Sunk Costs

Good eats

2011-07-06T19:06:00.002-04:00

So here's a barbecue recipe. The easiest thing you can possibly make, with one sorta tedious step- shredding the meat and picking out the fat.

1 big ol' pork rump/butt roast or shoulder or something called shoulder butt. don't be put off.

1 big onion

apple juice to fill up the crock pot 3/4ths full

salt

pepper

1 jar bbq sauce (plus more if you want to top your meat with it later)

Cut the onion into biggish rings. Lay half on the bottom of the crock pot. Rinse the meat, pat it dry, trim any big blobs of fat (or wait til it's cooked and tender, either way works). Salt and pepper it generously and plop it in the crock pot. Pour apple juice around it about 3/4ths full- not all the way to the top of the pot or it'll spill over. Top the roast with the other half of the onion rings. Turn the crock pot on high for about 6 hours (up to like 8 hours, or set the crock pot on low if you do it overnight). When time's up, take the roast out (careful, it's tender and breaky-aparty). Shred that mess and pick out any fat bits. You can use two forks, or the less dignified but more effective your own hands to do this. Empty the onions and juice from the crock pot, put the shredded meat back in and mix in a jar of bbq sauce. We only use mustard-based, but I have a friend who does half mustard-based and half ketchup-based sauce, and I suppose you could also do vinegar, or just throw in salsa or a bunch of green chiles to make taco pork. You can serve it right up, or I like to leave the crock pot on low or warm for another hour or two until mealtime. It makes awesome sandwiches, you can put it over rice, or just eat it by the forkful straight out of the crock pot. And that's all I've got for you today, but once you make it you'll see it's enough.

Isn't this when Mary Poppins comes?

2011-06-20T15:21:00.005-04:00

Someone hold me. We're going through what I suspect/hope is the 37-week sleep regression. Wynne IS sleeping, but don't ask me when her naps were yesterday or what they'll be like tomorrow. She'll wake up at 6:30 one morning, then sleep until 8 the next. She'll take 9 minutes to fall asleep for her first nap and an hour to fall asleep for the second one. I can't STAND the unpredictability and wondering if I put her down too soon or too late. She always cries when I leave her to sleep and takes forever to settle, which is maddening because she'd just gotten to where she knew the routine and usually took just 10 minutes to fall asleep. She needs to go in for her 6 month shots but I have no idea when to schedule an appointment because I can't guess when naptimes will be. Some days she gets 5 hours of naps, some days only 2.5 or 3, so bedtimes vary from day to day and that makes wake time vary. We have no schedule anymore and it is highly unpleasant.

She's also not eating like she used to. Sometimes she'll eat a normal serving, sometimes she'll turn her nose up at food she's always liked after three bites, sometimes she won't finish her bottle and has no interest in food at all. And no matter what it's a struggle to get through a meal. She's distracted and bats at the spoon and rubs her green beany hands in her eyes and hair. She didn't used to do these things, and it's making me dread mealtimes.

She constantly makes grunty humming sounds and scrunches up her nose and mashes her face into my body and rubs her eyes after 2 hour naps like she's still tired. She bursts into tears when I leave the room to put her diapers in the pail or get food ready or anything, even when somebody else is in the room playing with her. She'll be playing with a toy and suddenly NEED TO BE PICKED UP NOOWWW WOMAN!! She's had a rash around the sides of her diaper for a week now that will periodically get better and then pinker and more inflamed. She's always on the move, crawling for a step or two and then sticking her left leg out like a kickstand, getting stuck, and resorting to a sniper crawl. And in the last couple days she's started trying to pull up to her knees. I'm sort of hoping she'll start trying to walk just so we can do aaaall the developmental disruptions at once and get back to a schedule sooner.

I don't know WHAT to do most of the time. Basically I'm trying everything I can think to entertain her when she's awake, I'm doing ridiculous performances to keep her from melting down in the crib, I'm trying to sneak food in when she's distracted so she can't fling the spoon or the bottle to the floor, and for the most part, none of it is working.

What I Think About Schedules: Nobody Asked, and Almost Nobody Cares.

2011-05-05T18:31:00.005-04:00

The other day I read a blog post where a mama talked about allowing for flexibility in her baby's routine. They HAVE a routine, but on the days it doesn't fit with the other things that need doing, she doesn't freak out, and the baby adapts. What I took from it was that for them, a strict schedule is too limiting. Several commenters wrote that they totally agreed, that you can't let the baby's naptimes and whatnot dictate your entire life. And I absolutely get the gist- you aren't trapped in your house until your youngest child is through with naps. Even for stay-at-home moms, even with only one baby, it's totally unrealistic to expect that every nap be in the crib, that the baby's waketimes are never too long, that all feedings happen on time or at home. And I don't think any baby has ever suffered more than a day or two from a change to her routine. Maybe, as several moms noted in the comments, the occasional schedule disruption and lack of routine is good for babies (though I have my doubts. It isn't like babies go to bed and process the day to glean life lessons like "go with the flow").

What I think, and what I wrote in the comments, is that different babies have different temperaments and adaptability tolerances. Some babies are hardly phased when 2:00 rolls around and they aren't being set in the crib like the past several 2:00s. My baby isn't one of them; she needs a routine (all babies do, of course, but people. Wynnie don't play.), and when we're out at naptime or even when she wakes early from a nap, she is incurably cranky. It's not fun for her or for us. So I am loathe to disrupt her schedule. Occasionally we do, to visit friends or go out to eat with our families, but Mike and I both know we'll pay for it later, so we keep outings to a minimum. To us, it isn't worth the fussing or the day or two it takes to get back on track.

What I didn't write in the comments, because there's no need to broadcast your snobby dissenting opinions on someone else's blog, is this: I think it's a mistake to believe that as a mom, your life doesn't revolve around your baby and her needs (and other children too, when applicable). That may seem extreme, but I come by it honestly. My mama is a routine snob. Any time we're out and hear fussy crying babies or cranky meltdowny children, she says "that baby needs a nap." or "that child should be in bed asleep." When Emily and I were babies, Mama strove (strived?) to have us at home for naps and in bed at the same time every night. She almost never took us on playdates, shopping excursions, or visits to friends and former coworkers. I don't even think we did the church nursery, though I could be wrong. And I'm sure it wasn't much fun for her some days feeling trapped in those wood-paneled walls with two needy children. But what's that thing people are always saying about parenting? "It's the hardest job you'll ever love?" It's corny, but it's definitely true. Being a parent gives you a million new ways to make sacrifices, and for my money, sacrificing your schedule to your baby's, at every possible turn, in order to have a happier baby, is well worth the boredom, difficulty, and juggling it can cause. I don't want to step on any toes or criticize anybody else's parenting. I think routine is more important for a happy, well-adjusted baby than anything else, but some people may disagree, or may not be able to stick to a strict schedule as easily as we can, and their kids usually turn out great. All parents should do what works best for their family.

Of course, with a 2nd baby this is all out the window. Beyond 1 child, as best I can tell, survival is about all anyone can hope for.

I'm writing in haste because she's in the crib strategizing

2011-02-27T11:28:00.004-05:00

Every day is better. I feel it's safe to say I will NEVER be the mama who longs for times that have passed. One more day of holding a tiny sleeping infant when Wynne is older. Up to about 4 months, it was all just so much. And I do not miss it one. tiny. bit. I don't care if someone thinks this makes me a bad mama. I am just glad we made it through. At no point have I wondered where does the time go. It does not seem like just yesterday that I was pregnant or that she was brand new, and I am honestly glad when each day is over and we have one more behind us. Because we get closer and closer to being sleep trained, to being ready for real food and sitting up and talking and playing. Every new day is better. We get more smiles and giggles and sounds and motions. And we get more tears and fits and chances to fail, so when these days are gone I still won't wish to go back.

I hope I'll always be sensitive to other women's situations. Women who can't have babies, who have to wait for ages, women who parent alone, whose babies are sick or don't make it. I don't take for granted that my baby is healthy, is here, is in no danger except what might happen to her as a result of having clueless parents. My baby has a daddy, two sets of grandparents, lots of aunts besides just our two sisters. We have doctors for every possible body part and condition, books and websites and studies to learn from and help fill all the gaps. People who say all you need is milk and diapers ought to be stabbed. And I have some choice words for seasoned parents whose advice is to relax and enjoy it. Just find me ONE woman who felt relaxed during her first year(s) as a mother. Mike and I say that we'll know better the next time around and it will be easier. I can already tell you twenty things we are going to do differently, do better. It's a cruel system, having to practice and flounder and fail with the first one (and possibly subsequent ones). Only when you've done it all wrong do you realize there's a better way. Nowhere do your mistakes and shortcomings haunt you like they do in parenting. There's my mistake, crying in the crib for half an hour. Dirty (baby) dishes, piles of laundry and pizza boxes and new clothes in bigger sizes, filthy floors, days between pictures of the baby, weeks between updates to the grandparents. And what do we have to show for all of it? A list of what to do differently next time around. It's fortunate that parenting is heavy on the love, because it sure is heavy on the guilt. Amiright mommies?

sleep training help us Lord

2011-02-13T12:40:00.003-05:00

Sleep training is kicking our asses, guys. We have undoubtedly brought it on ourselves by always holding Wynne until she was completely asleep (and often for an entire nap). She never slept like you'd think a brand new baby would, for hours at a stretch and only waking up to eat. She was always awake for far longer at a time than I thought seemed right, but I had no idea how to MAKE her sleep. When she did fall asleep it was usually while eating, so we'd just hold her sort of upright until she woke up (since we never burped her before she nodded off and since we thought you were never supposed to wake a sleeping baby). Even then she'd only nap for maybe 30 minutes before an arm would fly up or the paci would fall out and she'd be up again. So for the first 3 months or so, we had a chronically overtired baby who had no idea how to self-soothe. Nighttime was never a real problem, likely because by then she was too exhausted to fight anymore, so I'm mostly talking about naps here.

I bet plenty of people diagnose babies with colic in situations like ours. It's an easy assumption based on all the fussing and crying, but really she was just way overtired. I knew she wasn't colicky, and after we ruled out milk sensitivity or anything in my diet, we finally arrived at the truth: we had a sleep problem. We started reading and watching lots of Dr. Weissbluth (I love him. Just listening to him talk makes you want to get under a blanket and nap) and agreed that we had made some mistakes. I don't mean to say it's a mistake for anyone else, but for us it has caused some serious strife that I suspect we could have avoided. If only we'd known. So now we're doing our version of Cry It Out- a mix of Weissbluth strategies and things I read on a blog I really like called Chronicles of a Babywise Mom, at babywisemom.com. And it is awful. Wynne got used to someone holding her until she was totally asleep, and that is a big no-no (according to many sources by which we now abide.) So she doesn't know how to get to sleep when we put her down awake. Her arms are unwieldy and her legs won't stay down and her paci falls out and there's nobody to put it back in and it's just more than she can handle. She grunts, then fusses, then cries, then cries hysterically. As per the guidelines of graduated extinction, we check on her after five minutes of crying, then give her ten and check again, then fifteen and so on. Many CIO parent testimonials say "we never got past the 20 minute check! She fell asleep and slept twelve hours straight!" Our testimonial would NOT include that statement. I think part of the trouble is that we don't have to cry it out at night, just naps, so there isn't an open-ended time period in which she can cry until she figures it out. After an hour or so of naptime crying, it's time to get up and eat and get on with the day so maybe she'll be tired for the next nap. The books don't seem to address this problem, so we really don't know what to do.

Crying it out is a snap in theory- put her down and let her cry until she falls asleep on her own. Next time there should be less crying, and the time after that even less, and so on until you lay her down and she drifts off to sleep without a fight. But man. In practice, there are so many variables. What if she gets hiccups? What about dirty diapers? Changing her gets her all roused up. If after the 10-minute check she's quiet for 8 minutes, then starts up again, do we start the 5-minute check over again or wait 15? If she's been wailing like a banshee for 45 minutes, and we know there's no chance she'll go to sleep in the next 15, do we just let her cry the whole time anyway before getting her up to eat? Has she learned anything if all she does is cry for the whole nap time and then we go pick her up? When the schedule is such that she's eating right before a nap and the bottle puts her to sleep, does it undo the self-soothing we want to teach?

Sometimes she goes down without much of a fight, sometimes it takes 20 minutes for her to get calm and drowsy. We never know if she'll sleep for 3 minutes, 15 minutes, or 40 minutes before waking up. She goes to bed around the same time each night, but we don't know when she'll first wake up (12:30, 1:55, 2:30, 3:45, 4:oo, 4:45- these have all been her first waking just in the last two weeks), so we don't have a routine so much as a pattern. It's a lot to manage, and factoring in how often and how much to feed her when we don't know what her sleeping schedule will be, and getting in play time and baths, it is truly a wonder to me that anybody ever does this more than once. Before Wynne I wanted 4 kids. Now I just want this one to make it to the age where I can reason with her about the importance of sleep. Or at least bribe her. What age is that?

I have no time to edit or make a tidy conclusion

2010-12-22T05:16:00.006-05:00

Invaluable Baby Junk, Wynne and Erin edition. Here's all our favorite stuff.

1. Medela Pump In Style Advanced. We have a love-hate relationship, but without this pump, I couldn't give her any breast milk. I haven't used any others to know that this one is far superior, but I'm still fairly certain there's no better pump out there. It's as convenient as pumping can be. I'm able to have my hands free (thanks to Mike's patent-pending Sports Bra With 2 Holes Cut In It, so if you ever get one, forget spending money on the brand name "corset" or whatever, cause sports bras work perfectly). Plus Medela makes a million accessories that make breast milk storage very easy. And I hear good things about their customer service in the event that something is wrong with your pump, which is nice because you can't really wait a while for replacement parts like you can for, say, a toaster.

2. My Brest Friend pillow. I didn't get one of these until about two weeks in, from some terrific friends of mine who were so supportive during our nightmare breastfeeding stage. I had a Boppy to start with, and it was no fun trying to position her on it to nurse. It wouldn't stay up high enough so I ended up hunched over, and it sags in the middle and it just wasn't comfortable for us. I actually use it now as a sort of body pillow, and we get some use out of it to prop her up for tummy time, and despite the tag's admonishings, we've set her in it to nap, so I'm glad we have it too, but as far as nursing I found it pretty worthless. The My Brest Friend was such an improvement. It straps around your middle and clips in place so you don't have to hold it up, and it really supports the baby so you can have at least one hand free rather than needing both just to hold the baby in place. I don't nurse anymore, but if we were nursing exclusively, I would be using this pillow every day.

3. Miracle Blankets. We have 4 (from Uncle Johnny) and they are in constant rotation. People who aren't familiar with them are usually pretty wary of them, thinking we keep our baby in a straight jacket when "she just wants her arms free! i can't stand to see them pinned down! she's wiggling, it must be that her blanket is too tight and restricting! let her out!!" These people are nuts; swaddling is magical to babies. I am extremely reluctant to believe anyone who says their baby did not like swaddling. Wynne startles like a madman when her arms are free and can't stay asleep more than 5 minutes at a time. She'll bang herself in the face, scratch her eyes with her unwieldy fingers and scraggly nails (so bad at baby nail-cutting). And when she's fussy, swaddling is always the first thing we do to calm her down. It's not a pacifier in itself, but it helps her to stop flailing, keeps a fit from escalating, and gets her attention so we can do the other things that calm her down. I don't think I'll ever waste my time with any other sort of swaddling blanket. This one is specifically designed so that baby arms can't pop out (though she does manage to bend hers at the elbows sometimes, she still can't flail them all around), and I feel certain that none of us would be sleeping if we didn't have these blankets. Our moms, both of whom disliked the tight swaddle at first, have come around because they know how well it works.

4. White noise machine and hair dryer. We have a little white noise machine that runs on batteries (handy for travel but we have to change the batteries often) and a sound machine that plugs in that we keep in the corner of her crib that we turn on whenever she sleeps. She, and I wager this is true of all babies, does NOT like quiet. It's much easier to fall asleep, and more importantly stay asleep, with background noise. And when she's really fussy, all we have to do is turn on the hair dryer (on high. low isn't loud enough.) and she'll stop crying almost immediately. Again, some people think we keep it too loud, but it turns out babies are used to a decibel similar to that of a vacuum cleaner in the womb, so the noise has to be fairly loud to work.

5. Happiest Baby On The Block, a book (by pediatrician Harvey Karp) about calming fussy babies. I don't think there's any new secret information in it, but it presents things nicely so that I can understand them. Basically, the point is that until 3 or 4 months, babies are really still fetusy and not well-equipped for life outside the womb, so we should recreate the experiences they're used to in the womb. Sensible and helpful.

6. Playtex Vent-Aire bottles. We tried several (nuk, breastflow) and these are the ones that work best for us, despite their many many parts. No fun to wash, but really what is fun to wash? We use the wide bottles with slow flow nipples, because we wanted something that would be similar enough to breastfeeding that she wouldn't refuse to nurse, which is no longer an issue, but I still really like these.

7. Soothie pacifiers. We have The First Years brand ones and love them. We have several other kinds too and she'll take them just fine, but I like the soothie kind. As we JUST discovered, the Munchkin pacifier clips sold at Target will attach to these kind (with a little force) so they don't go flying whenever the baby lets go (which she does. a lot.), and in our house with concrete floors, and with crumbs and fuzz and my hair all over the floors, it's nice not having to chase after the thing and rinse it off every five minutes.

8. Footed sleepers that zip or snap. So much better than having to pull a onesie over a tiny baby's head. And who invented shirts for babies? There's nothing to keep them down around their bellies where they belong. They all ride up and bunch up under their armpits and you're constantly yanking the shirt down. For the same reason, gowns are hit-or-miss for us. I like having her in them at night so diaper changes don't wake her up too much, but they bunch too. Wynne pretty much lives in footed sleepers. The last few weeks, however, she gets really hot and sweaty in her carseat or when she's being held to nap, so we also use lots of short sleeved onesies to keep her cooler.

9. Pampers swaddlers diapers and Huggies wipes. For this baby, Pampers is it. We still get leaks (dirty diapers only; I guess this is bound to happen no matter what), but other diapers leaked with far less mess than Pampers. And I love Huggies wipes because they are very easily torn in two. I like working with a smaller square and feel like I can use the whole wipe more efficiently this way. I usually only need 1, torn in half, for wet diapers and 2 or 3 for dirty diapers. I want to switch to cloth diapers here shortly, so when we do I'll try to do a post about what we like and how it's going, but for now we're using disposables so we love Pampers.

10. Other brand stuff we use: Enfamil Lipil formula (it's sorta frothy, which for some reason makes me think it's gentle on her stomach), Earth's Best Organic whole grain rice cereal (flaky like instant mashed potatoes! i tried food processing brown rice myself but i'm gonna need a much sturdier blade to really pulverize that stuff), Trumpette baby socks (the only ones we've found that don't fall off), Rockin Baby sling (I love it, Wynne tolerates it in short doses; had to watch youtube videos to figure out how to get a baby in and out of it), Moby wrap (again, youtube videos are important. we used this a whole lot early on, now it's hit or miss), Chicco (evidently pronounced key-co) baby gear. We have a Chicco carseat, stroller, and play yard, and they are awesome. I really like the quality of Chicco products and that they have a variety of gender-neutral colors; Baby Luve bath covers, which cover her up in the bathtub so it's not all chilly and drafty on the parts of her that aren't submerged. I don't know what bath time would be like without them, and I don't want to know. We could probably use a large washcloth or a small hand towel to the same effect, but these are designed for a baby's shape and aren't as thick and heavy as regular towel terrycloth. We luve them.

So there you go. Lately, Wynne has been throwing the worst fits I've ever witnessed. She fights sleep every single time we try to get her down (except the middle of the night feeding), and it's gotten way worse this week. Hysterical red-faced screaming. I don't know if it's teething, some phantom pain I can't recognize, or just that she's chronically overtired, but y'all. It is sapping me of all my strength and patience, neither of which I had in abundance to start with. If I can distract her, usually with the hair dryer or standing in front of the bathroom mirror (she likes looking at our reflections) with the vent turned on for noise, sometimes the wailing will subside so that I can get her swaddled. Then I usually have to take her to a pitch black room (for us the bathrooms are the only rooms without windows) with some white noise, and rock her and pat her bottom (kinda hard) and smush her tight against me until she falls asleep. It's a production, and if it wasn't so stressful and terrible it'd probably be pretty funny. But I'm just throwing it out there in case it helps anybody else. Loud noise to distract her from the fit (hair dryer, bathroom vent, white noise machine, motorboat sounds, loud rattle- pill bottles work in a pinch), swaddle her (quickly! she hates being put down and having her arms pinned down- initially), pitch black dark room (no cracks of light, shadows, NOTHIN), pacifier, hold her tight so her legs don't feel free and she can't arch her back, rock/swing and pat her bottom and wait it out. Also lots of prayer thrown in there.

Doing nothing all day takes up all of my time.

2010-11-15T16:37:00.001-05:00

Wynne is 6 weeks old today, which both seems impossible and like it took forever. Currently she's hanging out with her Gigi while I pump. Most things I've read say you should pump for 15-20 minutes, but I find that milk is still coming (in tiny dribs; I rarely make more than 1.5 ounces per pumping session), so I usually pump for 30 minutes. It's no fun. It's mighty uncomfortable, and I'm tied down to one spot the whole time, unable to cook or clean or shower or even change positions, and I have to do it sitting up, otherwise the milk leaks everywhere and all is lost, and we're making do with a fairly old futon as our primary seating. It really doesn't offer a lot of support. And worst of all, I can't really hold the baby while I'm pumping, so I have to hand her off (often for a feeding, so someone else has to feed and burp her) and then she'll get comfortable and fall asleep, so I can't hang out with her again for a long time after I'm done cause I don't want to risk waking her up. I do not miss the agonies of nursing, but oh what I would give not to have to spend 4 hours per day pumping (to say nothing of the storage and clean-up afterwords). And we're still having to supplement with formula cause I don't make enough. I know it sounds awful to complain that I'm able to give my baby ANY breastmilk, cause I'm sure if I couldn't I would be furious with anyone who griped about it, but this is my situation and I am just saying, it wears me down. I can't help thinking every time I hook up the stupid pump that it would be so nice if all I had to do was pull up my shirt or mix up formula bottles when it was time for Wynne to eat. I'll keep pumping as long as I can, but I am not gonna be sorry when it's over. It's so good that babies are adorable, because some of the stuff I have to do for one is NOT cute at all. Wet and dirty diapers don't bother me, and I don't care when she spits up all down my arm when I'm trying to burp her (this is a feat, by the way. who knew? it sounds so simple in theory, but babies fling their little bodies all over creation and two hands is simply too few), but the lack of sleep is really catching up to me. I get pretty upset over what I know are actually very small things, and I have to really concentrate on enjoying middle of the night feedings instead of feeling sorry for myself for being awake and only having gotten two hours of sleep. Again, it's a well thought-out system, cause the middle of the night feeding is when she does the most smiling. This week her smiles are seeming more deliberate and intentional, rather than just those little sleep smiles we were getting before. I can't WAIT for my mama to see them when we go back for Thanksgiving. She will just melt.

Here's a picture of her in a precious pea pod outfit that Gigi made her. Tell me I don't have the cutest baby in the land.

At some point I'd like to write about all the baby gear we've found really helpful. Perhaps I'll get around to it before SHE has a baby. But no promises.

And she smells yummy too

2010-10-17T20:23:00.005-04:00

Hey don't be mad about how long it's been! Look at the squishy baby! This is our baby girl, Wynne Larue. She was born on the 4th and weighed 9 pounds 3.6 ounces (yeeouch!) and she is a precious ideal dream baby, except when she latches to nurse I nearly die of agony. I believe breastfeeding is important and special and I want to do whatever is best for my baby, but believe me when I say that I gave it everything I had, and for us, right now, it just is not going to work. So I'm pumping like a bandit and Wynne is getting breastmilk from bottles as well as formula from bottles and I no longer dread feedings or cry tears of fear and pain and despair onto her little punkin head. We are very, very happy, except it is misery being away from Mike and knowing all that he's missing and except for the times when I'm petrified that my supply is going to dwindle and dry up any minute now. But she really is the perfect baby. She sleeps like a dream and is so freakin cute that I don't even care that she likes to save up all her dirty diapers for the hours between midnight and 6am. Baby sneezes and baby hiccups are just about enough to do me in. And her little half-asleep baby smiles. Oh mah Lord.

Anyway this is about all I've got time for. Between feeding and pumping and washing and burping and holding and sleeping, my days are mighty packed. Full of love! It is weird and awesome having a baby girl.

CORNflakes!

2010-09-15T09:06:00.005-04:00

Friends, I got nothin. I am so boring that even the Lord is like "meh," and he cares about everything. Here's what I know.

- Only 3 weeks til my due date. At my check-up yesterday I asked the midwife if she could estimate the baby's size, and after feeling around a bit she said maybe 7 or 7.5 pounds. If this seems normal to you, awesome, but to me it is hella scary. I was thinking she might would be 7 pounds when she came out and was none too jazzed about that, so now that I know we have probably passed that mark, I am extra freaky outy. I know millions of women do this, but I'm telling you guys, in terms of stretching and accomodating and expelling, it just doesn't seem possible. Also when asked if I was experiencing braxton hicks contractions, I said I don't think so, because there's been nothing especially unpleasant going on, but then she tried to explain how they feel by saying "it's like her rear end is pushing your belly and it gets hard for a minute," and I've been feeling THAT for about a month now. Soooo... I dunno what's going on.

- My right foot, and by about 5pm my left one too, is ready to cry uncle. Y'all, it is so puffy and fat that I can hardly wear a shoe. Any shoe. And I have the narrowest feet in the world, so in most shoes I've got a good bit of wiggle room. I know there are people who can't stand the sight of other people's feet, so I will spare you photographic evidence, but it is ridiculous.

- Fall. It is delicious, and it is coming. We've already made chili and cornbread, chocolate chip cookies, pumpkin scones, and cranberry apple crisp. Much to the dismay of grocers everywhere, it would appear, because apart from Ocean Spray NOBODY sells cranberries in September. I looked high and low for them yesterday, at two different stores, and they are not to be found. What gives? Why not have frozen cranberries year round the same as strawberries and raspberries and blueberries? With all this shopping and cooking I've been doing, it's no wonder my feet swell up like blimps, but you can't not cook delicious things this time of year. The SC State Fair is coming up, and pumpkins and apples and scarecrows and Halloween and Thanksgiving and orange and brown and yellow, and I'm just so excited I could pop. Everybody wear corduroys and drink out of mason jars and have desserts with apples and butter and oats and cinnamon and ice cream! (Once at a mexican restaurant my sister went to, the 'fried ice cream' was a blob of grocery store strawberry ice cream rolled in cornflakes. Cornflakes! Probably do not allow this travesty to be a part of your fall food library.)

- My Mama had a birthday last week, on the 11th. She does not read my blog, because she doesn't know of it, but she is just too great not to talk about. She does every single thing more patiently and thoroughly than I could ever have thought possible and she doesn't complain, and she always knows what's most important and always makes time for her babies, and she gets up every morning to walk on the treadmill, and she does my laundry, and she loves the Sound of Music and petits fours and James Taylor, and she makes room for dessert, and she can take care of everything, and everyone would be lost without her. Most especially me.

Here we are decorating my Christmas tree last year. If you can just ignore the fact that I'm wearing rubber gloves (the tree was stabby!). Also my weird shape (cookies are delicious!). Mama loves Christmas (it was her mama's favorite time of all), and I love her!

but not breyers ice cream. bleck.

2010-08-23T08:11:00.005-04:00

I'm getting to the point where most of my dresses are a little too snug for comfort. So except for a few dresses that have a lot of elastic, I generally prefer shorts and shirts. It's tricky, because I can still get my pre-pregnancy shorts on (thank you Lord for this blessing; I assume it's compensation for the ankle swelling and stabby rib pains), but the button side and the button hole side are always about 3 inches away from each other, with no hope of meeting, so I have to use my belly band (which Erin gave me, and it is the single most useful pregnancy item I could imagine) to hold them up, and stuff all the extra material as flat as I can get it under the band. It's a little bulky, and every time I have to go to the bathroom I dread having to get dressed all over again, but my shirts mostly cover the unsightly part, and it's nice to be able to wear shorts, cause I'm not fond of the way my legs stick together in skirts and dresses.

My belly picture photographer left me in the lurch last weekend when he moved to Arkansas, so I'll need my parents to fill in for the remainder of the pregnancy, which is 42 more days. Forty. Two. DAYS. You know how sometimes your computer freezes for a few seconds and then does several commands rapid-fire to catch back up? That's how I feel when I think about how little time is left. Wha--- OMG42daysbutIdon'tknowhowtohaveababyletaloneholdoneandchangeherdiaperandgethertoeatandsleepwhatdoidowhenshecries.
On the whole, I'm not too stressed about the baby. There's tons of stuff I don't know, but I think that's probably always the case, and I'll just do my best and figure it out as we go. What I'm anxious about is that Mike won't be here with me for the first few weeks. He has to be in Arkansas to teach, and I'm having the baby here so that we can keep my insurance and the midwives I've been seeing all along, and so I can have help from our moms and families. They're experts, so it's not that I'm scared about doing it all ALONE, I just want Mike to be here too and not to miss out on stuff. I know there are tons of families who'd gladly trade for circumstances like ours, and all we can do is make the best of it until the baby and I can move out to Arkansas. I just wish things always went precisely like I wanted. Is that so wrong?

This weekend Mike's mom's friends threw me a baby shower, and it was fabulous. The food was great and we got TONS of stuff, and these ladies did the most awesome thing. While I was opening presents, one of them wrote down what the gift was and who it was from, and stuck it in a thank you note that they had ALREADY ADDRESSED FOR ME, so all I have to do is pull out the card, read the post-it to remember what that person gave me, and write the thank you note. I am the worst about thank you notes. Over half of my wedding ones are sitting at my house, thanking my friends and family from inside a cardboard box for the beautiful trifle dish. I always tell people NOT to write me a thank you note, because I know the trouble I have with them, and I have no interest in inflicting that on anybody. I am a very polite and thankful person, and I make a point to convey my extreme gratitude to people in person when receiving a gift, but thank you notes are just not my bag. I will do them for this child, though, so people don't think her rude. But she is gonna owe me. And with all the awesome stuff people are getting us, writing a note and buying stamps is the very least I can do. My aunt Julie even found us a Star Wars baby book. You can guess which parent will choose that one every night. And Mike's mom (GiGi to the baby) has already made the baby two quilts and she's not even HERE yet, so by the time she's mobile we should have her whole room padded a couple layers deep. My dad (Chief to the baby; he's a fireman) was not too far off when he said this child isn't going to need to buy anything for herself until she's forty. That's a lot of years to perfect her thank you notes.

She's been kicking and shifting and hiccuping like a banshee lately, and I fear that she's looking for more room to grow in there, when really, isn't 4 pounds more than enough for anyone to have to expel from their body? My belly button is stretching a little more every day (for some reason it really skeeves me out), so it can't be long now until it pops out. At my last appointment, the midwife told me that the baby is head down (woohoo!), so I suspect that the part of her that periodically presses against the middle of my stomach and makes a funny little protrusion is her rump. I also think she tends to stay to one side (my left), but still somehow she's taking up all my stomach's room, so I have to cut waaaay back on my portions at mealtimes, excpet usually I don't, and boy am I sorry twenty minutes later. And usually by the end of the day, I can't see my ankles anymore, and I have to get up 3 times every night to pee. Also I could fall asleep at any given moment throughout the day, and often do nod off at my desk. But that's it for pregnancy issues. So far she's been a very easy baby. And I can already tell she accepts ice cream in lieu of thank you notes.

What do you mean, my mothering skills have more to do with how she turns out than my baby registry?

2010-08-04T14:50:00.009-04:00

The last few weeks, all I've really been doing is registering for baby things. It's a little silly how much stuff there is for babies, and I'm doing my best to research what we really need, which brands get the best ratings, which things lots of moms seem to love, and where to find things the cheapest, but even with all that work, it's still just a big guessing game, because there is no guarantee that any of it will work for THIS baby. Maybe she'll hate being in a sling and love taking baths, or maybe the clown toy that ALL BABIES LOVE! will scare her senseless. (It is a little creepy-looking, I'll admit.) Having a baby is a lot like saying "you know my life's all right, but I could really go for some more mysteries and surprises."

Yesterday was my work baby shower, and we really raked in the goods. I've got some very generous coworkers, several of whom have had babies since I started here, and they know what they're doing as parents, so that's been great for me. One of the moms apologized for getting me something that isn't on my registry (stacking cups for the bath, one of which she says is really useful for rinsing out shampoo). I made no bones about informing her that I don't know WHAT I need, and she should feel free to make whatever suggestions she pleases. I'll take all the help I can get, here, people. Her daughter has made it safely to 18 months, and if those bath toys will put us on the same path, then bring them on!

In real estate news, our house is finally ready to go on the market! So say a prayer that we can sell quickly and for close to what we owe, because SC house mortgage + AR house rent + new baby - Erin's income is not a desirable equation. It's a great house, and I'm really going to miss it. I already do, in fact, though I know it's far from an ideal setup for a baby. The master bedroom is the only downstairs bedroom, so we'd have had to convert the closet (which is way big enough) into the baby's nursery for a while. And while that would have worked great and been totally fine with me and Mike, I don't think my Granny would ever sleep again if she thought I was keeping my baby in a closet. Speaking of the nursery, here is the one item we have purchased for it. Try not to die of cuteness.

Mike is getting ready to head to Arkansas to start teaching, and since I won't be joining him until October at the earliest, I feel like I need to make him a bunch of food to last him until we get there. Not that he's used to home cooked meals every day, but if I can't be there, I can at least send him with enough food that he can eat every time he misses me. I quite like cooking, but can I tell you how much better it would be if I could sit down the whole time? And not because I'm pregnant, either, although my ankles have started swelling at night if I'm on my feet a lot during the day (and my shins feel really tight- is this normal?). I just hate standing up for that long. For my money, standing is just something you have to do in order to get from one seat to the next. But it's tough to get things done in the kitchen without being on your feet, which explains how the inventor of Crocs is laughing all the way to the bank. Anyway so I'm trying to find recipes that freeze well, both to send with him and so I can fix a few things before the baby (for whom we still have not settled on a name) arrives. Got any suggestions?

Here you go! Don't say I never do anything for you.

2010-07-21T07:49:00.006-04:00

Hey look! Pictures!!

So the first one (below) is 17 weeks. I know there's a bra hanging on the door, and I'm sorry, but I can't crop things.
Then this one is 20 weeks. We didn't know it was a girl yet, and I have no explanation for the weird gaps that appear in my hair, or the lack of make-up. Or the horrendous pile of laundry. I wear that red dress on a weekly basis because it's really soft and comfortable and is one of the few dresses I own that hasn't become too tight for me to take a deep breath. Elastic is my closest friend. This one was 23 weeks, so now we know she's a girl. I do not know two people who are less inclined to take pictures than Mike and me. We are awful at it, which is why there's such a gap between weeks. Also the change of scenery is because by this point we had moved in with my parents to try and clean our house and get it sold. It's still not on the market. If you are fairly lazy before pregnancy, I can tell you now that you don't have a prayer of accomplishing anything when pregnant.

Here is 27 weeks. Raggedy Andy looks on, probably fearing for the well-being of the child who has this pale, frizzy goober for a mother.

And finally, here is 29 weeks. I'm really sticking out now and strangers ask me when I'm due and how I'm holding up in the heat. I do not ever advocate talking to a woman as if she were pregnant unless you are sure beyond the shadow of a doubt that there's a baby in there, but since I am in fact pregnant, I don't mind it too much. The pan on the stove in the background is mine, and it's glorious for cooking pot roast, but a few months back I scalded the fool out of it by turning on the wrong burner, upon which the empty pan was resting, and leaving the burner on for upwards of half an hour before figuring out a) why the pan of beans I was TRYING to heat was still cold, and b) why it smelled like hot metal and I kept hearing strange popping noises. I'd like to be able to blame this on "pregnancy brain," but I've been turning on the wrong burner on that stove for far too long on my own for that to be the case.

So there you have it. If we've learned anything from these pictures, it's that pregnancy has caused me to stop putting any effort whatsoever into fixing my hair. This does not bode well for my appearance once the baby actually arrives, so this may well be the last set of photos you ever see of me.

So do you have any frozen chocolate-flavored glucose drink?

2010-06-28T12:39:00.005-04:00

Well Mike found the camera-to-computer cord, so I'm hopeful that soon I can get you people some belly pictures! Though I will say now, they are nothing special. I am not, for instance, wearing the same thing every time, or holding something that's equal in size to the baby, or taking pictures with any regularity, or any of that fanciness. So. You've been warned.

This weekend Mike and I hung out at his parents' pool with some friends of ours and their two kids, who are 5 and 6. For some reason the 5-year-old calls Mike Frank, which I find hilarious. And he announced to us that he was going to change into a girl. Named Teresa. Which Mike found hilarious. Kids are the best, right? And, out of the 6 of us, only I got sunburned. ::sigh:: I know. But I would like to point out that I applied Mike's sunscreen for him and HE didn't get burned, so. You don't have to worry about me slow-roasting our children. Only myself.

These days, I'm trying to map out a 4th of July menu and figure out if we can swing a beach trip before summer is up (it's not looking good for us, atlantic ocean) and register for baby things (us either, financial viability) and not eat all the chocolate ice cream in the land. It is so hot, and this baby is a chocolate ice cream fiend. The other night we went out for ice cream, and I ate all of my rainbow sherbet and drank about half of Mike's chocolate peanut butter shake. And that was after I ate half his onion rings. That might help explain why I got fussed at by the midwife this morning for gaining too much weight. : ( I'm up 23 pounds since my first appointment at 8 weeks and am on track to gain a pound a week from here on out. That makes 37 pounds by the time it's all said and done. Yikes. She did say I was "way underweight" to start out (which, HA and OH BLESS YOU), but right now I'm 5 pounds over what I should be. I do think I'm taking in more calories now than I ought to be, mostly in the form of starches and salt, and I know I'm eating more sugar than I ever have before, so I can cut back on that and eat more fiber so that I fill up faster. But, my question is, how feasible is it really to expect to LOSE any weight during pregnancy? I'm probably just going to have to work like a beast to drop the extra weight afterwords, right?

Stop being so unpleasant, I'm trying to love you!!

2010-06-11T10:16:00.008-04:00

My parents have been out of town this week, so I've had to plan meals not only for Mike and me but for my Granny too, since she's at a point where she can't really cook anymore. She'll put biscuits in the oven, sit down to wait, fall asleep, and wake up 30 minutes later to burnt biscuits. She can't stand long enough to mix anything up or even watch a pot, so she relies fully on meals we provide for her not just at dinner but also for her lunches, when we're all at work. And her memory is a little fuzzy, so she'll forget we've left her a plate in the fridge or not realize it's lunchtime and go all day without a real meal. It's frustrating for us having to take extra measures to be sure she doesn't starve or only eat snack food, particularly when my mom and I are both trying to get ourselves ready and out the door in the mornings, but mostly it makes me sad. Growing up, whenever Emily and I spent the night with Granny, she'd cook anything she could think of that we might possibly want. She would make huge meals for the whole family, all by herself, and never complain. She loved it. She still tries to be that person, offering to help in the kitchen and always asking "what can I do?," but she's just not capable of doing most of what needs done. I know she'd give anything to feel like she was contributing, and she can't stand feeling helpless or uninvolved, so I try to be patient and find ways to include her. I'll take all the help I can get, but when it takes 20 minutes to cut a bell pepper it's hard to classify it as 'help.'

She's also become a lot more blunt in recent years, making disapproving faces when she doesn't understand something we're making or hears that we're having any sort of pasta or chicken. (She does NOT like chicken, which she will passive-aggressively remind us of by saying "we've had enough of that lately!" when she hasn't had any in weeks. I guess maybe it doesn't have any taste for her so she's not interested.) She'll start eating from her plate the second I put it in front of her, even though nobody else has been served or seated and we haven't said the blessing. (Mike will attest that this sends me into a rage. OMG SO RUDE.) She struggles to breathe when she's eating, so meals are always a smack-y, noisy affair, and we can count on at least one bout of coughing and choking per meal. She takes pills with her meals but often forgets to bring them and will ask "did you remember my pills?" or say "we need a supper pill" and tap the piece of table where she wants them to be, as though it were anyone else's responsibility but her own and how could we be so stupid? And no matter how much is on her plate, she will finish every. single. noisy. bite. and then give us the "where's dessert?" face. Sometimes it's a lot like having a 79-year-old preschooler. I love cooking and I really love eating, but those tend to be the most stressful, tense parts of my whole day when Granny is involved. When I do get frustrated, like I was last night, I try to tell myself that she has done way more for me than I will ever do for her, and she doesn't WANT to be this way, and then I feel like a huge jerk for being short with her and give her extra ice cream with dessert and aim to do better next time, because when she's gone I don't want to worry that she so much as entertained the idea that we'll be better off without her.

Anyway I started writing this to tell you about the dessert I made last night. It was so awesome. I got the recipe from Deb over at Smitten Kitchen. I bought blueberries on sale last week without a plan for how to use them and I didn't want them to go to waste, so I was really excited to find a recipe that wasn't for scones (so time-consuming) or pancakes (so blah). It's got pretty much the best name I've ever heard for a dessert, and it is delicious beyond my capacity to convey deliciousness. We had it with ice cream, because I was worried it would be cake-y and rather dry, but I wound up eating most of it by itself because it just didn't need any ice cream. And then I had more for breakfast. And I'm wishing I'd brought the whole pan to work so I could have it for a snack and lunch and then another snack too. Seriously, make some.

It's true she IS growing!

2010-06-04T09:57:00.004-04:00

Well.

IT'S A GIRL!!!!!!!!

We found out yesterday. And I can hardly believe it. She seems so REAL now!

Only a couple people are allowed in the ultrasound room at a time, so I went back with Mike and his mom first. The plan was for the three of us to find out what the baby is, then switch out and I would tell my mom and Emily. So the ultrasound tech did all the routine anatomy and measurements (1 pound 3 ounces!) and said "okay, we can switch out now." I figured maybe she was planning to do all of it over again for Mama and Emily, so I guess it didn't occur to me that hey, she didn't say what it is yet. Mike was like "uhh... when do we find out the sex?" Oh right. That. ::sigh:: Can't the momentous occasions in my life not be marred by awkwardness as a result of my not knowing what on earth I'm doing? I mean, what is my deal? Before me, has anybody in the history of babies ever attempted to shoo their husband and mother-in-law from the room before they've heard whether it's a boy or a girl?

So the tech starts looking, but our sweet baby had its legs all stuck together (mermaid baby?). I wish I could remember the tech's name, but hello, clearly I'm awful at this, so I have to call her the tech. The tech smashed the doppler wand around on my belly to get the baby to move around. It worked, and she said rather softly "it's a little girl!"

Y'all. I was floored. I actually said "no it's not!?!" because I was so sure she was going to tell me it's a boy. I had a very quick moment of prayer that took a lot less time to think than it takes to read through. "Does this pregnancy's awesomeness know no bounds? October, arguably the best birth month. No agonizing trials or years-long wait for my baby. No morning sickness, nothing worrisome or abnormal or painful. AND I get to buy tu-tu bathing suits and watermelon dresses???" I am seriously in awe of how much love God has for me. Back in April for my birthday, my stellar friend Brock gave me some ballerina socks for my baby. We had no idea what it was yet, but she said she just couldn't resist. And I thought Lord, if this baby is a boy, I'm going to ask that you take away my love for these socks. If I were a better listener, I'm sure I would have heard him being like "Woman. Stop stressing out. It's me, the God who loves you so much that I give you exactly what you need." I'm not proud that I had to be reminded of that, but I can't think of a more awesome way to be reminded.

And look what her aunt Emily bought her!

He wants us to change our last name so he can be Dr. Danger. Would that fly in the Natural State?

2010-05-26T13:03:00.004-04:00

Here is what I know about Arkansas:
1. It's the Natural State!
2. Razorbacks
3. It's about a 13 hour drive from South Carolina. Don't ask me how long a flight it is, because until Southwest comes there is no direct flight from here to there.
4. A tiny little university whose school of business you're all going to wish you could attend because the smartest, hottest, funniest professor of all times now works there.

What do you know about Arkansas?

Underwhelming You Monthly, Edition May

2010-05-14T11:15:00.005-04:00

You know how sometimes you can feel someone staring at you, but you pretend you don't notice because you don't want them to be staring at you and you don't want to talk to them? That is what I'm doing when you come see if I've written anything new in the last four weeks. So. I've been very busy.

This week is the halfway point in my pregnancy! No real news-worthy updates I don't think. I felt the baby move for the first time a couple of weeks ago after an employee appreciation lunch, and since then it's been pretty quiet. A few pokey movements that could be a baby or could just be my insides trying to digest all the nonsense I send down there. I've got an appointment on Thursday, but at my practice they make you wait until 22 weeks to do the big ultrasound, so this week's is just a regular check-up and I'll go back in 2 weeks for the important one (therefore we have not yet registered for anything). I'm starting to show, but in a way that sometimes looks like baby (I find dresses to be most flattering) and sometimes looks like a girl who refuses to buy clothes in a size up because she's in denial about how well everything is fitting (t-shirts and shorts, you are dead to me). My mama and I went to Target this weekend and I bought three of the same cotton skirt because they're extremely soft and comfortable, so if you actually see me in person or pictures for the next few months, you should expect to see a lot of outfit recycling. I have taken exactly 1 belly picture, back at 17 weeks, which in truth looks the same as if I'd taken it 18 weeks before that, but I will begin regular photographing this week since I feel like I have something to show. Don't let me forget!

Also this weekend my mama and I painted a room in her house. Initially the plan was for Mike to help (a lot), but he got sick and spent the weekend developing an addiction to nasal spray, so we did it without him. All weekend. We had planned to go to a baby thing at a convention center this weekend but couldn't fit it in with all the painting. So every time I look upon those walls, it'll be a sweet reminder of all the things I still don't know about babies. Really though, I feel decently equipped because I'm not that different from a baby in a lot of ways. Mostly I want to eat, sleep, and play, and I've been known to pitch a righteous fit when something doesn't go my way. The hard part is just that now Mike will have to deal with two of us. Boy is he in for it.

Lastly, I bought some Crocs. In my opinion, Crocs are rather ugly. Particularly the traditional ones with the big fat blob with holes all punched in it. To my eye, they look silly on anybody's feet. So I tried to fight it, but when Emily told me how much better her legs and feet feel after a day in Crocs than in regular shoes, I couldn't resist. I don't know if I have a dreadfully low pain threshold or an unusually vigorous walk/stance, but if I spend more than about fifteen minutes on my feet at a time, it hurts. After a day at the mall or any kind of event that requires a lot of standing or walking, or being on my feet in the kitchen cooking, it's like I'm walking on raw, bare bones. Really unpleasant. So I bit the bullet and ordered some Crocs. I've worn them once when I had to stand up for about 30 minutes and several times to cook, and I can't be sure if it's all the shoe or partly the shoe and partly my brain thinking I'm supposed to feel different, but I can tell a difference. So I am currently debating whether or not to get another pair. And that's about all I've got going on.

I'm 0.12% baby! And 30% peanut oil.

2010-04-22T11:49:00.005-04:00

This morning I had my 16-week doctor's appointment. Everything looked good, so it went very quickly. Just a little specimen and blood pressure check, then a fast and tiny heartbeat, and we were out of there. Oh yeah, and I've put on about 5 pounds in 4 weeks. I'm sure some of it is water, and although my pants are getting tight, my rings aren't fitting any more snugly, so I don't know how much to trust the scale. But it's still disheartening, and a little embarrassing, because based on what I reported as my pre-pregnancy weight, my chart shows a 9 pound gain so far, and sources say that at 16 weeks the average fetus weighs about 2.5 ounces. OUNCES. I can't even bring myself to do the conversion to know how many of those I've gained. And there's only one fetus in there, so I have no choice but to assign the other 4.9 pounds to french fries, chicken fingers, and cheese.

Basically, unless I want to give birth to a salt-encrusted deep-fried baby, I've got to take it down a few nothches in terms of sodium and instead have an apple or a salad or some air. That should be a cinch, particularly since we're having a cookout this weekend for Mike's birthday with steaks and twice baked potatoes and onion rings. I guess I ought to install some counter space across the arms of my treadmill so I can make dinner while I preemptively burn off all of those calories. Although maintaining a brisk clip and wielding a sharp knife sounds like a recipe for birthday disaster. But if I do end up in the hospital, at least I can request the no-sodium meals they give to heart patients.

I don't really think my diet is that bad overall. I've noticed my appetite has increased over the past few weeks and I'm eating more at every meal, so I know that's not helping. I could certainly stand to add in some daily exercise, and I need to lessen the frequency with which I go places that have fried food. As it turns out, I'm too weak to resist when it's there, so the best solution is to do more of my own cooking, which will be easier now that Mike isn't gone half the week. I hate buying groceries when we're rarely there to eat them, but now there's no excuse. Plus the longer I can make it in my regular wardrobe, the better, because I can think of a million ways I'd rather spend my money than on maternity clothes. Lucky for me, my mom and Mike's mom have given me several maternity shirts and a fantastic pair of maternity dress pants, and a lot of my shirts and dresses will work for most of my pregnancy. Erin asked if I was going to post belly pictures, and I'd be happy to, except there really hasn't been any change yet, but I guess what's the point of the pictures if there's not a starting point, so I'll try to remember to have Mike take one when I get home and put that up later. For you, Erin.

So in 4 weeks I'll go back for another regular checkup, and 2 weeks after that will be the ultrasound that tells us whether we'll be getting my little ponies or hot wheels at the drive thru! Except at Chick-Fil-A when I plan to always ask for the ice cream instead of the toy. Did you know you can do that with their kids' meals? Just thank 3 of my pounds for that tip.

I'm going to need to work on throwing a ball and making noises

2010-04-08T08:24:00.013-04:00

I think this baby is a boy. People say your instinct is usually right, but I wouldn't really say I KNOW it's a boy or that I have secret mom instincts about it. I suspect it may be my brain's way of trying to gear me up for the possibility of not a girl, because I know absolutely nothing about little boys (circumwhat?), and their clothes bum me out. Erin and I have talked about this before. I feel like I've been to enough stores to have a pretty good idea what kinds of things are out there for boys. Sweet pastel-colored smocked jon-jons, and then onesies and shirts with cars, balls, tools, stripes, farm and sea and jungle animals, dinosaurs, monsters, nautical things, and "mommy's lil so-and-so." And that's about it. No skirts, no dresses, no ruffles or frills or pink or even purple. I know that this is a tiny tiny complaint, not the end of the world, some people have REAL problems, and hey, I can spend more money on my own clothes this way! But there's just something about a little yellow bathing suit with a tiny tu-tu sewed on, and you can't put your son in that. Can you?

So tell me what you (would or do) like about having boys. Also I am taking name suggestions, because currently my list reads like a bunch of last names. That end in -n. Names that end in -r are discouraged since our last name ends in -r also. We won't have the boy/girl ultrasound until the very end of May, so I've got a while to go before we know for sure, but I'm still trying to focus on the boy names and clothes and nursery designs in the mean time so as not to get my heart set on pink ruffly things. I absolutely won't be disappointed or sad if my baby is a boy, just to clarify. I don't have a preference for the baby itself; it's just that everything about boys is so new and foreign.

This week marks 100 days of pregnancy! So far I really have not felt pregnant, save for having to pee a lot more often. I haven't been sick at all, and I don't think I've gained any weight yet (or Mike is monkeying with the scale, and that would be all right), but the weight does seem to be distributed differently. My clothes fit a little tighter around the middle and it's harder to suck in my fat, but also I feel like maybe my love handles are being pulled forward, so I look a little worse from the front but a little better from behind. I get full a lot sooner, and between meals I have absolutely no appetite, whereas before I could pretty much always eat, so that's been difficult to get used to, though I wonder if that is how regular people feel all the time between their meals.

The thought of tomatoes turns my stomach and I don't ever want to see lasagna again, but other than that there haven't been any food aversions or noxious smells. I always want salty or tart things like fried or cheesy things and fruit and lemonade, but that was the case even before the pregnancy. So my diet hasn't been stellar, but certainly no worse than before. I try to get in lots of fruits to counteract all the veggies I'm not eating, since I'm not interested in bitter or earthy-tasting things like bell peppers or carrots or mushrooms or beans (unless they're covered in butter or cheese or dressing), or things that have a peanutty taste (which sadly includes Chick-fil-A chicken, since it's fried in peanut oil, but it's so salty and good going down that I eat it anyway). I haven't had any freaky dreams, but they all seem so REAL. Really vivid and like actual life. My aunt Pam had two dreams, before she knew I was pregnant, that I was having a baby girl, and she says she's always heard that the baby is the opposite of whatever you dream, so there's that. Really I think God knew what it was before I even existed, and no amount of Chinese lunar calendar studying or salty cravings or baby girl dreams or ballerina swimsuits is going to change that, so my prayers are mostly of the "help me find the best boy stuff and don't let me mess up our baby" variety. And of course I'm praying for a healthy baby. What's more important than that? Not ruffles, that's for certain.

Think I can recycle the gift for Mike's sister?

2010-04-01T15:00:00.004-04:00

I know how boring it's gotten around here lately, and I am going to do a lot better starting next week. For now, I'm just popping in to say that I hope you have a fantastic weekend, cause I won't be back for a few days. Tomorrow we're headed down to Charleston for the weekend to celebrate Emily's and my birthday. We'll be 24! I got her a present, but I sort of feel there's like nothing I could buy to say just how glad I am that she's my sister, so Mike and I decided to make her something too. An aunt!

So who'd you vote for on Dancing With The Stars?

2010-03-22T11:57:00.007-04:00

The only things I've been up to lately are cooking, watching tv, and sleeping. I've started to think I might ought to cut back on how much tv I watch, because at the end of the day I generally find myself wondering where all the time went and how I accomplished so little. But then I wonder how much more I'd really get done, because gang, I am lazy. And tv is entertaining. I just get the feeling that other people are getting more enjoyment from life than I am. I don't know. I tend to be a little bit jealous of pretty much everyone, so it's probably just that the grass seems greener on the other side, but has there ever been a case of somebody saying "I regret the decision to watch less tv."? Or "I shouldn't have left the house on this beautiful day in search of fulfilling activities."?

On the food front, to prove that I don't ONLY watch tv, last week my mom and I made some amazing Philly cheese steaks, despite not really following a recipe and never having cooked meat that way before. The key is butter. And we also made some reeeally awesome funnel cakes. Oh gah they were good. Then on Sunday night I made velveeta and rotel dip, which is always delicious, and my aunt Julie and my cousin Jessie made burgers that were exponentially better than any I've ever made. Why do other people's hamburgers always taste so much better than any I make myself? What do you put in your burgers? Mine always end up dry and only taste like pepper. Somewhere I saw a guy put butter in the middle of his burger patties to keep them from drying slap out on the grill, so next time I will try that. With a side of bacon fat.

The spring weather we've had this week has been making me want to cook out and also have a picnic, so Sunday I got to cross off cooking out (even though technically it was inside and on the Foreman, it was still burgers on the grill), and tomorrow I get to cross off picnicking! Some friends and I are having a picnic at the park after work, and I am pretty pumped about it. It's going to be so pretty out and I could really use some sun, not to mention delightful picnic fare.

Spring has also made me want to chop off all my hair, something like Jessica's from What I Wore, but curly hair is a real drag because if you pick a hairstyle that's intended for straight hair, it usually looks positively heinous in curls. That haircut of Jessica's is short and blunt and so sassy, but if I got it and then wore my hair curly, everyone would feel like they were watching the season of Felicity where she chopped off all her hair. Minus the goth friend and love triangle. Ultimately I'm probably not going to wind up doing anything to my hair and it'll just keep growing until only a professional can put down the split end mutiny. Which is probably what happened to Keri Russell.

Stellaaaaaaaa!!!!

2010-03-08T12:53:00.006-05:00

This weekend Mike and I went to see a play with his parents, who have season tickets to a community theater. I've been going with them since we started dating, and there've been a few duds (Inherit the Wind? More like Inherit a Nap), but the plays are usually really fun and entertaining (Noises Off is my favorite so far). This month's, however, was a dud, in my opinion. A Streetcar Named Desire. I won't go into all the plot details, but it's about as far from a light-hearted night at the theater as you'd ever wish to get. Analytically speaking, I think the takeaway is not to marry someone with a different sexual orientation than your own, because if you do, when you realize it and blurt out in the middle of a polka that he disgusts you, the shame will cause him to kill himself, and that will send you into a boozy spiral of prostitution, foreclosure, and despair. And maybe don't name your kid Blanche, either. Both good suggestions, but Tennesee Williams took about 2 hours to get his points across, and here I've done it in 2 sentences. Let's move on.

Next month I'm responsible for creating a mix cd to send to 10 other people, and I am really starting to feel the pressure not to be the square who uses songs everybody's already tired of. These people are a special kind of hip (and possibly a little snobby, but don't tell them I said so) when it comes to their music. The 2 cd's I've gotten so far have had a combined 3 artists I recognized. So, I need some help. Do you have any suggestions? What are your favorite songs? My mix is probably going to be fairly odd, with some hip-hop and some light rock and some upbeat dancey songs and some mellow indie-rock stuff, so nothing is off limits, except country, and if I have to tell you why then you could probably benefit from a copy of my cd. Heh. See what I did there with the snobby music hipster condescension? Really, I will appreciate any and all contributions, whether they're obscure or everybody knows all the words. So help me!

If you eat weird things, now is the time to confess

2010-02-23T15:11:00.004-05:00

Recently I got to thinking about all the meals my mom made when Emily and I were younger that we haven't had in a while, so last night I made my mom dig up her recipe for chicken enchiladas. And they are every bit as delicious as I remembered. They're not fancy, and if you happen to be some sort of enchilada snob you probably wouldn't concede that they're enchiladas, but oh man. I'm sharing the recipe because it's easy and we loved them as kids and we were horifically picky eaters.

10(ish) soft tortilla shells
1+ lb chicken, cubed or shredded
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 8-oz tub sour cream
2 cups shredded mexican cheese
1/2 cup pureed salsa

Now I'm not sure if pureeing the salsa is an integral step, or if my poor mama did that because otherwise her children (and husband) would be like, "ew, what are these green chunks? ::gag::" It's up to you, but I didn't like chunky salsa then and I don't like it now, so we pureed it. Also the recipe calls for just 1 pound of chicken, but we actually used about 1.5 pounds, cubed, and could only stretch it to fit 9 tortilla shells. And even then they were a little skimpy, so I think in the future I'll use 2 whole pounds, and I'll shred it rather than cube it.

So what you do is cook the chicken, and while it's cooking mix together the cream of chicken, sour cream, salsa, and half of the cheese (that's 1 cup). Add the seasonings to the chicken once it's cooked (probably fine to do that at any point), then add a third of the sauce to the chicken. Coat a 9x13 (or whatever dish) in half of the REMAINING sauce, then spoon the chicken mixture into tortilla shells and roll 'em up like enchiladas, lining them up in the pan as you go. Once you've got 'em all situated, pour the last of the sauce over the top and cover it with the other 1 cup of cheese. Then bake it at 350º for 30 minutes.

You see what I mean about it not being complicated, or complex in flavors. But it's very good, if you happen to like casserole-type chicken dishes. I don't know why I feel the need to apologize for the dish. If you don't like the sound of it, just don't make it! And also, don't tell me, because what is worse than when people are grossed out by you?

Remind me to tell you about how I also ate peanut butter and cheese sandwiches when I was little.

Anything for you, hush puppies.

2010-02-11T09:54:00.004-05:00

When I got home from work on Wednesday I did the 30 Day Shred. I think it actually may have been day 30, but days 1-29 were almost a full year ago, so I get the feeling Jillian wouldn't be okay with me saying I completed the thing. It was pretty exhausting and I am still sore today. It's probably a good idea to do the workout when I've got more energy, rather than at the end of the day when I'm tired and hungry, but right now I just can't bring myself to wake up 40 minutes earlier to fit it in before I leave for work. Do you exercise in the mornings?

I used to believe that food was just too good, and I was going to have to bite the bullet and exercise more to balance out all the delicious salt and fat, but about 15 minutes into the shred yesterday I was singing a different tune. Please Jillian, I will stop eating french fries and bread if you don't ever make me do this again, oh God not the side lunges. And she even tries to dumb it down for me. "Beginners, follow Anita." I'd feel a lot better about her as a leader if she were also panting and grimacing and using her dad's work boots instead of those unholy 3-pound weights. (Anita actually uses 5-pound ones, which is a riot.) But I try my best to do as many reps as the girls do because like Jillian says, you can't do a 20 minute workout and take a break. It really does take the place of hours of phoning it in at the gym. Which is the same as saying, these 20 minutes are going to be harder than the combined total of all the other minutes you've ever spent being physically active in your life. I think what I'll do is alternate that dvd with plain old walking, and I'm definitely aiming to eat a lot more fruits and veggies and a lot less starchy junk every day. One of the bloggers I read has lost 15 pounds in 3 weeks just by changing her diet (as best I can tell, and I'm not saying that's normal or healthy or whatever. Just saying. Diet matters a lot.) So hopefully I can get rid of my belly jiggle for good. I like to think that once it's gone, it'll be easy to keep it off because I won't want to go back to being jiggly. We shall see.

Tonight we're supposed to get some snow!!! I have high hopes that this will be our annual snow. Of course it couldn't happen during the week so I could enjoy an extra day off, but Monday is a holiday, so we're going to go visit Emily! I'll be walking to and from Charleston, in case you were wondering.

And don't think she won't get the car in the divorce

2010-02-09T12:16:00.003-05:00

Did you watch the Super Bowl? I spent most of it on my feet in the kitchen cooking dinner and cleaning up, which I wasn't too happy about. I tried to pick a menu that wouldn't require a lot of effort or attention (pioneer woman's amazing lasagna, plus garlic bread, salad, and a white chocolate raspberry cheesecake that I am very sad I had to share with anyone), and we prepared a few things ahead of time, but still somehow I only managed to catch about fifteen minutes of the game, but I guess that's for the best since the team I was pulling for evidently never got off the bus. Most of my family was rooting for the Saints since it would be their first win, but I've never really been an underdog fan. I have nothing against Drew Brees, but Peyton Manning is just the best. I did see the halftime show and a lot of the commercials, including the one for the Dodge Charger. Did you see that one? Oh, it made me mad. The commercial is a bunch of guys talking about the sacrifices they make for their girlfriends or wives, and the point is "since I do all that crap, I'm going to drive the car I want to drive." It's stuff like walking the dog in the morning, or being nice to his mother-in-law, or GETTING TO WORK ON TIME. And the slogan? "Man's last stand." As in, "In the face of your overwhelming control over every aspect of my life, the only shred of dignity and autonomy I have left to cling to in this world is that you get no say in what car I choose." Because left to their own devices, men would never be punctual or watch vampire shows. I just can't believe that's the commercial Dodge chose for the biggest ad opportunity of the year. That's the best they could do? A concept that blatantly alienates such an enormous demographic? What were they thinking? What woman sees that commercial and thinks "Huh. You know, they're absolutely right. We are so crazy and manipulative. Those poor guys. Thank heavens Dodge has created a product designed to give them a tiny ray of hope in their insufferably oppressive, emasculating lives."

I hadn't thought that Mike or I would ever have considered buying a Dodge, but I can tell you now for certain that we never will. I want no part of a company that thinks men have to defend their masculinity by ignoring their partner's input when making big decisions. I may not know much about relationships, but I know that resentment and selfishness are two good ways to ruin them.

Bad form, Dodge.

Why does she always get to be Trini just because she's Korean?

2010-01-28T09:20:00.007-05:00

Emily's coming home today!!! I'm so excited. Here we are in 2005, which is the last time we were together. (No, not really, but she really should come home more often. We have meat! (She doesn't get a lot of meat in Charleston, cause it's rather costy and she's got bills to pay.)) Sadly, our hair doesn't curl quite like that anymore. Or, mine doesn't. She straightens hers a lot, plus I haven't seen her in five years, so I can't speak for hers. But other than that, even now, I think we pretty much still look the same as in that picture. Not the same as each other. We're easy enough to tell apart, I think. Particularly these days, since if you see one of us in Columbia, it's a safe bet that it's me. If you see one of us in Charleston, it's not me. And in case that's not enough, if one of us looks like the secret footage of a fashion makeover show, it's me. If one of us looks hungry for steak, it's Emily. Simple, right?

In school, people who didn't know us well would have to know that Emily had the longer hair and the longer name in order to tell us apart. Except for Ryan Mercer, who told us apart because I "looked more like a clown." Thanks, pal! He tried to explain once that he just meant that my lips were more red (?), but why not just say that? He put his foot in his mouth a lot, so I didn't really take it personally. At least he knew who was whom. But that long hair long name trick doesn't really work anymore, because we both have long hair, so now when I run into somebody I haven't seen in a while, I think they just blurt out one of our names and raise their eyebrows like "did I get it?"

Once, in elementary school, one of the assistant principals wanted to split us up into different classes, maybe so the teacher wouldn't have to try and tell us apart? Or maybe because she just wanted to see how we'd do separated from each other? So she put me in a dumber class than I should have been in, where I got in trouble for answering the other kids' questions and had to stay in at recess with my head down on my desk. Really the only punishment there was the shame of having all the other first graders walk past knowing I was staying behind. While Emily got to be in the smart class and romp around at recess playing Horsey Court with her friend. She says Horsey Court wasn't a real game; they just ran around laughing and called it Horsey Court. For this and many other reasons, I am very glad she's my sister. I can't imagine being twins with somebody who just played Power Rangers at recess like every other kid.

Incidentally, if you'd asked either of us what our favorite movie was at the time that picture was taken, we would have said Uncorked, due in large part to this scene (not so much the last 20 seconds or so). It's an odd little movie but that song is so beautiful. Like Emily!

I mean, I have zero qualifications, but you have a dvd player right? So if you could just point me to my classroom...

2010-01-27T08:34:00.005-05:00

I don't think it's a secret to anybody I know that I don't love my job. I don't understand much of anything about our state government, so I usually have no idea what anybody's talking about. I rarely get to interact with my coworkers (or anybody else, for that matter). The coworkers closest in age to me have all had babies since I started, so I'm usually the odd man out in group discussions. People with kids just love to talk about kids! And worst of all, I just don't feel like anything I do helps anyone or makes any difference. I really like my coworkers. When we DO go out to lunch together or talk about non-work things, it's always the highlight of my work week. But overall, it's a pretty lonely, unsatisfying, unfulfilling place. For now, quitting isn't a feasible option. But when I can quit, I want whatever I do next to be as far removed from this kind of work as it can possibly be. I have no idea what lease purchase means. I don't understand tax deductions, tax credits or sales tax exemptions. Weighted pupil units? CPI? School operating millage? Nope, nope, and nope. And even if I did know, I don't believe I would care. Maybe I'm asking a lot, but I want to feel like I'm knowledgable about, and interested in, my work.

One of the things I think I might enjoy is teaching. It's certain to be rewarding, and I doubt I'll ever have a minute to think "I am bored" or "man, I wish somebody would talk to me today." I always wanted to be a teacher when I was younger. But then I wonder if I'm mostly imagining the field trips and Magic School Bus episodes and field days and Charlotte's Web county fair and holiday parties and summers off, and ignoring the part about making lesson plans and being observed and dealing with all the problems students and their parents can have. Every job has its downsides, of course, and I suspect the good would outweigh the bad, but part of me thinks that maybe I'm just incredibly lazy and won't be happy in any job because I don't want to work at all. And unlike waitressing, teaching isn't exactly a job you can 'try out' for a while to see if you like it. Once they hire you, they're banking on you sticking it out for (at least) 9 months. Which might feel a lot longer if you realize kids are the worst and who needs language arts and why aren't there more Wishbones, thanks for nothing you lazy dog.

So! Who wants to hire me to teach some children?

Fitness is nice but can we talk about how good cheese is?

2010-01-21T09:01:00.003-05:00

So the walking group was wonderful. It was hella cold, but the trail was really nice and by the time we made our way through the whole thing we'd walked about 2 miles (then we walked a little extra so it ended up being 2.5ish). The club only meets once a month, so in the meantime I've got to find a way to get in some exercise on my own. So I've gone walking a few times at the indoor walking track at my church, which is free after you pay the one-time $5 membership fee, and there's always a cute old man working the front desk and he doesn't know that I haven't been through the "equipment use and care" session so I can even use the treadmills and eliptical machines in the workout area. I'm not one to skirt authority, but come on. I can work a treadmill and an eliptical machine without a 45-minute seminar. I haven't made use of those machines yet, because they've been in use when I've been. I've just used the walking track. It's pretty short- it only takes me about a minute or 90 seconds to make a lap around it, so that's not awesome, but it's indoors, and that's infintely preferable to having to be outside. I don't know how people go running outside in the winter. I don't know how they do it in any other season either, but don't your lungs and your nasal passages burn like fire? Maybe I can get past the exhaustion and the runny nose and the agonizing pain in my legs, but seriously folks, how am I supposed to BREATHE?

I've also been stretching more, and doing some ab work to try and shape up so that it's like a double surprise when I lose the weight. I'm skinnier AND I've got muscles. Out of my way! Erin e-mailed me an 8-minute ab workout, which seems right up my alley (8 minutes a day, and you can lay on the floor the whole time), but you've got to have a computer nearby to go through the workout and we are a 1-laptop household, so whenever Mike is gone or working, I just have to kind of improvise. I took an abs class at PC and there are ab workouts from the 30 Day Shred that I try to pull from, so I'm hoping to look just like my abs instructor Mellette or Jillian Michaels in a few days. I actually kind of like ab work. But it's not going to mean much without some (extensive amounts of) cardio to firm up the (really) jiggly bits.

In a mealtime story that doesn't further my fitness cause at all, last night I made a chicken pot pie. It required a great deal of chopping and stirring so I was anticipating some stellar results to match the effort. Unfortunately, it turned out more like soup with a little crust blanket on top. It tasted fine, but it was nothing to look at and there was definitely not enough crust. It seemed like way too much filling to fit in a little pie dish, so I put it in a big rectangular 2-quart pyrex and it was impossible to get the crust thin enough to cover the whole thing. It looked sorta pitiful. Imagine a murky brownish puddle with a grocery bag in the middle. Next time I'll just use two pie pans and it should be better. Except nobody will eat it because all they'll be able to think about is a wet trash bag. More for me! That's probably something Jillian has never said.

Tonight I'm going to do lasagna, and I've got higher hopes for it since I've made one before. And as long as there are noodles and cheese, you've got a winner in my book. Maybe I'll skip the trip to the grocery store altogether and just put noodles and cheese in a bowl. Lately I've been going to the grocery store just to get the things I need for one or two meals at a time. I can't decide if this is better than one big trip every couple of weeks. I feel like I'm spending a lot of money, but I don't buy things unless I already know precisely how and when I'm going to use them. How do you grocery shop?

Exercising in Winter: For when you want to be sweaty AND cold

2010-01-08T11:51:00.005-05:00

This morning I woke up a little excited about the possibility of a two-hour delay for state government employees due to a forecasted "wintery mix," but when I turned on the tv, the meteorologist said there was barely even any rain, so "good news, the roads are clear and you should have a normal commute." Thanks so much Ken Aucoin, you faulty weather liason. It was such a letdown. Throw us a bone, weather gods! It hasn't snowed since that one night last January, and even then it wasn't enough to stick. Living in South Carolina certainly has its perks, but winter here is generally a dull, snowless affair. We're lucky to get one "snow" a year, and I can pretty well guarantee that no snowman has ever laid his charcoal eyes on the palmetto state. When Mike gets a job and we have to move away, one thing I'm praying for is that we go somewhere that gets some snow. (But not a lot, Lord; you know I'm not cut out for the bitter cold.)

Ultimately I guess it worked out in my favor, though, because tomorrow morning (forecasted high 42º) I'm going walking with my mom and some of her coworkers who started a walking club. Evidently the man in charge is called First Sergeant Pelley. I'm hoping this means there'll be a whistle. I really don't mind walking, so it's super-easy exercise, and I like being out in the sunshine in the mornings, which is something I very rarely get to do. So I'm going to wear my thanks-for-interviewing-for-that-scholarship-and-accidentally-throwing-one-of-your-rings-across-the-room-while-doing-so-but-we've-chosen-some-actual-smart-people-instead Presbyterian College hoodie with the pouch pocket stuffed full of kleenex, and I'll be sporting my new sneakers that are meant to help correct my (apparent) tendancy to walk a little crooked. Something about my right leg going too far to the center...? I forget. But it's sure to be good cold fun, and Sergeant Pelley is even bringing hot water for everyone, so we can have cider or cocoa when the walk is over. Or maybe he plans to throw it on us to get us to move faster. I'm not clear on that.

Reason #12 I'm glad I married Mike

2010-01-06T11:53:00.004-05:00

(For clarity's sake, let me just say there are way more than 12 reasons why I'm glad I married you, Mike. Like how you always try out new nicknames. For example cookie sheet or tractor beam.)

The other night we went to see Sherlock Holmes with Mike's parents and his brother. After the movie we stopped at Barnes and Noble(s, as his family sometimes calls it) to kill some time before dinner. I was looking at cookbooks, and Mike came to get me because he wanted to show me something he liked. He took me over to the sci-fi/comic book/manga section, and when we got there (there were like 5 rather dorky kids sitting on the floor in the middle of all the shelves, reading various books from that section) he pointed to a book on display smack dab in the middle of the manga section. Asthma for Dummies.

All aboard the Cutie Express

2009-12-30T16:41:00.006-05:00

(Please note, nobody is paying me diddle to write about tea. I'm just talking to you.)

So Mike's parents took us to Charleston for a few days as our Christmas present this year. Isn't that awesome? We just got back about an hour ago and I wanted to write about one thing we did before I forget all the important details. I have the worst memory when it comes to day-to-day stuff. I have to write down what I do every day in my little calendar at work, or else I honestly can't remember my life. And I've been out of my office for a while now, so it's going to be a real challenge trying to catch up when I get back. Luckily Mike can usually fill in the blanks, but that also makes me feel even worse about not being able to remember things.

Anyway. So this morning we went to the Charleston Tea Plantation. My mother-in-law and sister-in-law both like tea, so they wanted to go on a tour of the place. When I found out yesterday that we were going, I was not excited. I don't drink tea, I don't care about tea, and I figured it would just feel like a field trip. Except instead of missing school, I'd be missing out on shopping or sleeping or eating hush puppies. So I was expecting to have a pretty lousy time, while having to feign excitement and interest so as not to hurt Mom's feelings.

But y'all. It was SO interesting. We took a trolley tour around the plantation, and the trolley driver, Bob, was just about the cutest man of all times. He was charming and sweet and made the cutest jokes. He knew so much about tea. Some heifer from Pennsylvania kept asking questions as we were leaving, so I couldn't even tell him how much I enjoyed it and ask if he wanted to come home with us. But also the owner of the plantation, a man named Bill (one of only 28 professional tea tasters in the US, by the way), talked to us about tea via cassette tape throughout the trolley tour. And I SWEAR, that man talks EXACTLY like John Malkovich, which is not easy to do. We never saw Bill, so I'm not fully convinced it WASN'T John Malkovich. But even if you don't find tea interesting, as it turns out that I do, it would still be cool just because of the way Bill talks. And did I mention Cute Bob the Trolley Driver? Who passes out lotion made from the tea for you to try as you start your trolley tour? His wife makes him put it on every time he comes back from fishing.

So here are some of the truly fascinating things I learned about tea today:

1. All tea (black, oolong, and green) comes from the same plant. There's only one plant in the whole world that produces tea, and the different types of teas are simply processed in different ways. Also, tea plants are super eco-friendly because they're resistant to pests and disease so they don't require any pesticides or fungicides, and Bob says even deer don't like to eat the plants, so they don't have a single "predator." Plus the soil doesn't have to be tilled so there's no soil erosion. Tea is awesome. And the part they harvest is just the 3-5 inches from the top of each plant. That's where the tasty tea leaves grow. A tea plant can be harvested every 14-21 days, so the plantation has 20 different fields of tea plants. During harvest season, they harvest one section each day, and by the time they start again, the first one has new growth to harvest! Bob told us there are 3 workers who do the entire 127-acre plantation. ALL the planting has to be done by hand (!!!) and the fields have to be weeded and such by hand. Can you IMAGINE??

2. The tea plantation in Charleston is the ONLY one in all of North America. Tea plants need humidity and rain and a certain type of soil (Bill Malkovich told us tea plants looove rain but hate wet feet, so the sandy soil in Charleston helps keep the roots dry even when it's humid and rainy). The tea they produce is called American Classic Tea, and Bob said that in 2010 they're joining the digital age and getting a website where you can order! In the meantime you have to call to order, I think, and their little html website has the phone number. It's here. They had the raspberry tea for us to sample and oh MAN was it good.

3. Ireland is the biggest per-capita consumer of tea. The Irish drink an average of 9 pounds of tea a year, and Bob told us that one pound of tea makes 200 cups! HOLY CRAP, Ireland. And tea is the 2nd most commonly consumed beverage in the world.

4. 80% of the tea consumed in the US is iced tea. In South Carolina, or at least the part where I live, people don't ask for "sweetened iced tea," they just say "tea." When I worked in restaurants I always knew the non-southerners because they asked for "iced tea," or as Mike's mom still specifies (she's from up north), "unsweetened iced tea." Here, it's weird to drink what we just call "unsweet" tea and not need Splenda or some sort of artificial sugar, and hot tea is just a crazy people's drink. Hot tea. What are you, 100? Carol Brady on Christmas eve?

5. You can decaffeinate your tea! Did y'all know that? This is the single coolest thing I learned today. Here's the text from the little how-to paper:

FOR LESS CAFFEINE:

Studies show that heat releases caffeine. Therefore, you may enjoy your tea with naturally-reduced caffeine by using the following methods:

ICED TEA: Pour cold water over the tea bags- DO NOT BOIL WATER- and let sit overnight on your counter. In the morning, remove bags, add sweetener if you like, then ice and drink! (This is sometimes called "Moon Tea," but you may also leave your tea on counter during the day while you are at work.)

HOT TEA: Pour boiling water over your tea, and let it sit for 60 seconds. POUR OUT THAT FIRST CUP. Then pour boiling water over your tea again, and enjoy!

(By the way- THIS ONLY WORKS WITH AMERICAN CLASSIC TEA!! .....Haha)

I love how they tell you that it's sometimes called moon tea, but don't worry y'all you don't have to make it when the moon is out. And the joke at the end just slays me. But isn't that cool? I mean it probably doesn't turn it totally decaf, but how HANDY not to have to buy a totally different kind of tea when you want tea at night but don't want to be unable to sleep. And as Bob says, "maybe you like caffeinated but your spouse likes decaf- this little trick can save marriages!" Oh he was precious. And do you know what's the last thing he said to us? Here it is.

"Well it's been a pleasure driving y'all around. Go get some tea (there were free samples) and maybe buy some to take home, and take back home with you a little of the Charleston philosophy for living. And that's to start the day slowly, and taper off from there."

Seriously, if you are ever in Charleston, you have to go to this place. I think Bob is the only trolley driver, but if he's not, just stand there and wait until he's on duty. And try not to let any chatty heifers on.

Maybe some kind of neckwear? A nice book?

2009-12-17T09:58:00.007-05:00

Last Friday, at 5:30 in the morning, Mike flew to Phoenix for a work thing. The thing lasts a week, so he won't be home until this Friday, which means that, for me, this is the longest week in recorded history. I can't even remember how many times yesterday I thought "it's only Wednesday?" It has not been pretty. And to make matters worse, up until Monday, I thought he was coming home on Wednesday. I sent him an e-mail to ask if he wanted me to pick him up from the airport and he said "You think I'm coming home on Wednesday?" Oh man was I bummed. Two whole extra days without him at Christmas(time).

So I've been staying with my parents, who only live about 2 miles away, and with my cousin, because it's just lonely to be alone. And yesterday my sweet friend Laura agreed to take me in for the night. After work I went home to get my things (pillow, firetruck pajamas, monsterberry crunch). And do you know what was waiting for me at home? Presents! Mike had hidden presents in the house for me to open while he was gone, and he left notes for me about where to find them. It was so awesome. He got me jingly Christmas jewelry, and a really marvelous sparkly headband that I plan to take off for showers and haircuts only, and these amazing red-and-white striped candy cane socks that I totally would have worn to work today if they didn't have a furry band around the top that made the calf-area of my pants look weirdly fatter than the rest of my leg. Ordinarily even that wouldn't have been enough to deter me, but we've got a board meeting today and the other girls who come to it are disturbingly glamorous and I totally do not fit in. Maybe I've got frizzy hair and my clothes aren't tailored, but I draw the line at being the frizzy unkempt girl with the lumpy calves.

But the best present was the last one in our guest bedroom. Y'all. I have the best husband in the history of husbands, because that turkey booked an earlier flight home from Phoenix and he was waiting to take me to San Jose for special nachos. Also we watched the SYTYCD finale. Does he get me or what? I don't know what I did to deserve such a supremely awesome man, but yesterday was for sure the best day of 2009.

So now I am finally feeling Christmasy. Mike is home, and I have festive accessories, and tomorrow I'm skipping out early in hopes of finishing my Christmas shopping. All that's left is my dad, Mike's sister and brother-in-law, my aunt and uncle, and one last thing for my sister. Well, and now I have to figure out what I can get Mike that says "Please never leave me because no one else would ever treat me half as good as you do." Any idea what that might look like?

Just say "It's almost 2010, you mean, inelastic tub of lard."

2009-12-13T17:01:00.006-05:00

This week I've been thinking about some things I'm not satisfied with in my life and how silly it is to sit around thinking about what I don't like. I'm so lazy. So I'm going to make a list of some things I'm hoping to do differently, and that way I can focus on the good things and be more proactive. Sometimes I am not very good at that, despite having read that Steven Covey book several times.

1. I need to stretch more. It may sound silly, but I am so, so inflexible. You know those sit-and-reach tests where you sit with your feet pressed against that wooden box and lean forward with your arms out and push the metal thing as far as you can? Yeah, it hurts me to just sit on the floor with my feet against the box. I can't even touch my toes when I bend over. It's bad, friends. And how long does it take to STRETCH every day? Not even 5 minutes. So there's no excuse.

2. I need to exercise. I would say exercise more, but that would imply that I exercise. Which I don't. I've been taking for granted the fact that I've lost a little weight this year just by eating less (and maybe drinking more water), but I keep complaining about how clothes don't fit right and how I don't feel pretty and how much happier I'd be if I were just fit and thin, so I'm going to need to get busy. I think my best bet will be getting up earlier to use the treadmill and/or exercise bike (we have both, in our home, and still I don't exercise), since by the time I come home from work all I really want to do is eat ice cream and go to sleep. Probably ought to get rid of the ice cream too. Also, my church's Family Life Center offers several fitness classes, and they are free, and I don't know what brain troubles were keeping me from taking advantage of THAT before now, but I'm going to start going to some or all of those in January. I also have several Jillian Michaels dvds and can go walking over my lunch hour. So really, I ought to be a fitness maven already. I know that the sooner I get into the shape I want to be in, the happier I'll be. And the happier Mike will be, because it's got to be tiring to hear "I'm fat" and "I hate everything" as often as he does and to still see me as an attractive person who splits infinitives.

3. Floss a lot more often. Again, it's small, but it's pretty important. Floss costs way, way less than fillings, which I will have 3 more of soon, and nobody has to stick a needle in my gums every time I floss.

4. Don't be such a downer sometimes. It's far too easy for me to look at the few things that are wrong than everything that's right, and that tends to make me a sad and mopey person nobody wants to be around. It is not hard to be positive and optimistic when you've got as many good things going for you as I do, and I am a true heifer for not always feeling very thankful. And happy. Everybody loves a happy person, and nobody loves a heifer. Words to live by.

There are probably more, but these 4 are what I'm going to work on for now. If you encounter me not doing these things, preferably all at once, slap some sense into me. Tell me I'm not being a highly effective person.

Slow down December it's not a race!

2009-11-30T15:43:00.007-05:00

So I've been a little busy putting off my work. I am something else. I complain about not having any work to do, and then when I get some, I procrastinate until I've got a knot in my stomach and I'm racing to get everything ready for our 9:00 meetings. Then, inevitably, I make some stupid mistake on my charts or tables and look like a fool. Luckily somebody's usually quick to point it out. And where are YOUR charts, mister "I'm going to be late today because I'm picking figs."? That axis may be skewed, but at least I didn't skip work because of some fruit. That doesn't even taste good.

Also this week I'm trying to help Mike by proofreading a paper of his that is 50 pages long and full of words like "organizational" and "theory" and "covary," which my document reader wants to change to "ovary." That'd be something new for the information systems journals, babe! But it is taking me an uninspiringly long time to get through it. And not because there are lots of errors. Let's just say we won't be seeing my name on any research publications unless there's a journal that focuses on amateur analysis of tv dance competitions, or maybe how to get through college without ever really learning any time-management techniques, because it's day 3 working on this paper and I'm only on page 7.

So now Christmas is fast approaching and I am trying my best to feel spirity and not let the fact that I only get 5 days off bum me out too much. I almost never miss school, but the holidays really make me sad that I have a real job now. So I'm listening to Christmas cds in the car every day (James Taylor and Mariah Carey are in heavy rotation; N'SYNC's Home for Christmas stays in just long enough to play Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, because the rest is pretty much one long sappy ballad.) And! Last Friday we went and got our Christmas tree, so now it's sitting in the den shining its festive twinkly lights upon all the presents I haven't bought.

Really now. Why are guys so difficult to shop for? Mike's mom and I were discussing how easy it would be to buy dozens of presents for the girls in our families, but those men really throw a kink in the works. Just because you're a dude you think you can't wear make-up? Hello, it's all-in-one face and body shimmer made from REAL BEE HONEY, Daddy! Does every present have to come with an instruction manual?

And this weekend (in a few hours actually), my family and Mike's family are going to Atlanta! We've got tickets to see the Rockettes, who I think are just about the most glamorous, classy ladies going. And we're going to The Cheesecake Factory for lunch before the show. I realize this creates the possibility that we'll be having a delicious lunch followed by a fancy, ticketed nap, but I'm eating cheesecake and I don't care.

Still if that dude eats all the turkey he'll WISH he had a helmet on.

2009-11-18T14:22:00.008-05:00

It's almost Thanksgiving?!? It's true what they say, time really does move a lot faster when you're not in school. Well I don't know how many people really say that, but my coworker Lisa said it when I first started here, and she spoke the truth. Now she's on maternity leave. We'll see how THAT makes the time fly. Although if you ask me she really planned it right. Since her baby was born in October, she'll be at home until the holidays are over. Which is not to say that I'd trade places with her. I may have to scrounge for annual leave to get a week at Christmas, but Mike can tell me what he wants, or better yet get it himself, and I get 8 uninterrupted hours of sleep a night. That's what's known as looking on the bright side.

We're doing Thanksgiving at my mama's this year, and Mike's parents will be visiting family in Florida, and my mom's family hasn't been getting together for Thanksgiving lately, so it'll just be the 10 of us on my Dad's side. I'll be making several things, though we haven't divided up the menu yet so I don't know what those things will be. Macaroni and cheese? Broccoli casserole? Mashed potatoes and gravy? Pie? Regardless, it's a safe bet that I'll need seven or eight sticks of butter. And I'm thinking of making this bread because it looks easy and highly delicious. As for dessert, I've never been a pie fan, or cake for that matter, so I think I may also try to do a cheesecake. Caramel apple or this magnificent caramel toffee cheesecake that Mike and I had at our rehearsal dinner. Oh man, that thing was incredible. Mike and I fought over who got the last piece. So if I can manage not to sneak out of bed in the night to eat it all while he's asleep, I know it'll be a hit. Although the lady who made it warned me not to use the heath bar bits in the crust because they tend to burn and stick to the pan, so in case you plan to make one, you've been warned. Not to burn your pan, and also that it's the kind of dessert that causes people to turn on each other.

What's the food that your family fights for the last bite of? For us it's the deep-fried turkey and the cornbread casserole and the macaroni and cheese. And the desserts. This side of my family is definitely the eatin-est. My cousin Hunter plays football and the poor kid actaully struggles to consume ENOUGH calories to gain weight. And I think the rest of us feel so bad for him that we wind up eating more just so he doesn't feel like a pig. Our kindness is our greatest flaw. Or, maybe we hoard extra food because we don't want him to eat all our hard work and not even appreciate the fancy chocolate curls on top and maybe he is only sixteen and he does 'need' the calories, but would it kill him to pitch in and throw together a salad or at least buy some freaking artisan bread, I mean I'm not asking for some culinary masterpiece, since after all this is the same kid who asked his mom "do we have a microwave oven?" when he wanted to heat up his Totino's pizza rolls.

But that would make us rather petty. Probably it's just that we're so compassionate.

Prime Time Entertainment

2009-11-03T11:05:00.003-05:00

Do you like playing games? I do, and this weekend at our Halloween party I learned a new one. Well, maybe it's not a game exactly, but it's something fun to do with a group of people to pass the time. It's simple and hilarious, and what more can you really ask for in a sort-of-game? My friend Andrew introduced us to it, and here's how it goes.

It works best with a bigger group, I'd say at least 6 or 8. Everybody gets a sheet of paper and a pen. At the top of your sheet of paper, you write a sentence. Any sentence at all. The boy likes pie. Two monkeys and a clam are speaking Spanish. Just whatever you can think up. Then you passes your paper to the person next to you, and they have to draw a picture to represent the sentence you wrote. After you've drawn your picture for the sentence the person beside you wrote, and this is crucial for the game to work properly, you FOLD OVER the top part of the paper with the sentence written on it, so that when you pass it to the person beside you, all they see is the picture you drew (and they can't read the original sentence.) Then they write a sentence to describe the picture, fold over the picture and pass it on for the next person to write a sentence describing THAT picture, and so forth and so on until you wind up with your original sentence again. The best way to know when you have your original paper back is to write your name on the bottom of the paper when you begin, so thanks again to Mike for writing everyone's names on their papers because we were all too caught up in the frivolity to bother with logistics. But you just wouldn't believe the hysterics this game can render. We were laughing so hard we were crying, reading through all the sheets to see how everyone interpreted what they were given and how different the last sentence was from the original one. Seriously, you will not be sorry about how you spent your time if you do this. My personal favorite started out as "My bird is too big for its cage." and ended as "Rocket lizards conquer Everest." There's no knowing just what kind of winners you'll get. And the best part is that this game works for all ages (so long as the kids can write) and artistic abilities, and at the end you have some wonderful artwork to frame.

What games do you like to play?

It's tricky getting the candles to stay upright in the meatballs though

2009-10-26T11:05:00.007-04:00

Today is my Daddy's birthday.

He loves spaghetti, peanut butter milkshakes, ice cream, spaghetti, cheese, haystacks, and spaghetti. He really, really loves spaghetti. He also loves taking pictures. Emily and I have hundreds of pictures for each year of our childhood, and that's no small feat considering he had to go out and buy the film and take it to a drugstore to have all those photos developed. He captured so much of our childhoods on film, which is awesome because my memory is pretty much blank before about age 8. He also loves music. He always played music in the house when we were growing up and he turns up the radio in his truck a couple notches every time a good song comes on. His favorites are 60s and 70s rock, bluegrass, accoustic guitar, folk, blues, southern rock and country (not the junk from the 90s and 2000s, but real music like The Allman Brothers Band and ALABAMA.) He used to play this song a lot, and if you don't have the GLAD acapella Christmas album, your holiday season is seriously lacking.

When he wasn't playing music, he was watching surgery shows, cop shows, crime shows, NASCAR races, baseball and football. My daddy flips channels like no one else I've ever known. Just when you finally start to get interested in that gruesome murder case, he'll switch to a guy with a gunshot wound, and when you beg him to go to ANYTHING else, he'll change to a NASCAR race. Then he falls asleep holding the remote and snores so loud that you can't hear anything anyway.

His favorite place to be is the beach. Well, the Carrabbas at the beach. We go to Myrtle Beach every year and Daddy always sleeps with the sliding doors open to hear the ocean, even when it's 40 degrees out. He is so, so smart and extremely hilarious, which are probably the two best things to be in the world. Everybody comments on his deep, distinctive voice and he always sings or whistles along to every song he recognizes, plus some he doesn't. He has some hilarious live-action dreams and occasionally talks, laughs, and (most often) fights in his sleep. He's been a fire equipment salesman, a 911 dispatcher, a fireman, a paramedic, a saftey coordinator for a chemical company, a fire academy instructor and now he's back to 911 dispatch. He takes great care of all of us and would do anything in the whole world to make us happy. He still takes out my splinters and bandages up my cuts and he teaches me things every day and I love him slap to pieces. Even if I told him so every minute of every day, it wouldn't be enough.

Dads are the best, right?

I'll do some real blogging soon so don't be mad okay

2009-10-23T15:47:00.004-04:00

Five YouTube videos I will never ever tire of:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtUI5MC9tVM Electric Feel, a MGMT song. Look at the colors! The clothes. The Country Bears. I freaking love this jungle dance world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4_4abCWw-w Jose Gonzales covering a song called Heartbeats. So, so beautiful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HksFcm9wi0 So You Think You Can Dance routine with Kayla and Kupono from Season 5. I'm not sure about much but I can be sure of this: if it doesn't give you goosebumps you're dead inside.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTF8x-2XbWc&feature=channel Louis Armstrong cover. This girl is amazing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wC_kZNYMWg Bon Iver and Sarah Siskind singing a song called Lovin's for Fools. This song is so incredible. Here's a cover of the song done by a different girl with an amazing voice. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJKhR9WiuZg

So what gives you that feeling in your chest like your heart has filled up so full there's not even any more room for love in it?

I'm just gonna write "healed; made mess"

2009-10-14T09:50:00.006-04:00

Hello. My husband gets sick every time anyone coughs, and then he brings home his illness to me, so that is where I have been. I left work on Thursday afternoon and haven't been back until this morning. Very bad news for the calendar in which I write what I did every day. I've got 6 blank days staring me in the face and I'll be darned if I can remember anything I did.

Well I do remember how Mike and I drowned our germs in diet CranGrape and Sprite and the most delicious granola bars I have ever tasted. For Jo-Lynne they are healthier and less process-y than storebought, but I haven't been able to find Sucanat or soft wheat pastry flour anywhere in my 4-grocery-store search, so for us they're more like sugary dessert bars. From heaven. But hey! there are oats in them, and that surely makes for a balanced nutritional breakfast bar. Plus I feel it's safe to say they help you to get better faster. Especially if you bake in a few Mucinex D tablets. That Mary Poppins may have had an ugly bag and witchy shoes, but she had a keen understanding of incentives when it came to taking medicine. A cupful of sugar really helped the off-brand cold pills go down. So now I'm feeling much better. Poor Mike can't seem to shake the cold he picked up, which I believe is a sweet little testament to his commitment and loyalty. Aww. I'm like the cold that he'll never develop the antibodies to neutralize.

And I guess I can fill in yesterday. My sister Emily and I ate some cupcakes and bought some meat. Then last night I drove my mama and my granny to pick up some dinner, and my precious granny told me I can never have kids because I don't have any room for them, what with the mess in my car. ::sigh:: It really isn't that bad. An old pair of sneakers, a couple of tank tops, a flashlight, a tool box, some receipts, a few catalogs and scraps of mail, and a floorboard full of fertilized dirt and dead leaf bits from when a plant (a plant SHE gave me) fell over in my backseat. I don't do plants, but Granny doesn't get that, and she wanted my front stoop to look nicer, so she bought us a plant, which I promptly forgot was in my backseat until I took a tight turn in the garage at work. And now I can't have kids.

So what have we learned today? Eat sugar and don't make a mess. Sage advice from pretty much all magic nannies and all regular grandmas.

Mine's Rebecca

2009-10-02T08:36:00.005-04:00

Look what Erin gave me!
She thinks this place is fabulous! Thanks lady.

Now I'm supposed to list 5 current obsessions, so:

1) Cooking. When the weather gets like this, I just want to eat and eat. Last week I made pita chips (Mike helped a lot. Hot oil = scary!), chili, and some apple things that only required one stick of butter per apple. This week my mom and I made eggrolls. They were pretty easy and downright delicious, if a bit too salty. And we had strawberry shortcake, which wasn't so much made as assembled, but still. I am liking being in the kitchen and trying new recipes these days. Is Pioneer Woman an appropriate answer to the question "what do you want to be when you grow up?"

2) Arrested Development. I think it's hysterical. Have you seen it? Why did it end so soon? It can be a little raunchy, but it's so funny. My favorite part is when George Michael has a girlfriend named Ann(e?) who's so boring and plain that nobody can remember her or get her name right. The first 2 seasons are available on Hulu, and all 3 are available through Netflix, if you're interested. And evidently there's going to be a movie! I am excited.

3) This time of year. How can you love any three months more than October, November, and December? It's like walking around in a hug. That smells like cinnamon.

4) My hair. Sad but true. I'm no counting expert, but I'd estimate I lose anywhere from 900 to 4 million hairs every day. Is this normal? It can't be. New ones can't be growing in at the rate all my old ones are falling out. If this continues, I'm going to have five curls left on my head by the time I'm 25. (My friend Johnny is probably laughing at that image.) Do I change my hair routine? Use fewer products? Better ones? Stop pulling it up so much? Eat more Jell-O? What's the answer?! I do not wish to go bald.

5) Baby names. I've been keeping a list since I started working here last February, and it's up to about 100 names now. That means there are 90ish names on the list that I'll never get to use. Unless you want me to name your kids for you. How many middle names is too many? I went to daycare with a girl named Marley Anne Coutsous Rose, spell check on the Coutsous, and I thought her names were awesome. What's your middle name?

That wrinkly shirt smells an awful lot like Pert Plus

2009-09-18T11:17:00.007-04:00

Today I'm up in Clemson with Mike. I have Fridays off through September and he teaches on Friday mornings, so I've been riding up with him to 'keep him company on the drive', which we both accept as code for 'to get a kink in my neck from flopping over sideways in an attempt to sleep the whole time, while he listens to Bill Simmons podcasts. Because it isn't enough just to watch all the sports.

Later today we'll be going to Mike's parents' house and eventually to my cousin Hunter's football game, and tomorrow night we're seeing a play with Mike's parents. So last night before The Office, we packed up all our stuff so we wouldn't have to do anything but load up the car this morning. And that meant loading up all our bathroom things last night, which for me is always the most troubling aspect of packing. Along with wrinkles, but that's a discussion for another day. But packing up all those liquids is a real drag. And how are you supposed to pack a razor? I put it in carefully, and I don't just shove my hand in and blindly fish it out, but when I go to unpack my bathroom things from the skinny zipper pocket, my fingers almost always manage to meet the business end of those blades with horribly painful results.

Well. Last night, in a moment of clarity I feel sure was brought on by the cheese dip I ate at dinner, I developed a solution. It only works for razors with a detachable, replaceable blade, so if you use disposables you're on your own. But it's so simple! I just popped off the blade and put it in one of those tiny zip-loc bags that hold the extra buttons and thread when you buy a new sweater! Zip that heifer up and you've saved yourself hundreds of cents in Neosporin and band-aid expenses! How about ME, huh? I might wind up wearing a dress that's covered in shampoo, but I am done unpacking with a stinging, bandaged, unbendable, worthless index finger. And that's a win in my book.

He said Fatty Redface will you marry me?

2009-09-14T16:19:00.008-04:00

Two years ago today, Mike and I got engaged. It was definitely one of my favorite days ever. This is a picture from that day. I hate it, and I sincerely hope I don't really ever look like that, because oh dear. But in case I really do look the way I seem to in most every picture ever taken of me, I'm working on coming to grips with the fact that I just don't look quite as nice as I sometimes imagine myself. Note there had been crying and my face is not always so full-and-red-looking (I hope). It was a great day despite how it might look on film. And that's one of Mike's mom's dogs in the background, begging to be let out so she can run away from the monster in the pink dress.

We went to my house later that night and my sister and my parents and my friend Laura and my cousins and aunt and uncle and granny were all there and we ate cake and drank champagne and it was so much better than I'm making it sound. Emily and Laura and my cousin Jessie and my mom all had on t-shirts that I'm realizing I'll need a new sentence to explain. In 2003, my friend Meredith and my sister planned Erin Day for me, for no real reason other than that they are magnificent friends and they love me. And they had Erin Day 2003 t-shirts made. So for engagment day, all the gals donned their Erin Day 2003 shirts and taped some masking tape on to add "and Mike" and change the 3 to a 7, resulting in Erin and Mike Day 2007 shirts, and it was so freaking sweet I cried again. I have the best friends and family of all. Mike is so lucky to have married into all this love.

Really though, I'm the lucky one, because he is a very awesome husband and I would for sure be lost without him. He hugs me like a madman, and he makes me laugh, and he kills all the spiders in our house, and he pays the bills for me and orders all my favorite movies on Netflix, and he packs my lunch, and he lets me have the last bite even when he really wants it. And if that's not love I just don't know what is.

Mike+Erin

2009-09-08T09:45:00.004-04:00

Did you have a nice holiday? Mine was good, but Mike went and got sick on Friday, so he spent most of the weekend coughing and blowing his nose and not talking at all. And it was highly lonely being in the house with somebody I couldn't talk to or even come within a foot of. Except for at night, when he made all sorts of noise in his sleep because he couldn't breathe properly. Then it was like having lots of people or bears in the bed. Not lonely at all! He is now on the mend, thank heavens, so we've got high hopes for this coming weekend. We're aiming to have double the fun, just to spite all those germs. Incidentally if you know where I can rent a bouncy castle in the midlands for next to no dollars, please give me a call.

This weekend June shared the story of how she and Marvin met and fell in love. Though in no way will it rival the humor and poignance of her storytelling, I thought I would share Mike's and my met-and-fell-in-love story too. We're one of those couples where he remembers all the details of our early dating life, whereas I was generally too busy worrying about how not to seem stupid to bother with what restaurant we were at or what movie was playing or what day it was. So if I get anything wrong, babe, know that it is out of love and an intense desire not to lose you forever to Kathryn or Mary or Ashley or Elisabeth. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

We both went to a tiny college in South Carolina and took a bunch of business, economics, and English classes. But we only had one class together. And that class was creative writing. Everyone had to write 3 stories over the course of the semester, and we'd spend each class critiquing everyone's stories and reading various other stories and discussing writing in general. Most of the stories written by the students in the class were rather terrible, and mine were no exception. Just awful, truly. So embarrassing to think back to what I wrote. I do not do well under pressure, but I always waited until the day before they were due to start writing. So did Mike, actually, but with the opposite result. Everybody loved his stories and thought he was hilarious. One of his stories was a parody of CLASSIC LITERATURE, people. It was clever. I remember the first day of class, we all had to go around and say something about ourselves, and he said he was taking the GMAT the following week. A couple weeks later I asked him how it went, and he said that security at the test center was like Fort Knox. At the time I had no idea that Fort Knox is where they keep all the gold, so I laughed despite not fully understanding the joke. But that was really the only interaction we had, because the rest of the time the cute girls in class would talk to him and laugh at all his hilarious and clever stories, all Mike do you want to go to lunch with us at KFC and that shirt is so cool and can I maybe have your babies? So about that time I determined that I didn't stand a chance.

About 3 weeks into class, I facebook friend-ed him, and a few weeks later he sent me a facebook message to remind me that Conan O'Brien was finally coming back with live shows, because he had seen that Conan was listed in my favorite "tv shows." I sent him one back to say thanks and talk about Imogen Heap, who was in both of our "music" lists. Then we talked about Scrubs, and I mentioned that Emily and I had the first season on dvd. So he came by my dorm room one day to borrow the dvds, and he stayed and talked for an hour. Then he left to go eat dinner, and I went to eat dinner, and I think we both wondered why we weren't eating dinner together. A few days later he asked me to go with him to Dempsey's, a pizza buffet in town, and I said "Can my roommates come too?" in part because the food at our dining hall is THAT bad, and in part because I didn't think he was actually asking me on a date. I figured maybe I could be the friend he cracked jokes with in class, to impress the other girls. But my roommate was like, um, maybe it should just be you and him, so then it was. He came to pick me up in his tiny blue car, and he was wearing a blue t-shirt and camo shorts and he barely ate because he was sick (which I did not know until after the fact) and he talked about how one time he and his sister had to wash off their cat with a garden hose because it got covered in paint. And then he had to go to a lecture for our school's silly Cultural Enrichment Program, and because I had already racked up enough CEPs for the semester, I didn't go with him. Was I dumb or what? But he persisted and finally I came to my senses. So then we got married!

Does that about cover it? I feel like I'm forgetting something.

It's a bird

2009-09-03T16:03:00.005-04:00

I've been e-mailing with Erin about how excited we both are that fall and football season are finally upon us. Also about many other topics because the e-mails are pretty dang long. It's true what she says, we are blog bffs, or as I like to call us, bbffs, and I am going to mail her some sauce.

So she's down in Atlanta prepping for the first Hokie game of the season on Saturday, and tonight's the first game of the season for the Carolina Gamecocks. Which is a terribly strange mascot when I think about it, but I grew up with it so it never seemed strange. Neither Mike nor I went to Carolina, but it was the closest college to me growing up so I became attached, and our friends Johnny and Rich go there, and really the whole town will be watching the game, so we're going to too. Clemson (where Mike works) and Carolina are rivals, and I am a rare breed because I cheer for both schools. Though when they play each other, I have to pull for Clemson. Which is fine, because the only Gamecock cheer I've ever heard the cheerleaders do goes: Carolina!, Carolina!, Go!, Go! and that's just a little too complex for my taste. Anyway the game tonight is at North Carolina State, so we're going to watch it on tv. And eat pork tenderloin and potatoes and squash and zucchini and maybe carrots if I can manage to go to the store after work without falling asleep in the produce section. Otherwise just the squash and zucchini. Also if I feel up to it we may have some dessert, but again, it's asking a lot of me not to go home and just take a 9-hour nap. Luckily, though, today is my Friday, so at least I won't have to shoo our friends out the door an hour after kickoff (7:03 pm) because Gramgram needs some rest.

I've also got Monday off, and to celebrate, my mom and dad and I are going down to Charleston to labor the day away helping my sister move. Poor Mike has to teach on Monday, because for some silly reason Clemson doesn't give their students the day off. And THAT is why we're going to start pulling for Carolina. Right babe?

So whom do you pull for? What's your favorite football game food? Would your boss be receptive to the notion of afternoon naps?

If only my bank account didn't have to prove that it happened.

2009-09-01T08:29:00.003-04:00

One morning last year I was in a hurry leaving for work, and in backing out of the driveway I ran into the mailbox. So stupid. Mike fixed the mailbox, but my car still has a big ol' dent on the back passenger-side bumper area. Some paint is missing, and a piece of the plastic covering the headlight is chipped, and the dent is about the size of my hand- big enough to see from a ways off. Since then, every single time I get in my car, or see my car, or even talk or think about my car, I can't help but think "There's a dent. My car is messed up. Everyone can see that it's flawed. That guy driving past me knows I had an accident." I haven't gotten it fixed. I haven't even gone to have an estimate done. Back in May, a guy came up to me in a parking lot and gave me his business card, saying he could give me an estimate and fix the dent. The business card is sitting on the side of my bathtub. I keep putting it off because I know that it's going to be expensive, and it's hard to coordinate a time when we can leave the car to have it fixed. But it's a constant mindset now: My car is defective. And I'm embarrassed to drive it.

This has taught me two things. First, that afternoon when I got home, I made Mike switch sides with me in the garage so it would be much harder for me to get to the mailbox. It seems like it would be easy to avoid running into your mailbox, but I'm not the best with depth and distance perception, and when I'm in reverse and I get flustered, I tend to forget which way to turn the wheel. Not awesome. Our hope is that this way, I'll have to hit something else first, like the tree in our yard, and that will keep me from careening into the mailbox again. So far so good. But the second thing I learned is that God is capable of a kind of forgiveness I can hardly imagine, because even though I'm waaaay more dinged up than my car, there isn't a single second that passes that He thinks "That Erin is defective. I'm ashamed to call her mine." It's only through God that I can even attempt that kind of forgiveness, so big and complete that I literally forget whatever wrong was done. So my car is ganked up and ugly on one side, but even when I do get around to having it fixed, it will still serve as a reminder that I'm not really forgiving something unless I can move right past it and act like it never happened at all.

Can I get more toothbrushes? We have a lot of cousins.

2009-08-27T11:33:00.007-04:00

Tonight my mama and I are going to a bridal shower at my church honoring pretty much the sweetest, most adorable person I know (apart from my grandmothers). She is wonderful and everybody loves her, as evidenced by the fact that the invitation to the shower has twelve names listed below "Hosted by:". Twelve! That's how many people were in my entire wedding party, including me and Mike. And this shower is just the one for her church friends! She'll probably have a work shower and a girlfriends shower that are each hosted by just as many people. She is THAT special. She really is. I don't want to talk too much about her, because it's not my story to tell, but nobody is more deserving of all the love and happiness in the world than she is, and I am so so excited. My excitement is compounded by the fact that we go to a Baptist church, and the shower is from 6:30 to 8:30. And you know what that means. Hangover!

Oh, I'm kidding. There aren't even enough of those wee plastic communion cups to get a child drunk. I don't think grape juice has a very high alcohol content anyway. But I'm going to pay attention to all the reactions from all the presents and see what everyone thinks is the best so we can try to establish a Customary Wedding Gift. Is there something you usually get people? It's tiring having to go through a registry every time, seeing what's left and making sure it doesn't cost more than what they gave us. For this shower, we did a recipe album and measuring cups and spoons and some dish towels and an oven mitt. We got the measuring cups (and spoons) at Kohl's, and now they're all I can think about. They include the weird sizes you don't usually get, AND the measuring cups come with an egg separator! I am envisioning terrible things accidentally happening to my plain old four red measuring cups.

Then in September is the wedding! And, we have a lots of birthdays. Our friend Johnny, our friend Meredith, my mama, Mike's sister Lori, Granny, and our friend Rich. And I'm sure I'm forgetting someone. Plus Mike and I have evidently gone crazy with the acidic and sugary foods since we shacked up together, because we walked away from the dentist earlier this month with a combined 6 cavities. Basically, we are fixing to be horrendously cash poor. For the rest of our lives. Nobody tells you that when you get married, your birthday budget is going to have to expand. Or more accurately, once your friends get married, your birthday presents from them are going to get a lot crappier. And forget Christmas. Just forget it. Hope you have fun fighting over who gets the mint-waxed dental floss and who gets the sensitivity toothpaste.

It's practically illegal to disclose all of this at no charge.

2009-08-19T15:01:00.004-04:00

Okay, I noticed some things in San Francisco that we need to talk about. Join me in a discussion of what I believe to be the current and coming trends in fashion for young women.

Let's quickly go over what 'trendy' looks like in South Carolina. It's basically a razored emo haircut and a silly t-shirt or maybe some tights underneath a pair of cutoff jean shorts. We don't get too wild with our fashion. I've never seen or known anyone here to wear something crazy and weird that nobody else was wearing, to discover in six months that it's what everybody is wearing. We just don't set many trends. After they've been in place for half a season, at least three famous people have worn them, and we feel sure we won't look like fools, then we may cautiously adopt them. So, ladies, if you're looking to stand out in South Carolina, you've come to the right place. Here's what you do.

First of all, I hope you haven't cleaned out your closet in 20 years, because guess what's making a comeback? These are. Not new, updated, funky ones either. Plain white and plain black canvas ones. I saw them EVERYWHERE in San Francisco. When I spotted the first pair, I chuckled to myself, thinking that poor girl is laughably behind the times with her footwear. I should offer her my overalls and velour patterned scrunchie. But y'all. I saw more plain black Keds than I could count. I can hardly believe it. These shoes are practical, comfortable, and they've been around forever. Three things I happen to know most young girls do not consider to be positive qualities when shopping. And do you know what I saw nary a single one of? It brings me no small amount of joy to tell you that it was Crocs.

Next up, harem pants. Got your Princess Jasmine halloween costume from ten years ago? Those pants ought to fit just right. Basically you want them to be nice and baggy and totally unflattering, with a fitted cuff that falls a few inches past your knee. Or, if you want a European-inspired look, and I wish I were kidding, something more like these. Twice I saw women holding up the ...harem part of their pants to keep from stepping all over it or dragging it through the rain. They were tumbling and freewheeling all right, but I don't think that's what Jasmine and Aladdin had in mind when they sang A Whole New World.

Third, you need either to eliminate from your wardrobe any jean that is not a skinny jean (unless you manage to find a denim harem pant, which I have no doubt exists), or you need to peg those jeans, a la the 80s, Katie Holmes, and your J. Crew catalog. Now I have no qualms with the skinny jean, but there's a time and a place. And as for the peg? If you can just tell me how it's flattering, I might come around. J. Crew has some ideas about pairing a frilly silk blouse, pearls, and heels with a light-wash pegged jean, and all I see is a woman who gave up from the waist down and balled up her husband's jeans so she wouldn't fray the ends with her 3-inch heels. I'm afraid these trends are a byproduct of people just not knowing where to go next in trouser fashions. It doesn't bode well for Fall 2015.

This next trend was evident in Charleston, SC as well, but decidedly more pronounced and quirky in San Francisco. It's simple, so long as you don't ever have to bend over. Just put on a solid-colored tank top (to truly recreate the trend, I regret to inform you, you'll need to ditch the bra) and a skirt. Bonus trendiness if it has a strange and dizzying pattern. Yank up your skirt so high that it covers up 75-100% of your ribcage and only a fraction of the tank top is exposed. You can then add a skinny metallic belt or a big fat tacky belt, pretty much anywhere. Top of skirt, middle of skirt, around your knees. Whatever.

Lastly, you're going to need some lipstick. Color is irrelevant, so long as everybody can immediately tell that you're wearing some.

I'm sorry I don't have more top-related fashion tidbits to share, but shirts in San Francisco are pretty much the same as they are wherever you live. That, or I was so distracted by everyone's legs and lips that I didn't pay any attention to the rest of them.

So that about does it, save for a quick disclaimer. I make no promises that people will find you trendy. If you elect to sport one or more of these trends, you're doing so of your own volition and at your own risk, and if you receive comments and/or requests to let others take your picture or study at your school of snazzy fashion looks, I will accept neither credit nor blame. Unless there is cash or fame involved.

But I do love the Allison Janney starfish

2009-08-08T23:04:00.007-04:00

I'm sitting in the hotel room waiting for Mike to come back from a social function at an art museum. And I'm watching a show about these young girls who can see spirits and auras and communicate with ghosts and know when people are going to die. And that kind of stuff scares the crap out of me. I hate scary things. Once I see or hear something scary, I remember it when I'm going to the bathroom in the dark, or walking past a window at night, or when I'm home by myself. Sometimes after we watch Monk and Psych I make Mike stand right outside the bathroom door and talk to me the whole time I'm in there. And I haaaate when tv shows have special scary Halloween episodes. I don't want to be scared! But here I am, watching 9 year old girls talk about Freddie the spirit tapping on the window or that little boy Jacob who wants to play every time she goes to bed.

And do you know why I changed the channel to the ghost girls show? Because Finding Nemo is on and I can't stand the part at the beginning where everybody dies and Nemo's the only survivor and he has a gimpy fin. The only thing worse than scary stuff is sad stuff. That Nemo breaks my heart with his little fin working and flapping twice as hard as the normal-sized one. Wouldn't kids like a movie where some fish just swim around and eat snacks and nothing bad happens to anybody?

When Mike gets back, we are going out in search of dinner. So far we haven't had the best dining experiences. Nothing has been bad, but it's nothing we couldn't have at home, which I find disappointing. Maybe people in California just eat the same things for dinner that we do in South Carolina. Though from the number of girls I've seen in skinny jeans with wasitbands that I couldn't even fit one leg into, something tells me our diets can't have THAT much in common. Mike even found a Mexican restaurant online, and I was really excited about that, but it turns out they don't give you free chips and salsa! Talk about scary.

All right, I'm going to switch back to Nemo and try to avert my eyes whenever they show Nemo. Which, if you haven't seen the film, should make me some more dizzy, because (not to spoil it for you) that fishie is a critical part of the storyline.

Just a quick update. Cause I'm going to fall asleep.

2009-08-06T14:34:00.003-04:00

Well we made it! The flights were fine, except the descent into Houston made my left ear hurt like a mother. Does this happen to anyone else? And then Mike and I both got stuck in middle seats on the flight from Houston to San Francisco. That was fun. But the best part of the journey was definitely the time I was exposed to a mystery allergen. We may never know what it was, but we can be sure that my skin DOES NOT WANT IT NEAR, OH HELP, IT ITCHES SO BAD. So last night, rather than go out in search of dinner or other entertainment, we stayed in the hotel and used up a tube of hydrocortisone and a sleeve of Benadryl capsules. My poor husband. I cried like a baby. I was so miserable and I kept insisting that it would never get better and we need to go home right now. I'd like to think it was the Benadryl talking, but I've displayed the same winning cool-headedness on too many other occasions for Mike to write it off as drug-induced hysteria. I'm just a big wimp who can't stand being itchy. My options are a) itch, or b) take Benadryl and feel drowsy all day. So I'm not scratching myself silly, but it is a bit of a challenge staying awake.

On the plus side, the weather here is amazzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Do they say dude in California?

2009-08-04T16:01:00.003-04:00

Most days, this job bums me out. I wake up at 6:20 to get here in time which means I go to bed by 10 most nights. That makes me feel stressed and rushed every evening when I get home. Only 4 hours to cram in everything. Hurry and relax! Then when I am here, I frequently say fewer than 20 words the entire day. The way we divide up duties means we all keep to ourselves and work individually on our own projects, then report to the boss individually. I don't generally interact with anybody for longer than it takes to answer the phone or say good morning when somebody passes by on their way to the printer. We have meetings every Monday morning to update each other on projects, and once a month or so I go to lunch with a few people from the office, but mostly it's pretty lonely. I don't know what I expected, and I don't know that we'd all be able to get our work done any other way, but it's kind of sad. Do you feel like that ever? I don't know. I kind of feel like I'm wasting my life away doing something that doesn't really even matter, and that is a scary feeling.

But, for the time being, I'm going to stop stressing about wasting my life, and I'm going to go to San Francisco! Well. In the morning. But my sister is staying at my house so don't bother trying to rob us, bad guys! Or if you do, please only take the couch. I hate that thing.

See you dudes later.

I'm going to see some Giants!

2009-07-29T08:33:00.005-04:00

In a few days, Mike and I are flying to San Francisco. Land of the Giants. And the Tanner family. Mike has to go for a conference, and I'm tagging along because work is really wearing on me. It takes a lot out of a person having to come to work four days a week and occasionally make tables in Excel. I need a break!!

In truth, this vacation is making me a little anxious. First of all, we have to fly. That means airports, which I love (they're so bright and open!), but it also means airplanes, which I'm just okay with. This will mark flight number three for me, ever, because I am a sheltered person who's never been anywhere you can't get to by car in a reasonable amount of time, although certain bus drivers and I have very different definitions of what that amount of time is. I'm not afraid to fly by any stretch, but I'm not wild about having to sit and entertain myself for more than a few hours at a time. My other flights were only 3 hours, and it was only about an hour into them that I started to split my chewing gum in half and chew half on each side of my mouth, and if that's not a sign that you've run out of ideas, I don't know what is. And I may well be the last person in the US who has a portable music player that sits empty on my nightstand because it's too daunting to operate.

Second of all, did you know about time zones? I'm going to be waking up at 6:30 like I do on weekdays, ready for breakfast, only it'll really be 3:30 (please let that be right) and there won't be anyone to make me waffles. Do you think my carry-on luggage can be a cooler full of frozen waffles and a toaster with a strap that I use like a purse? Also, it's our first trip to the West Coast! I don't even know if it should be capitalized! We have no idea what it's like over there, but I get the feeling that if there was such as thing as the opposite of South Carolina, California might be it. So if you have any suggestions about anywhere we should go while we're there (just for a long weekend), I'd love to hear them. But you should know that my friend Johnny has already told us about the guy at Mission Dolores Park who sells the ganja treats.

Sustaining lives is so complicated.

2009-07-15T08:05:00.006-04:00

On Monday night we made dinner at home. An undertaking which has become exceedingly rare as of late, possibly because we've quit going to the grocery store. San Jose is on the way to the grocery store, and we'll get home too late to fix dinner, so let's just go ahead and eat first. Yum tacos. Uhhhk. I am too full to move please don't make me go in that grocery store full of foods I need to lay down. Does this happen to anyone else? Is it just because it's summer? Maybe it has something to do with me being at work for an extra 2 hours every day and not having any energy left to open the refrigerator door when I get home, let alone prepare a meal and clean up afterwords. Luckily my hours will change back come fall, but then I'll also have to go back to working Fridays. I tell you I don't know how moms do it. I can barely get myself fed.

Cooking and eating at home was a very welcome change from what we've been doing lately, that is for certain. We fixed chicken and twice baked potatoes and brownies AND we made banana bread. As far as the east is from the west, was this banana bread from my last dreadful attempt. And all I did differently was barely help at all while my mom did the work! Evidently that's the trick. In order to make tasty things, I need to not really play a role in their production. There isn't a show on the Food Network where somebody does that, so I believe I may have stumbled onto a million dollar idea here.

Then yesterday my friend Johnny came over and we ate at home again. This time there wasn't a lot of culinary investment, since Mike and Johnny just ate sandwiches, and all I did was boil some noodles and heat up frozen chicken. But it was nice not to have to drive somewhere and pay money to eat. If I go back through my bank statement, almost every entry is money we've spent at restaurants. Not exactly a wise investment. And probably not a healthy one either. So from now on I'm aiming to have more meals at home. It isn't that challenging if we can just slap together a meal plan and shop on the weekend for what we'll need all week. Fairly simple, in fact. But someone else will need to do the grocery shopping because every time I try, I only come home with a stomach ache. Which you can't bake or freeze for later.

What do I, run places?

2009-07-07T10:48:00.004-04:00

For the fourth, my parents and Emily and Mike and I went up to Mike's parents'. We had much tasty food and hung out at their pool all afternoon, and then we went up to Simpsonville for an outdoor symphony concert and fireworks display. It was really fun and enjoyable to be with our families. Said everyone in attendance. Boy do folks like to take their kids to outdoorsy summertime festivals. And it makes them all so HAPPY! And they are so cute when they dance! And find a cricket and put him in a bag with some grass and name him Silly and ask their dads to take pictures of Silly the cricket! It almost made me want to go home and dump a bunch of quarters in the Polly Pocket jar.

But only almost. Because shortly after Silly's photo shoot, I saw the funnel cake booth and desperately threw all my quarters at them instead. I couldn't believe they wanted five dollars for a funnel cake, but you better believe it was worth every penny. And now I'm going to run the whole way home to burn off all the calories!

Which, if you were to picture it, would make you laugh very hard if you know me at all.

Seriously, how does anyone ever stay in shape? Do they not KNOW about funnel cake?

Also this weekend I saw Away We Go, and at one point Jim makes Maya promise that she will love their daughter whether she is fat or skinny or short or tall or anything else so long as she is happy, and at that point I wondered whether it is awful of me to hope my children are skinny. But if they are I will probably just be jealous and feed them pies.

Home is where I'll be at!

2009-06-25T15:45:00.006-04:00

1. Boy am I lazy. This applies not only to not blogging for a week and then copping out with a list, but also to the fact that I am deliberately not drinking enough water simply because the bathroom is too dang far away, and I have to stop by a coworker's office to let her know I'm going to the bathroom every time I have to go, because we're the only two who can answer the phones. I won't get into how we're also the only two gals, lest I start some kind of nasty rumor about sexism or some such. This is 2009!

2. My governor is a bit of a schmuck. And I'll tell you why. Utilizing an outline. Without the Roman numerals because I never really learned those so well.

A) He disappears for a week, and no one knows where, and he can't be reached by phone
1. He's got a wife and four boys
2. He's gone on Father's Day
B) Staffer says he's hiking in the Applachian
1. Senators, Representatives, and citizens freak out. "We can't get a hold of him if we need him! Who'll run our state further into the ground?!"
2. Staffer reports that governor will cut trip short to appease us
C) He wasn't in the Applachian! It was Argentina!
1. SO different
2. Oh no, I do not like where this is headed
D) Press Conference
1. He says sorry about all the travel-related fibbing
2. Oh yeah and about the affair

3. Who neglects her blog all week, comes up with a pathetic two-point list, and then darts out the door before quitting time because it's only logical that I should be GONE by 5:00 so that means I have to get to the car at 4:50, right? I do. Next week my boss(es) are all going on vacation, though, so I should have plenty of time to devote to updating this poor blog. And/or watching tv online. Do you have any favorite shows that are available online that I could maybe latch on to? Any blogs I can read through the archives of? Any sentences I can end in prepositions?

Crap.

2009-06-18T08:12:00.007-04:00

Yesterday I spent an hour and ten minutes listening to Alex and Gus demonstrate all the ways I will now be able to utilize their company's econometrics services. Don't ask me what those are, because all I can tell you is that this job gets further and further over my head with every passing day. I had to log in to a training seminar online where my screen became Alex/Gus's, and I had to call in to the company to get the accompanying audio, so they could show me around the wonderful world of economic forecasting. And if that doesn't sound like a keen way to spend 70 minutes, I don't know what does. Nevermind that for the most part, I had no idea what anyone was doing or saying, and about twenty minutes in my stomach started growling so bad that I had to mute my phone so I could eat my almonds without everyone hearing. Almonds: not the best idea for people who need to be stealthy.

Then after work I went home and cried over how much weight I haven't lost. I just don't understand how I can eat as much bread and cheese and consume as many empty carbohydrates and diet Cokes as I do and not lose any weight. Clearly I should have asked Alex or Gus for a quick nutrition lesson while I had them. Anyway I resolved to get my act together and quit messing around at meal times. I haven't earned myself those 30 tortilla chips just because the bathroom is on the opposite side of the building from my office and I walk to it quickly. So for dinner I ate a salad and a bowl of vegetable soup. And only 1.5 croutons and 4 of Mike's chips. And a little piece of bread to get rid of the weird taste that those croutons left in of my mouth. Leading me to believe that all of the carbs have banded together and crafted some sort of elaborate plan for how to do me in.

Aaaaand my coworker just brought me some bread.

Still working on that hobby...

2009-06-08T08:06:00.004-04:00

Just want to share a recipe real quick. I made these yesterday morning for the new small group Mike and I are attending at church. They are easy and portable and a nice alternative to boring old breakfast casseroles that can be messy and that you have to eat with a fork.

Breakfast Casserole Muffins!!

1 lb. sausage, browned and drained (can add onion, peppers, or sub. bacon or ham for sausage.)
6 eggs, beaten
1 cup biscuit mix (Bisquick or whatnot)
2 cups half-and-half or milk
1/4 tsp. pepper
1/4 tsp. salt
2 cups shredded cheese

Preheat the oven to 350º F. Brown and drain the sausage, adding in whatever you like. I used maple sausage, and God bless Jimmy Dean for that treasure, and added in somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of an onion, though ultimately I shoveled out about a tablespoon of that because it just looked too oniony. I have onion issues. Too many diced onions and I feel like I'm eating a happy meal that somebody forgot to order with NO ONIONS IN SIGHT PLEASE MY DAUGHTERS ARE FREAKY ABOUT THOSE TINY DICED ONIONS.

Grease 2 muffin pans and distribute the ground sausage evenly into all 24.

Mix together the eggs, biscuit mix, half-and-half (or milk, whichever you use), salt and pepper. Pour this evenly into the tins. Then put all the cheese on top. Stick those suckers in the oven for 25 minutes and you are good to go.

Can I bum a hobby off of you?

2009-06-05T10:04:00.005-04:00

**Updated: Stainless steel is the solution to my garlic problem in item 6. NOT sterling silver. Who am I, the queen of America? I don't have sterling silver spoons.

I thought I'd use this post to share some very useful/important/pretty things with you. That way we can bond over a love of said things, or I can at least get up another post and not feel as bad about going so long without posting. Not too much going on a lot of the time, so sometimes I just don't have many words to say. So today, instead of sharing thoughts or ideas, let's just talk about stuff! Ready?

1. I love these tank tops. (Caution: the model in the link is adequately covered, but the shirt is pretty dang tight. Maybe don't show that to a kid.) I probably have 15 of them. I wear one under everything. They're long (even on me, and I'm tall) and thick enough that you can wear them alone, and they fit nice and snug and suck in any pudge you might worry about. They are especially great under low-cut sweaters and dresses, and I wear them under virtually every top I have. They come in about 30 beautiful, vibrant colors. I buy lots of the brightly colored ones because they're so pretty, and then most mornings I throw on a white one. So I have 4 in white. I just can't say enough good things about them. I will likely never buy another brand of tank top. Maybe after Jillian is through with me, I'll be able to wear the brightly colored ones by themselves. Incidentally the workout is still going great, and I'm starting to notice my pants being a little loosey, and also in addition to the shred, this week my sister and my mom are doing the Sacred Heart diet. Yikes. Notice the complete lack of cheese and starchy carbs, and on an unrelated note, I am never, ever going to do that diet ever. Anyway I like these tank tops. I highly doubt you would regret buying (at least) one. Though they are usually buy 1 get 1 half off, so you may as well get two.

2. Mexican food. Who doesn't love Mexican food, is what I'd like to know. I cannot get enough. Tacos, quesadillas, nachos, taco salad, queso, rice and beans, even the dang chips and salsa. I get so bummed when we go to San Jose because I want to order some of it all and I never have enough room to eat everything I want. I wind up eating half a basket of chips and then all I have room for is one measly taco. Guys. What is the deal? I could really, truly go every single day. Are they using some kind of drugs in the cooking? ARE THEY?!

3. Are you familiar with haystacks? Birds' nests? Beaver dams? Chinese noodle cookies? Whatever name you know them by, your life is bound to be better because of them. Except when you can't wear your beautiful pink tank top because you ate too many haystacks. But then you can comfort yourself by enjoying another haystack. I made these for a cookout recently and had lots of leftovers, and I have been preparing all week for the fight I imagined Mike and I would have regarding who got the last one. He let me have it without a word. I love that dude.

4. Bon Iver. Ack. If you don't have his cd(s), I feel sorry for your ears. This guy has the most wonderful voice. My sister Emily introduced me to this music, and she gets to see him play at Bonnaroo in a few days. I'm so jealous. (note: some of the songs have PG-13 words in them)

5. Cake Wrecks. Not only are the cakes hilarious, the blogger who maintains this site is hysterical. She cracks me up. Particularly when she uses the word flotsam. That word is a riot. I've read all the archives. Hoo boy, some people are just not bright. Cause it takes a special kind of bakery employee to turn 'happy fatherhood' into 'happy falker satherhood.' A special kind.

6. Last night I fixed a pork tenderloin marinade that requires minced garlic. I don't know about you, but I dread dealing with onions and garlic because they make my hands smell dreadful. For days on end. I can't get away from the smell, it gets all up in my fingernails and on my pillows and makes me a little nasueated every time my hands get too close to my face. So unpleasant. Well it turns out there's an easy remedy. A really easy one. Stainless steel! Maybe you already knew about this, but I've been wandering in the Hand Stench desert for years. Come to find, all you have to do is rub your hands all over a stainless steel spoon (or sink, in the event that you really manhandled the garlic). The smell isn't totally gone from under my nails, but it was so great to discover such a simple remedy. And that pork is going to be extremely delicious. Not long ago I was preeeetty intimidated at the thought of cooking pork, but I found some recipes online that seemed fairly straight-forward, and here we are 1 year later and we have pork at least once a month. The recipe I use is here.

I'd say that's enough linking for one weekend. Saturday we're going up to Mike's parents' house to hang out by the pool and eat. I will use that time to consider taking up a hobby of some sort, because if you asked me right now, Erin what is it that you like to do in your free time?, the answer is eat and sleep. And somehow I feel like life is meant to be about more than just the things that, you know, everybody has to do or else they die. What do you like to do? Can I do it?

I don't know what he thinks a wildcat needs money for.

2009-05-26T14:26:00.004-04:00

Phew! Today will be day 12 of the 30 Day Shred, and I'm still alive. And that's about all I can tell you. As far as progress, there isn't any difference in my weight yet, but I feel like I can tell a difference in certain areas even without weight loss. Plus Jillian says the goal is to burn fat AND build muscle, so weight loss isn't imperative and it may just be that fat is being replaced with muscle. We're going to stick with it as long as we feel like it's giving us a good workout, probably beyond 30 days, and then when we're ready to move on, we'll switch to another of Jillian's DVDs which I ordered at the same time as this one (for a small discount) on Amazon.

And that's enough about that snoozy topic. This weekend we had a family reunion in the upstate. It was great, and it gave Mike another opportunity to show that he excels at each and every thing. This time it was corn hole. He got those dang corn bags on the board or through the hole every single time! You'd think I'd have learned my lesson from the Bowling Incident of 2007 and insisted on being on his team. It was my dad's side of the family. His dad was one of five brothers, so the family is fairly large now and spread out over the state, so we don't see each other often. My dad's aunt Nancy had all the 'kids' get together and ask each other questions so that we could get to know each other better. It was adorable as well as a little awkward. There were also lots of pictures of previous family reunions, and those are always good for a laugh. What was everyone thinking in the eighties? I take no responsibility for my dreadful appearance up through about 2002, because I am convinced that nobody had any idea where to go from shoulderpads and stonewashed denim, so we all just swam around in a sea of wardrobe confusion for ten years. Tight clothes? Baggy clothes? Greasy hair? Poofy hair? Who am I supposed to be??? It was a dark time for fashion. All I can say is I'm glad to have made it out. And I sure am glad I didn't get married back then. Heh.

Then yesterday we went to the zoo! Which was as fun, and smelly, as I remembered. Reportedly the Columbia Zoo's animals live longer than just about any other zoo's in the world, which makes me feel incredibly proud of my zoo. There was an adorable mom at the zoo with her baby who talked and talked to that baby like she was her best friend, just another grown-up to talk to about llamas and the rain, and it was so darn cute I almost melted. Then at a wildcat exhibit, a zoo trainer was playing with some baby wildcats using one of those sticks with a bunch of felt shapes attached to it, and a little boy explained to his brother that she was "teachin 'em how to make money." Which is when I flat out died of cuteness. Kids are hilarious.

I'm going home now to eat some salmon and broccoli because I can feel Jillian shaking her head at me whenever it's meal time. How does she know I only want to eat cheese and oreos?

You do the math, Jillian

2009-05-18T09:58:00.004-04:00

Yesterday was day 3 of the 30 Day Shred. I got the dvd in the mail on Friday, and after dinner that night, my mom and sister and I got to work. The workout is only 20 minutes long, plus 5ish minutes of warm-up and 5ish of cool-down, so we hardly had time to start complaining before it was over. We have since learned to get our whining in ahead of time and after the workout is over, because Jillian has us moving non-stop and it is difficult to talk about how much you hate someone mid-jumping jack. The two worst parts of the workout, for me, are when we have to do push-ups (well. modified push-ups. lest you think I could ever complete a real one) and this horrible simultaneous side lunge and weight lift that makes me want to snap off my arms before the pain causes me to meet my maker. Also I always seem to get a stitch in my side during the jumping jacks and jump rope, but I think I'm just not breathing properly or I ate too recently. Other than that, it's really quite manageable, and Jillian mixes up the steps so we're never doing the same thing twice. The workout is broken into several 3-2-1 circuits, composed of 3 minutes of strength, 2 of cardio, and 1 of abs. And you have never seen 3 people so blissfully excited and thankful to get to lay down and do some crunches. You'd think Jillian was telling us to eat french fries for a minute. Really though, it is over very quickly, and I know I'm getting a better workout than I used to by using the treadmill for 45 minutes. If all the sweating didn't give it away, all the lactic acid certainly would.

So I'll keep you posted, but so far I'm feeling pretty good about this exercise system. It's quick and easy, and all we need are some hand weights. Plus, the dvd has 3 levels of the workout, so if we decide level 1 isn't doing it for us anymore, we have the option of moving up to level 2 or level 3. But as sore and sweaty as level 1 is making me, I can only assume level 3 is 20 straight minutes of push-ups. If that's the case, there's a better chance I'll quit eating altogether. And there's about a .0001% chance of that ever happening.

We're going to need a few more jars

2009-05-15T09:38:00.006-04:00

Bahahaha. Thanks babe, for telling me the books you enjoyed. I will for sure look into that dinosaur book.

The softball game was great. I still cannot get over how free everything was. I worried that there'd be some large hulking guards at the gates, and if they didn't automatically recognize me as Invaluable Legislative Staff for whom the event was free, they would force me to fork over a hundred dollars to get in, or they'd escort me right back to my car, in which case haha!, joke's on them because we parked about 9 miles away. But there were just two sweet women handing us ticket stubs so they could keep track of how many people came. We just walked right in. We could have been anybody! And THEN, once we were in? All the food in the land was there. All for us. And for free! There were hot dogs, burgers, barbecue, baked beans, corns on the cob, cole slaw (boo), chips, cookies, popcorn, ice cream sandwiches, sodas and beer. In cute commemorative cups! And they set up 3 different tables of food and several drink booths so there weren't even any lines! I mean. Y'all. Sometimes the general assembly is a real pain in my side, but I am not kidding when I say that all of their transgressions against me were pretty much atoned for right there at the hot dog table. Those hot dogs were SO GOOD. I am not one to use the word weenie, but I was looking all night for some event staff person who might be able to tell me where I could buy those weenies. Mike doesn't even like hot dogs, and he ate one. It was amazing, and let's not forget the part about how much it cost. Thank heavens for friends like Laura who work for Senators and can tell me about things like that.

The game itself was also fun, though the Senate made a bit of a sad showing. Several of them sent their grandsons, pages, security staff, and other athletically inclined friends to play in their stead. Which is okay, I guess, since they worked till 6:00 on the budget (and they didn't cut my job!). A few of the actual Senators were there, so those of you reading in the northwest section of the state can rest secure in the knowledge that if government were to come down to one big baseball game, your senators would still have your backs. The rest of us are in some trouble. But the Representatives were mostly there live and in person, though they were clearly distraught at the prospect of playing against a team of 15 year-olds. And rightly so. Ultimately the Senate Filibusters pulled it out over the House Amenders. I can't remember the score. There was a smooshie little girl with curly hair sitting in the section beside us with a hippo ballerina 'pocketbook' (her word), so I was a bit distracted. I am a sucker for a curly-haired girl who knows how to accessorize.

Which reminds me of a hilarious incident. Several years ago at a vacation bible school, one of the four-year-olds in my class had a teeny Polly Pocket that she wanted me to hold for her while she played on the playground. Only we both forgot about it and she never got it back. So I threw it in my purse, and recently during a cleaning spree, Mike discovered Polly, so he put her on the bathroom counter, because he is a good husband who doesn't throw your things away even if they are really weird. Also on the counter we have a jar where we put our loose change. So he set her on the lid of the jar so she wouldn't inadvertantly get knocked down the sink drain. Neither of us thought much about it I guess. Then, when we had a bunch of our friends over for our birthday last month, they used our bathroom to get ready. Several weeks later, seemingly out of the blue, our friend Ali asked my sister "...are Erin and Mike saving up for a baby?" Emily was totally confused. "Uh, I don't think so. Why?" "Well I saw that jar of money with the little Polly Pocket on it..."

Hooo boy, did we have some laughs about that. Polly Pocket reminding us to save up our pennies like when the jar gets full we're ready for a baby.

Boy did I love books where everyone went to summer camp

2009-05-13T14:37:00.005-04:00

So tonight there is a sporting event in town. The 16th annual South Carolina Senators vs. South Carolina Representatives softball game. With free food! And maybe free booze! We are going to go, of course, and I will report back with what is sure to be an extensive injured reserve list. I don't know much about softball, and I don't know much about government, but I can guarantee that when the two are combined, a very good time is in store.

Meanwhile, please tell me about your favorite book(s) from childhood, or your siblings' or children's or nieces' or nephews' favorite books, or books your students loved, or books you like even now, and possibly tell me why you like(d) said book(s). Children's literature is my favorite, as I have said before, and I'm reading a great book now called The Mysterious Benedict Society, and I'm afraid it will soon be over and I'll be left with nothing. You can certainly tell me if your favorite books were something like The Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew or or something horrifically sad like Charlotte's Web or Old Yeller or Little Women, but I make no promises because I just am not one for the scary or the sad. Also if you like(d) Little House on the Prairie, talk to me about that, because I've never read those. Some part of me just feels like prairie life = boring. For the record, my favorite book as a kid varied depending on which Babysitters Club or Sweet Valley book I was reading.

Take, for example, Nickelback

2009-05-06T09:12:00.005-04:00

1. Unless you count the frozen waffles I eat for breakfast every morning, I haven't had a meal at home, or even one from home, yet this week. For a change, tonight we will have some tacos prepared in our very own kitchen. ette. Kitchenette. It's probably not a real kitchen unless it has walls around it and ours is all open to the rest of the house. Incidentally it's also making me rethink my stance on carpet. Which is to say, I don't feel all the crumbs sticking to my feet on carpet like I do on linoleum. Not that I'd re-do my floors in linoleum, but I suspect even the fanciest hardwood won't be self-cleaning. We should probably just get a dog. See how I started with waffles and ended with dogs? It's a wonder and a shame I don't post more often.

2. Monday I played Bunko for the first time. I'd have spelled it with a c, but the women who hosted spell it with a k, so Bunko with a k is what I played. Many women would probably tell you that the beauty of Bunko is that it requires no skill whatsoever. But those women are wrong. Dead wrong. Because the beauty of Bunko is that everybody has to bring some food. After 18 rounds and more simple addition errors than I care to admit (I can add together a bunch of 1s with little trouble, but throw some 5s and 21s in there and it's a different story.), I wound up winning 9 and losing 9. I think. All I know for certain is that I paid five dollars and got a better dinner than if I'd eaten at home, so I felt like there were really no losers. I am supremely excited to play Bunko again. Just as soon as I buy a calculator or do some remedial mathematics.

3. Today at work we had an employee appreciation luncheon where I was relegated to the overflow table for people who didn't get there on time or whose 'friends' didn't save them a seat. SO awkward. I did what I could to make conversation, but we all knew what table it was, so mostly there was a lot of errant glancing over at the cool table and laughing when everyone else laughed, hoping somebody would realize we belonged with them and there had been some sort of terrible seating arrangement faux-pas. Eventually, enough people trickled out that I was able to filch my way in, just in time to watch a coworker attempt to eat 10 brownies for twenty bucks.

4. Whenever I see someone in great shape all showy-offy with their tiny clothes and bottled water, or really when I see anyone skinnier than me, I get pretty angry. It probably really does stem from a place of sheer rage, and not any sort of secret envy or self-doubt, but that's beside the point. I just need them to cover it up and please be uglier for crying out loud because nobody wants to see that. Right? Well I've decided that instead of yelling at the skinny people to eat more doughnuts, I'm going to try Jillian Michaels' 30 Day Shred and see what that does to my attitude. And my fat. So I will keep you posted on that front, unless it goes to pot and I'm to embarrassed to tell you. I am expecting to be highly sore, plus I'll probably just redirect my anger toward Jillian, which seems like exactly what she wants. Is it possible to gain strength from other people's hatred? History points to 'yes.'

Nobody remembers their favorite tax law.

2009-04-29T20:24:00.004-04:00

I am at work.

It is 8:30 at night.

And what's the REASON I am at work at 8:30 at night? One word: Budget.

Alternatively: Bureaucracy.

Never have I been so sure that this kind of work is all wrong for me. I go home depressed and dread having to wake up and come back. But I need this job and the money and benefits it provides. And I like the people I work with. Everyone is really friendly and helpful and funny and they all agree that there are aspects of our work that are just awful. Like when we have to stay late and wait by the phones just in case we're needed. And I can tell you right now that none of the people who are requiring us to be here so late have even stopped to consider that their schedule might be affecting the lives of anyone other than themselves. Call me crazy, but I just don't see the sense in working somewhere that I don't feel at least remotely valuable.

Next time I get a job, I think it will be in teaching. People remember their favorite teachers, man.

Now hiring. Will pay 2 rice cakes per idea.

2009-04-22T09:12:00.004-04:00

This is a busy week at work. I have nothing interesting to say because I haven't been anywhere except my office and my bed. Today is Administrative Professionals Day, though, so if you have one, do something nice in honor of yours. If you are one, good job working like a dog to make your office run like it does. As best I can tell, it's often a thankless job. My mama is a secretary at a high school, and if that flaky principal and those self-absorbed assistant principals don't do something special for her and the others, well. I don't even know what. I don't even KNOW! That's meant to be threatening, for the record, and leave the consequences a mystery so as to insight fear and submission. Sometimes it's hard to convey emotion without a voice or face.

Friday is Mike's birthday. That is meant to be a dejected, Debbie Downer-style announcement. Because I have no present. I don't even have an idea for a present. A few weeks ago, I had a dream that I decided what to buy him for his birthday, and I woke up and realized it really was a good idea- a DVR for the bedroom tv. Awesome idea! And I never have meaningful or productive dreams. I was pumped. But I know nothing about technology. Do I go to Best Buy? Do I call the cable company? Do I pay for it up front, or every month, or both? How on earth do I set it up? Ultimately, I just had to tell Mike I had the idea, and he went out and got it. And added baseball channels. ::sigh:: And that appears to have been my one good idea for the month of April, because now I'm slap out.

And I've got to get busy working on all this work that keeps me so busy. I don't even have TIME to have an idea. I need a personal administrative professional.

The whole weekend was one big party

2009-04-07T10:01:00.004-04:00

This weekend we celebrated our birthday and Mike's and my first anniversary. On Friday my sister and Mike and my friends threw me an amazing (and surprising) surprise party. It was great. My friend Johnny made cookies and Ali made queso and Mike made burgers and chicken tacos and somebody made margaritas and boozy Arnold Palmers (Firefly and lemonade) and it was magical. There was even a theme. We all really love the song Electric Feel by a band called MGMT. The music video is amazing and psychadelic. Your basic hip young sexy people partying in the jungle, with an appearance by the Country Bears, and then the band rides bikes to the moon. You get the idea. So they decorated our house to look like the video and everybody dressed up like the people in the video and it was really perfect and great. These people know how to throw a party. I wish I had pictures to show you, but alas I am one of those people who complains about never having pictures of anything and always forgetting the camera or feeling awkward making that squinty I'm-taking-a-snapshot face. You know the face.

Then on Saturday we went with my family and Mike's parents to The Melting Pot, and I'll tell you right now that the only way to improve your very own electric surprise party is to follow it up with a trip to The Melting Pot. I don't know what they do to those little hunks of teriyaki sirloin or those brownie bits, but you should prepare yourself for the day that I find out, because there will be rejoicing throughout the land. Man was that dinner good. I hope for your sake that you have been to a Melting Pot, unless you happen to be someone who's terribly practical and has a problem spending a week's worth of your salary just to cook your own dinner. In which case, I'm sorry, but I don't think it's going to work out between us.

In closing, I am happier every day that I get to be married to my best friend and my favorite person and I hope we have 700 more years together.

I love you but those bread cubes are mine, heifer.

2009-04-02T10:23:00.008-04:00

It's my birthday today! It's also my sister's birthday, on account of we're twins. But whether we're identical or fraternal is still up in the air, because apparently in 1986 the most reliable way to tell was some type of scale that ran from 0 to 20, and all they could tell our parents is that Emily and I scored an 11. It's a fool-proof scientific measurement they've worked up, isn't it?

Anyway. There is a picture of us from last summer. You can decide for yourself whether we are identical or fraternal. Just, you know, be sure to go about it scientifically.

And happy birthday to my beautiful hilarious sister! Whom I will see on Saturday for the most dramatic episode of Birthday Dinner ever. Cause we're goin to the Melting Pot, and those fondue forks are very stabby.

I had a crabcake at dinner that almost changed my view of the outdoors. The underwater outdoors, anyway.

2009-03-23T12:54:00.006-04:00

Saturday, my best friend from middle and high school, Lauren, got married. She can make me laugh like no one else can, and I love her slap to pieces. She and her husband Jon are adorable, hilarious, caring people. Totally MFEO. Lauren works in a bakery, and I can tell you that paid off in spades for her wedding. Not only were the cakes delicious, but Lauren had a hand in making them! The groom's cake was an edible recreation of their engagement spot- some hikey mountain locale. These two are big into the outdoors. Biking, hiking, camping. They like to commune with nature. In this way we could not be more different. Mike can make peace with the outdoors, but since meeting me he's grown tired of the beauty of the land, as it pales in comparison to me. That, or he knows how miserable the outdoors will make me, and in turn how miserable I will make him, so he knows to steer clear. I get itchy, frizzy, and paranoid when I am out of doors. But not Lauren and Jon. They get engaged.

The wedding was sweet and perfect. All the bridesmaids cried like babies when we saw her coming down the aisle. It was over fast, like all weddings are, and then we went into town to have dinner with some friends. On the way out of the park where the wedding was held, our caravan made some poor driving decisions (pdd) that led us to a toll-booth-like road where two (live) giant geese flanked either side of the drive way. The first 2 cars made it through, but when it was our turn (my sister was driving, I was riding), the goose on the left chose to switch sides. We slowed and waited. He hesitated. We moved forward. He started walking. We stopped. He stopped. Jake, driving the car behind us, honked. The goose slowly ambled across to the other side. Finally we were able to get through, only to come to some strange dead-end. It was so frustrating, and we were highly put-out with the lead car for steering us wrong. Jake, who was in back, drove past us to instruct the front car how to get out. We rolled down our window to hear his instructions. And he said:

"That goose was really rude, by the way. F*** that bird. Let's go."

And we nearly died laughing. It's probably one of those stories where you had to have been there. Is it? Lord, it was funny to us.

Imagine how many people will offer to buy me some green beer when they see me wearing that!

2009-03-16T14:31:00.005-04:00

This weekend Mike and I went to Charleston. He had a school thing for part of the time, and we decided to make it our anniversary trip so I could go along and we could shell out the big bucks for a nice hotel and round-the-clock hush puppies. Do you love hush puppies like I do? I love them about 4 pounds worth. As in, this weekend I gained 4 pounds. So. Probably you don't love them like that. And that's for the best. Because when they say to add more seafood to your diet, I get the feeling they mean salmon or tuna, not so much battered and fried cornmeal blobs slathered in butter and, judge me if you must, ketchup. But you just can't go to Charleston and not eat seafood, and you REALLY can't eat seafood and not have hush puppies. There've been many studies. You can't.

Regardless, we (me + the new 4lbs. on my belly) had a wonderful time. We got to spend some time with some friends who we never get to see anymore, and we also enjoyed the most juice-like wine you will ever find. It's called Red Cat, and if you cringe at the sting-y smell and painful burn of red wine like I do, this wine will make you cry tears of joy. Because nothing is less cool than having a wine night or going to a bar with friends and being the girl who 'just can't stand the taste of aclohol. I just can't.' Am I the only one? I feel like the only one. It's just all so burny. Plus it all gives me a headache, which really bums me out. So while my friends are all light on their feet and happy after a few glasses of wine, I become fairly hostile and incessantly ask everyone for some Advil. And if I've learned anything from my dad the paramedic, it's that you're not supposed to mix one glass of 13% alcohol by volume wine with 2 over the counter pain reducers. That's just gambling with your own life.

I also got a beautiful green sweater at J. Crew that, in an ironic hush-puppy related twiste of fate, I won't be able to wear for Saint Patrick's Day tomorrow unless I can somehow find a way to sleep and tread my mill at the same time. No? Not possible?

I guess I'll just wear this tomorrow.

I anticipate many garlic cheese trials in my life.

2009-02-27T09:14:00.004-05:00

Last night we went to a surprise party to celebrate my uncle Gene's 50th birthday. Uncle Gene is my mama's baby brother, and I think he looks like a salt-and-pepper haired Kevin Kline. I've possibly heard him speak five or ten times in my whole life. Once when he was little, the family was celebrating my uncle Barry's birthday, and they all got to singing happy birthday, and even though nobody was singing to him, Uncle Gene was so embarrassed that he slinked under the table. He handled himself much better last night, probably thanks to his fabulous wife Kathy. She is truly an all-star, that Kathy, and I love her to bits. She makes up for Uncle Gene's terseness, but in the good way and not the way that makes you want to crawl under a table. One of the first times she ever met Mike, she had a lengthy discussion with him about vegitarians and how it's a personal choice but God made animals to be eaten and hell if she isn't going to take advantage of that.

The party was a lot of fun, despite a few hiccups. Aunt Kathy had the party at restaurant and everybody was supposed to get there at 6 and sit down so we could all be there to surprise Uncle Gene when they arrived. But we were late. Surprise! Didn't see that one coming, did you, Gene? Then, despite ample warning and advising from Aunt Kathy, the restaurant staff was ill prepared. I never counted, but I'd guess there were probably 40 of us. And without giving away too much information, I can tell you that it took far too long for the cheddar bay biscuits to show up, and when they did, the baskets were all one biscuit short, forcing a lot of that "we can share it" baloney. We can share it. It's a biscuit, not a math book. Get your own. We had to all but send up flares to get a refill, and then good luck getting the waitress not to pour tea into your empty Dr. Pepper glass. And there wasn't even a free birthday dessert! Lastly, and most troubling, my granny nearly choked herself to death. Thankfully she made a timely recovery, despite every attempt from the waitstaff to leave her with an empty glass in a time of crisis. Still, it was scary to watch. And a little frustrating. I love my granny like a madman, but for heaven's sake, WHY does she insist on shaking pepper all over everything? Of COURSE she's going to have a coughing fit at every meal. But it always seems to take her by surprise. ::hack hack:: I don't understand. ::cough, wheeze:: What could be the cause of this? ::eyes watering:: Can't identify a culprit! ::hoist another forkful of peppered food to mouth::

Oh Granny. There are plenty of times when I love her slap to pieces and it's all I can do not to melt because she's so cute, like when she buys me decorations for every single holiday or when she cracks up while watching one of those goofy prank shows. Ha ha! You thought the water was going to come out of that spout, but look where it's coming out instead! On your pants! Man she's cute. She really is, and she's a great granny. She just sometimes makes me a little crazy. Is this normal?

Also, if a heart for the elderly isn't my spiritual gift, I am wont to wonder if perhaps my talent falls more in the realm of eating a lot of biscuits. If I could just figure out how to use my abilities to glorify the Lord.

From: Erin

2009-01-28T10:04:00.003-05:00

To the citizens of Aiken county: Your Senator looks like Clint Eastwood. Except he is much more concerned about your tax dollars than Dirty Harry will ever be.

To the rain: Please stop. I swear to you that it is actually raining UP right now. UP. How?

To Jeopardy winner last night: It was a real class act how you wagered just enough to tie the other guy so you could both come back. Even if that guy blew it.

To Friday: Can you get a move on, because I am about burned out.

Behold! My long-awaited, highly-anticipated, exciting and new, intriguing and delightful, insightful and... okay I can't think of anymore, return!

2009-01-12T15:33:00.006-05:00

All right, I'll say it. It's been a sweet forever. But Christmas vacation wasn't over until last week, and then I had to catch up on everyone else's blogs. Which took a looong time. Thanks for being moderately to extremely dedicated to your blog and your readers, everyone. Way to make me feel like a heel. Oh well. What can I do but aim for better from now on.

I could tell you about our beach vacation, wherein I purchased many things on sale at J. Crew outlets and also a fire alarm forced us to stand outside in the cold just minutes after midnight on New Years. Or I could tell you about my aging Granny and our family theory on how growing old makes you not care if what you say is nasty or hurtful. I could talk about All The Football Games and Speculation About Football Games and Analysis of Football Games I've had to endure lately. I could tell you about how one of my best friends got a job in the building behind mine, or how my dad retired, or about these fabulous chairs I found on craigslist that I desperately want. But I'll tell you what's on my mind. It's the Twilight series. Somebody help me. I can't quit reading. I don't even like the writing that much. It's just sort of plain. And the dialogue is often forced and awkward and I spend a lot of time thinking enough with the paragraph-long descriptions of the weather and the scenery and the trees and the dang rain already, can we please have some more mediocre dialogue? I'm pretty sure the books could actually be about half the length without sacrificing any substance. Still I read, though. And I won't lie, I'm more than a little intrigued by the notion of becoming a vampire myself. I'm already alarmingly pale.

Ordinarily I tend to read children's and adolescent literature. It's always the first section I go to in a bookstore, the children's. They don't mess around, those authors. Lemony Snicket, Roald Dahl, Louis Sachar, Jerry Spinelli. The books are so quenchy. And they don't get all bogged down in page after page of 20-adjective descriptors of every single thing. Students are always taught to be descriptive and specific and give as many details as you can, and frankly I think that better advice is to be entertaining, for heaven's sake, and if you can do it in five words instead of five hundred (I'm talking to you, Mr. Grapes of Wrath. It's really dusty, we get it already!), then God bless you. I'm not too proud to admit I skim right over those lengthy description paragraphs to get to the talkin. Hear me, Stephanie Meyers? I did. I skipped RIGHT OVER all that nonsense about the rain or the truck or his perfect skin and trembly hands.

Tell me this does not make me a lazy old Philistine.

I mean it, lady. I'm not messing around.

2008-12-15T11:00:00.003-05:00

There is a ladybug in my office. And she is driving me crazy. She snuck in a crack in the window and she canNOT figure out how to get back out. But she keeps slamming her bug body against the window in an attempt to osmote through the glass or something. How does she be so noisy?

I've been out sick since Wednesday. I don't often get sick, and when I do it isn't usually a debilitating kind of sick. Just a mild cold where my throat is scratchy and all that makes it feel better is eating. Your garden variety winter cold. With a funny twist. Which is that I always develop these awful sore places all over the roof of my mouth that feel like the top layer of ....skin? has been scraped off. Like tiny cuts or blisters. And OH do they hurt. The only relief I can get is to breathe warm air, so I spend a lot of time in the shower or with a scarf or blanket over my face. And those things pretty much limit me to my house, on account of there not being steam showers in my office building. So I squandered away my sick days getting all pruny and watching HGTV with a scarf over my face. And I don't know, but I'm getting the feeling that you might ought to declutter before you try and sell your home.

I've only got to finish out this week before Christmas break. We're going to the beach with my family for New Year's. It is going to be magical. We love the beach. Also eating and shopping. Lots of both are in store. And if that bug is still here when I get back, well. One of us will be sorry. And I'm resolving not to be sorry in 2009.

Those glasses were so awful

2008-12-08T11:45:00.005-05:00

I don't know about you all, but in my family, we are a real-live-Christmas-tree people. Well. My immediate family, anyway. So yesterday we went and fetched our Christmas tree. My parents and my sister and I have always gone to Hollow Creek Tree Farm for our trees. And in recent years, sometime around Thanksgiving, Daddy has tried to make a case for Making the Switch. He is ready for us to be a fake tree family. He's the one who gets to cut down our tree and lug it in and out of the house every year, and I guess it doesn't put him in the holiday spirit to get hay and pine needles all down his britches like that. But Mama always gives him the whatfor and we get a live tree and Christmas is saved. This year, though, it seemed like he had finally dampened her spirit. He said he'd do the whole tree thing IF the tree was for me and Mike, and they could finally convert and maybe just get a nice live wreath for the smell. And he almost had her. Until we cut down our tree and sent it off, along with that scary, scary saw they give you. And then Mama spotted a sweet little baby tree. And it was really sincere. So we trekked back for another saw, which was a little awkward. "So, we were just here, with the guy that made you pose for that goofy picture where we all look at the Tree Map and point in different directions, you remember, and you gave us that saw? Even though you were worried that we maybe shouldn't be trusted to operate sharp cutty things? Well, we are kind of going to need another saw. Heh heh. We just love trees!"

Then of course we had to go to Target for new ornaments, since the tree was so much smaller than Mama's usual ones and couldn't stand the weight of the 95 popsicle stick snowflakes and clothespin reindeer Emily and I made in 1st grade. It is here that I must admit that I do not derive any Christmas Joy from all those dang ornaments. Our tree is always beautiful, and I know Mama loves to have the ornaments that we all picked or made over the years, and that is what makes her love the tree so much. Still, I have made it clear to my family: Erin is not an ornament person. I will not be one of those moms who treasures every sweet ornamenty keepsake my children assemble. I cannot deal with the delicate wrapping in tissue paper of one million ornaments, each of which represents some special memory like the time I had to go first in that stupid gift swap or when Granny told me to pick out an ornament at the Dollar Tree when what I really wanted was those colorful plastic rocks you put in the bottom of a fishtank. (As a kid, I really loved small, brightly colored things that were completely useless and made a big mess. Also I used to collect pencil points. Why?) I don't want to sound scroogy, but I want my ornaments to match. I want them to come in those easy plastic trays with the indentions. Better yet, I want to just fling them all into a tub and not have to worry about precious things getting broken. If a shiny red ball breaks to bits, I can just go out and get another one at ANY STORE for next year. Is that wrong? Am I being an ornament snob?

I don't know. Maybe after I have kids it'll change. Surely my mama didn't grow up thinking "I can't wait to hang goofy, mismatched ornaments all over my tree." But I can tell you right now, I will never be one of those parents who lets their kid choose gigantic, hideous red-framed Nintendo glasses at the optometrist, no matter how much she insists that she'll never get tired of them. And it only took two years of looking utterly ridiculous to figure that one out.

It's Mike. He is not going to like this one bit.

2008-12-05T07:47:00.004-05:00

I'm not a low-maintenance sleeper. I have a variety of really adorable sleep quirks that my husband just could not be happier about. It's sort of takes the same amount of time to get ready for bed each night as it does to get ready for work each day. Except longer at night. Getting ready for bed involves several trips to the bathroom, ear plugs, 5 pillows, my own sheets and blankets, curtains and blankets to block out every conceivable speck of light, Special Prescription Strength Lotion (thanks for all the dry skin, daddy!), temperature requirements... it's a special time.

I'm not proud of it. I don't want to be one of those fussy people with a 42 Point Perfect Sleep Environment Checklist. But there you have it. I am one of those people. Luckily Mike is great about it. Plus he's not the one who has to wake up at 6:48 every morning. Although technically he is, since he always fixes my breakfast and packs my lunch for me and starts my car when it's cold. Basically he's a saint, and I'm making his life impossibly hard. But he gets to go back to bed when I leave. So it evens out. Anyway the point is, I get pretty angry if I ever have to get out of bed in the middle of the night, because it was so much work to go to sleep in the first place, and I hate to have it all undone just because I drank a 40 oz. diet coke a couple hours ago. So I've managed to master waking up just enough to make it to the bathroom and back. It's not a good time for, say, logical thought.

Well last night I woke up in the middle of the night because Mike was growling or mumbling something in his sleep. And I saw this creepy greenish light appear on his side of the room. I figured maybe he had been using his laptop before he went to sleep and just forgotten to close it or something. So I got up to go to the bathroom (where I have to keep my eyes shut, lest the seemingly constant brightness coming in the window wake me up to such a degree that falling back asleep is hopeless), and when I came back out I went to turn off his laptop. Only there WAS no laptop. So in my winning state of mental clarity and alertness, I started freaking out thinking I was dealing with some sort of ghost situation. Great. I'm going to die, and my pajamas don't even match, and I have no idea how to fight or defend myself, and Mike is going to sleep through the whole thing. (Which reminds me of another time I was half-awake and convinced I was going to die. We were in Mexico in this fancy 4-star hotel and early one morning I heard, like, seriously 300 gun shots. They went on forever and I just knew Mexican killers were running rampant through the hotel killing every American they saw. Lord was I panicked. I seriously thought it was going to be the end of me. And my dang roommate never even woke up! Hours later, somebody on the bus was like "Man, did you guys hear all those fireworks this morning?" Ha ha. Fireworks? It is funny you should say that, you know I thought I heard something. I just figured it was imminent death at the hands of ruthless killers in a foreign country.)

Well it turns out the green light was just the dang smoke detector. Low battery! ::blink:: Get up, people! ::blink:: I am going to die! ::blink:: What if there's a fire? ::blink:: Get me more batteries!

At least this time I didn't have to lay in my death bed panicked and sweaty for hours before I figured it out. And it didn't even take that long to go back to sleep. Where I dreamed that I was cheating on Mike. With my best friend from elementary school. Who is a girl. And her mom was like "Now, we're open about this. But I know your Granny would never go for gay marriage. Is there anybody else in your family we have to worry about?" Um, yes, just one other person.

A Thanksgiving Miracle Complete with Unicorns

2008-11-26T10:20:00.005-05:00

Oh brother. It's a dead zone around this office.

Ordinarily, there are 9 people here. Yesterday there were 6. Today, 3. I hate to see what tomorrow will look like.

So what I'm saying is, it's quiet. And boring. Because there is nothing to do. For the most part, my job is to do the research my boss asks me to, make the charts he needs, tweak the charts he needs, invert the axes, no switch them back, but now add footnotes and a trend line and do something about that yellow because you can hardly see it. But he's been out all week. Sooo.... ::shrug:: What am I supposed to do but watch episodes of Planet Unicorn and online shop?

Tomorrow it's Thanksgiving, and my mama and daddy, granny and sister, aunt and uncle, girl cousin and boy cousin, and mom and dad-in law are coming to eat All The Food There Is. We will have a deep fried turkey, a ham, dressing (baked in a casserole dish and cut in squares), homemade mashed potatoes and gravy, fresh green beans, cornbread casserole, baked macaroni and cheese, broccoli casserole, sweet potato... something, cran-apple cobbler, cranberry salad, homemade pumpkin bread, homemade pie, homemade cheesecake, homemade pie and also some pie. And I think my mother-in-law is bringing some pie. We are a hungry hungry people. And guess what's the only part I'll be making. The cranberry salad! Oh people. This stuff is all right. And I'm going to tell you how it's made.

Grandmama mixes up some ingredients and then everyone dies of cranberry perfection.

Just playing. Some of them die from sheer amazement.

In all seriousness. What you do is:

Boil 1 cup of water. While you're waiting, open up a can of jellied cranberry sauce, dump it in a bowl and mash it to smithereens with a fork. Then stir a 3 oz. box of (sugar free!) cherry jello into the boiled water. Pour this over the mashed up cranberry sauce. Mix some more. Then add a drained (small/regular sized) can of crushed pineapple and 8 oz. sour cream and 1/2 cup of chopped pecans. Mix all this together and put it in a (wideish, shallowish) pretty dish and stick that bad boy in the fridge till it sets. Overnight is good, since it takes a while. Then take it out and slather a container of (fat free!) Cool Whip all over the top. And stick it back in the fridge. Or serve it right up. It is sweet and tart and has nuts so you're getting a fine combination of flavors, and it works as a side dish OR a dessert. It's the cranberry dish that keeps on giving.

So. There you go. Make it and watch 'em die. Except no one should really die.

I so picked the right person

2008-11-13T13:56:00.004-05:00

Did you ever do these in school? What fun.

Today it is rainy and blah, and I am again freezing cold. Being so cold causes my rings not to fit as snugly, which tricks me into thinking I'm losing weight. And I am okay with that kind of trick.

My husband went out this afternoon to pick up a couple things for the Birthday Weekend, including birthday cards for his dad and his brother-in-law. He called me to ok the birthday purchase (fancy new space heater for his dad's office/shed) and to ask if I needed him to get anything from Wal Mart since he had to go there for cards. Whereupon we agreed that we really hate card shopping. All that rhyming nonsense is just a crock. But you can't not get a card. I also asked him to get some chocolate and a couple zucchinis, and he just sent me a message to say that shopping for two good-looking zucchinis was like deciding which cripples he wanted on his football team. He cracks me up. I mean you just can't buy a sentiment like that in the card section.

Really all I care about is the parade

2008-11-12T11:04:00.005-05:00

Right now I am typing whilst wearing one glove, on account of it is freezing here, but only my right hand is affected by the cold. Bionic left hand, perhaps? Odds are low. I can't even open tamper-resistant pill bottles. So you can rest assured, I'll never be falsely accused of waging biological warfare.

I had an extended weekend that lasted until this morning at 6:49. Which is the time I'm most likely to want to wage any kind of warfare. The long weekend was a magical time. My husband is working from home for the time being, so we got to spend a lots of extra time together. We saw Appaloosa, which was actually pretty all right, despite my initial misgivings that it was just going to be a boring old western. A good movie made better by the absence of obnoxious movie patrons, which we can all agree is an exceedingly rare blessing. And we went shopping and out to eat (my choices) and watched all manner of sports coverage (his). And now I only have to make it three more days until another weekend! This one will see us travelling 1.5 hours north for Mike's dad's birthday. We are delighted to be so close to our families, but we know it might not be like this forever. When Mike goes on the job market in a year or two, we'll have to move out of state, so we're soaking up the closeness while we can. Which contributed to the decision to host Thanksgiving at our house this year. I'm not nervous or anything. We don't have crazy families, and everybody's pitching in with cooking. So nothing can go wrong, really. We just have to obtain a dining room table and suitable seating for more than 2 people. Or enough sedatives that nobody cares that they have to eat on the floor. That's probably how the Pilgrims did it anyway.

Closer to Thanksgiving, maybe I'll make a list of All Which I Am So Thankful To Have and it can be a fun way to disguise me just talking more about myself. Or maybe I'll post a cranberry salad recipe that no holiday food arsenal is complete without. Or maybe I'll skip posting for several days in a row, tell a story about my weekend, and then hypothesize about posts to come. Only time will tell.

2008-11-05T09:20:00.003-05:00

Last night Mike and I met my parents for dinner at a restaurant where I used to work. It was a good place to work, despite bad management and several unpleasant coworkers. Several of the other employees were in the same boat as me, working while they were in high school or college to earn money for clothes and food and entertainment and Christmas presents. Luxuries. So I made friends, and we had fun. And the money was pretty good. But there were also several employees with kids to feed and bills to pay. So there were two pretty clearly-defined groups. And the manager knew it, and played into the dichotomy. The 'front' manager, the one who interacted with us day-to-day, assigning sections and side work and end-of-the-night work, was especially bad about it. She generally gave the best sections to the people with kids and bills, leaving the less desirable sections for those of us who didn't 'need' the money as badly. She would give them easy work like restocking the beer cooler and wiping down high chairs, while the rest of us got stuck hauling massive trash bags outside to the dumpster or vacuuming the entire floor. It was infuriating and completely unfair. Who is she to decide who 'needs' the money more? Why am I working in a restaurant that rewards bad choices and punishes me for making good ones?

In many ways, I perceive the general principles and beliefs of the Democratic Party to be similar to that manager's. It's my understanding that one of the chief tennants of the party is that people should be equal. And I agree. Nobody should be considered any less valuable than anybody else. But I disagree with some of the ways the party works to equalize people. Progressive taxes. Subsidies. Affirmative action. Certain publicly owned and/or funded entities. Various trade restrictions. So I am anxious about the direction in which Obama will take our country. But it's hard for me to get really worked up about it. Because God is still God, even if the guy I voted for didn't win.

Still. Some people, from both parties, are going to be pretty insufferable for a few days. Or years.

2008-10-31T09:41:00.003-04:00

Happy Halloween, friends!

We've been trying to scope out how many kids live in our neighborhood. Which sounds creepy. But we just want to know how many trick-or-treaters to expect. It's a fairly new subdivision, and I think this will be the first year that there are more houses than empty lots, so it's hard to know whether parents are accustomed to taking their kids to church or grandma's, or whether they'll trapse them through the neighborhood in their light up sneakers wearing sweatshirts under their costumes thanks to the glorious 45 degree Fall weather we've been having, braving the construction debris in hopes of neighbors who buy the good candy. Raisins may be nature's candy but this is Industrialized Civilization, people, and the children want their processed sugars. So the cone of uncertainty persists. Will we get trick-or-treaters? Or can we eat all the candy we bought? Mike seems to be banking on a low turnout, as evidenced by the reeses wrappers in the trash.

Tonight we're having a few friends over to carve pumpkins and eat tacos. Mike and I are fairly laid-back, and one of the friends who's coming tonight is a bit of a Party Controller, so she's taken the reins and mandated that we all wear costumes. My sister and her friend (who's flying in tonight from Virginia) have come up with a stellar costume idea, further proving to me that she got all the genes that make you clever and hilarious. They're going as passengers from the Titanic: fancy gowns, pearls, and pincurls, topped with life jackets. Pretty dang clever, right?

So we're all going to go pick up the friend at the airport. In our costumes. Which are the same as disguises. To mask our real identities.

It promises to be a real Homeland Security Hootenanny.

Relatively speaking, I had a great day

2008-10-27T15:45:00.004-04:00

This morning I heard a wreck happen outside my window. By the time I looked to see what had happened, one driver was out of her car, kind of stumbling around with her hands on her head. I could see that her airbag had deployed, but she was walking around and not visibly injured, so it was hard to tell if she was in pain or really upset about smashing up her SUV. Several people were close when it happened, so they rushed to help and make sure everyone was okay. The other driver, a younger girl who was probably on her way to class, seemend fine and was out of her small car making calls on her cell phone. (Sidenote: If I were in a wreck, I'd probably call my husband and my dad first. Is that wrong? Then I'd think "...911? I call 911 for a wreck, right? It's not really an emergency. But surely they'd have taught me if there was some other number. Are they going to send all the emergency vehicles as a precaution, or do I have to tell them if we need them? Do we need the ambulance? Maybe I'm bleeding internally. Is the car going to catch on fire? Do I have to pay if they come? No, that's what taxes do. What about a tow truck? Do I need a tow truck? I should call Daddy back and ask.") Lots of drivers honked when they drove past, as if the wreck was an unthinkable inconvenience to them.

A cop arrived, then a firetruck and an ambulance, then another cop and some wreckers. Several guys looked at, and into, both cars, examining the damage. The tow truck workers swept the road to clean up all the bits of plastic and glass and metal. Within an hour of it happening, everything was gone and back to normal. Except for the drivers in the wreck. I prayed that they wouldn't be injured, that they wouldn't stress about money or getting in trouble with their parents or being yelled at and that they weren't missing out on or running late for something important. It's hard not to be disappointed and angry when something like that happens. But it's even harder to have someone disappointed with and angry at you for getting into a wreck. Which is something I'll try to remember, hoping I'll never need to remember.

Because I likes to win

2008-10-24T10:58:00.004-04:00

When I'd study about sunk costs in my economics courses, there was always some example about a nonrefundable expense. You pay for something in advance and then some conflict arises. People often decide to keep the (original) commitment because otherwise they'll have wasted their money (so the text reports). In economics you learn that one of the dumb things people who don't study economics do is look to the past to make decisions about the future, incorrectly drawing conclusions about getting their money's worth or believing that if they cut their losses, all will have been for naught. Morons.

So economists came up with a fancy name for teaching their moron friends to make a rational decision at a time when it might be hard to make a rational decision. Mostly they did it because they operate under the impression that people are rational, and when they aren't, it really throws a kink in the works. When other losers act irrationally and negate economists' very existence and basic principles, it gets 'em all worked up. Or they just have a good laugh at lesser humans' feeble minds. Either way, what they named the principle is sunk costs. What I like about sunk costs is that it's simple. In theory. When you can't recover costs you've already incurred, don't get all emotional about it and dwell on what could have been. You have to make your brain forget about the sunk costs you've incurred. Because the cost is sunk. Deciding to pay the cost was a different decision. You have to make a completely independent, different, new, unrelated decision about what to do next. The two decisions aren't linked. Nothing complicated about that idea.

What I don't like about sunk costs is that in practice, it's not always so simple. Isn't that always the way. For me, the problem usually goes like so: I paid for this entire plate (okay, more like this entire bag) of food; I have to eat it all to get my money's worth. It's just going to sit on my plate (fine, more like someone else's plate) if I don't eat it. It's wasted food; therefore, wasted money. Somehow I forget to make an independent decision about when to stop eating, and I also forget about how food has calories. It's true for other decisions I make as well. It's easy not to make a rational decision when money, or some other valuable resource, is involved. But I am hoping to make sunk costs one of the basic principles in MY life, so that's the idear behind the blawg title. I strive to claim victories in the name of sunk costs. And also any other kinds of victories I can claim.

I don't intend to talk only about food

2008-10-22T09:49:00.000-04:00

We've had dinner with my mama the past two nights. My daddy has been working late all week, so he's been scarce until bedtime, and my sister works until 8 most nights, so my husband and I feel obligated to go and keep Mama and Granny (daddy's mama, who lives there too) company until daddy and my sister get home. It's only right. And delicious. Monday she and I cooked up some winning jambalaya, and last night she offered us spaghetti when we called from the grocery section of wal-mart to ask for the number to a pizza place so we could call in our order and pick up dinner on the way home. And it has been supremely nice not to have a sink full of dirty pots and pans to scrub or ignore at the end of the night. Whenever we go to Mama's for a meal, Granny always does the dishes. This summer she fell and broke her elbow, and for weeks all she would say is "I can't wait to get better so I can wash dishes again." She stores canned goods in her dishwasher, so great is her love of handwashing the dishes. Or perhaps her love of green beans, very young early peas, and canned pink salmon. Anyway, for dessert both times we've had some really great/guilt-inducing cheesecake. Originally, we prepared the cheesecake for some relatives, but then Mama got busy scraping popcorn ceilings and priming walls all weekend, and I got busy forgetting all about our ailing family members. So instead we ate it in their honor and vowed to make them another. And to actually take it to them. But for what it's worth, that cheesecake is the tastiest memorial I've ever eaten. I believe my sister put it best when she said, "the miles between us (the relatives and us) taste so good with cherries on top."

The weather has been pretty ridiculous this week, going from 40 in the mornings to upwards of 70 in the afternoons. Apart from being fairly lovely and typical fall weather, it really confounds mealtimes. In the morning all you can think about is hot, heavy, wintery foods, and by the time evening rolls around you're so clammy from the warmth that you just want to stand in front of the fridge with the door wide open and eat grapes. Where's the happy medium? Sandwiches? Burgers? Every night is like Sophie's Choice. Except the foregone meal doesn't have to die at the hands of Nazis, and instead of poisoning ourselves at the end, we eat dinner. And sometimes we let Bojangles' or the Target Cafe make the decision for us. You can see the haunting similarities.

Fall has loosed my shackles. And rurnt my bread.

2008-10-16T15:00:00.000-04:00

It's finally Fall! No better time to start a blog, that's what I always say. In honor of the season, and because we had some brown bananas, I made a banana bread yesterday morning. It smelled truly magical and autumnal, but a critical error at some point in the process resulted in more of a banana burnt-on-the-edges, mush-in-the-middle square-shaped concoction. My husband ate some anyway, because he was starving, masking his disappointment for my sake. He tried, for me, which I will remember come Christmas. So because I like to cover things up and hope they get better while I'm not looking, then I covered it up and we high-tailed it to Atlanta Bread Company. A guy behind me in line had never been before, and was discussing the menu with his girl friend (relationship unknown), questioning the concept of a loaf of soup. I wanted to turn around and impart my knowledge on the matter, which is that the loaf of soup is God's way of saying to me, "Erin, I know the desires of your heart." But I refrained, fearing that he might then decide to order one, and I'd rather not jeopardize my chances during a busy Sunday lunch rush. So yesterday, for the first time in months, I was able to order a loaf of frontier chicken chili without funny looks from all the other hot, sweaty patrons and employees. Not that the looks stopped me before, but there's only so much judgment one person can endure, and all the sweaty gawking really saps my joy when I'm trying to devour a gigantic hunk of toasted sourdough filled with chili in the heat of the August sun. As I got ready for work this morning, the weather man reported that it was 39 degrees outside, and if that's not God saying "Well done good and faithful one" on my soup pick, then I don't know what is.

And tonight we're having jambalaya. Which I will recruit my mama's help in making, so that it does not go the way of the season's first banana bread (attempt). Good riddance, Summer. I'm done with you and your flimsy salads. Bring on the hot and hearty Fall food.