Moving (into a Flatulent-Friendly Home)
(See title. When will I ever stop saying awkwardly inappropriate things? I hope never. Along those same lines, I just peed a little when I sneezed, if you want to know how 36 weeks pregnant is going.) I can’t tell you much about the past few weeks other than that they happened. So there’s that. Moving Day’s Eve was pretty much the worst ever, but actual moving went swimmingly aside from a few hormonal outbursts (from Taylor, of course). We honestly couldn’t have managed without the help of my brother and my parents, who were in town for 5 years 2 weeks. We painted and decorated and unpacked our little…
Moving Day’s Eve
Moving day 1999: My family was moving from Nebraska to Tennessee and, on the day we were to depart, my oldest and favorite chinchilla decided to bite the dust. (More like he was nibbling the dust and the moving truck driver had to take him out back and finalize the process.) 1. Yes, I had chinchillas. 3 regular, 1 inbred. 2. It was a bad moving day. Moving day 2013: I’m 6ish weeks from birthing a child, our other child is handling the chaos by sprinting through the house adding his bath trumpet to the dishes box and unpacking the bathroom towels, Taylor is working, and my mom is…
The scoop on the Instagram Direct feature
A few days ago, Instagram released an update with something called “Instagram Direct”, a way for users to send pictures privately to one person. Or a group of people. Either way, the “direct” feature gives you the option of sending photos only to specified recipients . You choose your option at the top of the screen after a photo has been uploaded and filtered. Receiving a photo looks like this: 1. Get a standard push notification from Instagram saying, “so-and-so sent you a photo.” 2. Once opened, you can like and comment on the photo as normal, difference being that it is just a conversation between you and the sender,…
Christmas: the most wonder{stress}ful time of the year!
Rule 1 of church attending: Never ever, ever, ever skip potluck day. It’s way too delicious to miss. (Can I get an amen?) A few weeks ago, some young couple friends of ours broke this rule. They skipped the brunch potluck we had during class and came straight to the worship service afterwards. I saw them across the room and walked over to give them a hard time. “Skipping, on POTLUCK DAY? What were you thinking?!” I said. My friend laughed and said, “I know…we knew it was a brunch today, but we couldn’t afford to bring anything so we just stayed home!” The part of the conversation that caught…
“Don’t slap your face with the bread.”
“I’m not gonna lie…your belly button creeps me out.” – my brother. Just one of the special moments we shared over Thanksgiving. Parent instructions. No amount of parenting books can prepare you for the random battles you’ll face with a young child. Like the yellow train needing to go before the red train. No, not THAT yellow train, the OTHER yellow one that looks identical to the one you just held up. {insert hysteria} You also have to say a lot of things out loud that you never imagined needing to specify. Like when we had to say, “Don’t slap your face with the bread.” out loud at dinner a few…
Froggies & Weighty
This is what happens when you make a joke about your dog being the only family member on prescription medication: 1 week later, and 3 out of 4 family members have new prescriptions. Ear Froggies It was fun to jokingly bemoan how terribly that trip to Kansas went last month, but seriously…it’s still sticking with us. We’re now on round 3 of antibiotics for Beckett’s ear infection. I see some tubage in our future. I finally took him back to the doctor last week (and yesterday. We basically live there.) because he was still…slightly grumpy. Could be 2 year molars, could be liver failure. You just never know with a…
Third Tri, Unsolicited Intimacy, & An Almost Residence
I had a speaking engagement at a school the other day and I couldn’t find the building I was looking for. I stopped a lady walking past and asked for directions to the middle school library. She looked at my face, then my preggo belly, then back to face. She said (trying so hard not to look at my belly again), “Um, yeeeeessss, but are you sure there’s something going on in there?” I didn’t know how to say, “Yes, I’m the guest speaker they’re waiting on.” without sounding like a tool, so I just said, “Yes, there is. There’s a meeting for junior high parents.” She still wasn’t buying…
Why We Left Church in College
Gen Y’s and church. It’s all the rage. My mom called the other day and asked if I stopped attending church in college for any length of time and why. I did, as did my brother. (Two preacher’s kid, mind you.) And my husband. And a lot of my friends. But I couldn’t really pinpoint the why. Part of it was because we went to a Christian university that had chapel every single day and Bible classes most days. That’s a lot of textbook Jesus. By the time Sunday rolled around, honestly, we were tired of hearing about it all. It was another lecture in less comfortable seats. But, regardless…
Prozac-Mack, Second Child, & Language Schmanguage
My dog might be a Prozac lifer. Those words are physically painful for me to say. I didn’t anticipate being a person who medicated their dog daily, but then said dog destroyed 1 couch, 3 bedding sets, 6 pillows, 1 dog bed, and 1 metal crate. It’s like a really expensive, depressing version of the Very Hungry Caterpillar. I finally took him to the vet today who basically said, “Yea, that sucks…but it probably won’t get better. Here’s some Prozac and a month’s supply of sedatives to give as-needed.” Aside from the fact that we miiiight have overdosed him the first day (like, his legs didn’t work and he ran…
The Positives of Social Media: Spread of Information
Show of hands for those of us ever jolted awake at midnight by the Amber alert feature you didn’t know you had on your iPhone. Do you remember how missing children used to be advertised? Milk cartons. Printouts at a police station or local businesses. Now it comes directly to our smartphones as a push notification. I saw a Facebook post a few weeks ago about a high school girl, Jessica, who went missing after school. She went missing at, maybe, 4pm. By 10pm, the post about her disappearance had been shared 7,459 times. That number isn’t individuals who saw the post, but networks of individuals. I’ve seen a wide…