This picture has nothing to do with anything, but when I Googled "seedlings," this came up. I now need pink and purple beans. Immediately.
You know what I hate? Coming up with a good idea for a blog post and then completely forgetting what it was. It happens quite regularly. Pretty much daily.
So, I've started jotting down phrases and words that I think I may want to blog about later.
It hasn't helped. Now I just have a bunch of words and phases that I either can't remember what they mean, or aren't really worthy of a post.
So, I'm just going to put them all here exactly the way I wrote them and you can use your imagination.
I'm on the fence about his facial hair. Pokey yet sexy.
If the cat was human I'd have filed a restraining order by now.
Cheese. It's creamy.
Why am I really, really good at things I hate to do?
I see what you did there, Valentines makers. 20 cards per box. 21 kids in the class.
Running can bite me.
Tell me again why I thought this would be a good idea?
You better be prepared to eat asparagus every night.
Take away my geek card. The Big Bang Theory makes me stabby.
Fun with avocados.
Just because someone is WRONG doesn't mean they're STUPID. Usually.
Me: What did you do in PE? Amelia: We played Silent Ball. Me: That teacher is a genius. Why didn't I think of Silent Ball?
For those who missed it, my husband finally got home from a yearlong deployment in Afghanistan. He's on leave for the next two weeks, and several of my internet (and real life) friends have generously offered to provide posts so I can spend some time with him without feeling like I'm neglecting you.
Our second guest post comes from the lovely and talented Rena Lesue-Smithey: Teacher and writer extraordinaire. Not only do a I hate her just a little because she's an actual writer who gets published, but also because she's skinnier than I am. You can find more from her HERE and HERE.
I got to meet poet, J. Allyn Rosser, and after a sordid affair with diction and imagery and 5 versions of a Russian poem about a panther, our love child (this poem) was born. And here it is presented to you without swaddling clothes, without the amniotic fluids swiped from it's face, and cord still attached. (Man, this metaphor is gross.) I hope you enjoy.
Frowning naked in the mirror while finishing off a bag of peanut m&ms,
My chocolate fingerprints evidence for a diet forensic pathologist,
I slide to the bottom of the tub,
Let the water rain down on my convulsing body to bathe my tears.
Yet, the pain remains and now I have a stuffy nose.
Then, mentally, I finger my goals,
My dreams deferred and I curse aloud.
Damn! Flannery O'Connor and her Southern genius on the human condition.
Damn! Meg Wolitzer and her Jewish feminist brilliance.
Damn! Damn! Damn! Stephenie Meyer for being a fluke success.
Buried beneath the weight of words;
I take heart, wipe away black tears,
Kiss my daughter, the next generation feminist;
A Buffy...not a Bella. A Buffy battling the Bella's of the world. A roundhouse kick to her pining female foil. An uppercut to Her male-dependent prose.
Liam, Amelia and Ben in about 10 years. Minus the whole part where two of them are dating.
So, Friday I let the kids skip school.
If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you're probably wondering when I suffered the traumatic brain injury that would cause me to do such a thing. I get annoyed when they have to stay home because they're sick. Keeping them home when they're perfectly well is unheard of.
But it was only a half day of school anyway, and Liam had a doctor's appointment in Nashville, so we all played hooky and spent the day there.
It was a near perfect day.
We made it to the doctor's office nearly thirty minutes early. They took him in immediately, and were done with him in twenty minutes. We were out of there before his appointment was even scheduled to start.
Then we headed to Trader Joe's for high end junk food. Masala naan. Gummy Tummies (from France! Because American gummy penguins wouldn't be as delicious). Chocolate covered potato chips. Baked jalapeno cheese crunchies. You know...the good stuff. Those of you who live in civilized places are probably scoffing at the idea of a trip to Trader Joe's being an outing, but when you live where we live, we have to go to The Big City for our baked jalapeno cheese crunchies.
Not the sort of place you'd expect to find Sheryl Crow or Dolly Parton or Nicole Kidman, but they're all regulars.
Then it was off to lunch at the Loveless Cafe. It's a tourist spot in Nashville, but somehow it's managed to remain un-touristy. It's just a little cafe in an unsuspecting building. The food is delicious--imagine if Cracker Barrel had a talented chef and used fresh ingredients, the atmosphere is homey, and the fried green tomatoes are the best I've ever had. Also, they make moonshine. A certain family member of mine may or may not have gotten a teeny bit drunk off of it the first time we visited. I come from a very classy gene pool. Moonshine in a mason jar followed by a concert in a barn.
Best biscuits and homemade jam ever.
After we'd eaten ourselves silly we headed to the Opryland Hotel. Have you guys ever heard of this place? If you ever get to Nashville, you have to go look around. You don't have to be a guest. The inside has three large atriums [Google is telling me that's spelled wrong. I'm sure it's supposed to be atria, but that's just seems too pretentious. Atriums it is.] filled with palm trees and water falls and flowers and walkways.
This is INSIDE the hotel. And only a small part of it. There are acres of this stuff.
The kids initially complained that we were going to go to the hotel. They were sure it would be boring. But when it was time to leave they didn't want to go. Neither did I. I think maybe they pipe nitrous oxide through the ventilation system because I was totally relaxed while we were there. My cheapskate husband even suggested we get ice cream even though it was Hagen Daz and five cups was going to cost nearly as much as our lunch. He would only do that if under the influence of mind altering chemicals. I was even really, really tempted to find the front desk and ask what kind of a deal they could give us if we stayed the night.
But I didn't. We headed back home.
It was such a gorgeous night that we sat on the deck while the kids played in the yard, and then had cereal for dinner.
In the famous words of Ferris Bueller, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."
For those who missed it, my husband finally got home from a yearlong deployment in Afghanistan. He's on leave for the next two weeks, and several of my internet (and real life) friends have generously offered to provide posts so I can spend some time with him without feeling like I'm neglecting you.
The first guest post comes from Jen. She's someone I knew in real life several years ago, but as is the case with many of my friends, I didn't really get to know her until we reconnected on the interwebs. You can find more posts from her HERE.
Yes, this post is exactly what you think it is. This is me bellyaching about weight! And believe me, after the last decade I've got quite the belly going! :D
As of this exact moment in time I am 225 pounds, which is 10 pounds off from my heaviest (235).
And I just can't do it anymore.
Freshman Year -------- Junior Year
Once upon a time I was in high school. And while I don't ever think I will be as small as I was back then, I hope that with enough diet and exercise I can get close. Until the middle of my junior year I only weighed 110 pounds. And then for my senior year I packed on a few. I think by time college rolled around I was about 130, which is perfect for my height (and is my "healthy weight" according to BMI). In the 3 years that followed I gained about 30 pounds. When I got married in 2004 I was sitting at about 160-170. And then.... the 3 years of my marriage happened. This is not the post to belly ache about what happened there and how not right for each other we were and we were just trying to make it work... but yeah. I gained about to where I am now in that time. Like.... 50 pounds in those 3 years.
Christmas 2011 ----------- Easter 2011
In the meantime my weight has fluctuated greatly. In late 2007/early 2008 when I moved back in with my parents I got back down to 190 (mostly because I was so depressed I was starving myself and eating like... popcorn and string cheese). And then I moved to Pierre, and then I had a baby. And now I'm at where I'm at.
And I need to do this for me, internets. I need to do it for my family. Skinny Jenny is in there somewhere and I just have to find her!
This is the first post of what I am sure will be many through this year chronicling my weight loss and my journey to be a better me.
It will start with me going to the YMCA on my breaks from work (where I am the assistant director of a daycare) and working out. That will start in February and I will report in in the middle and end of the month so we can see how that is going.
Stand with me, friends and random people reading my blog! Cause it's about to get real all up in here!
I think Will brought home some sort of Taliban goat farmer desert disease. For a week now the two younger kids and I have had blinding headaches which occasionally produce unexpected vomiting. There's nothing more fun than surprise vomit!
But mostly it's just a headache that never goes away.
So I haven't written lately. Obviously.
Tomorrow (or possibly Thursday) I'll start posting some of the guest posts.
Thanks to everyone who has submitted something. And it's not too late to send one in! I'll be posting them off and on over the next two weeks.
(But honestly, Will's been on leave for less than a day now and we're already bickering. So, I may be here more than I planned just to get a break. We'll see.)
Well, when the soldiers get home, they immediately begin seven consecutive partial work days where they go in to hear all the same stuff. While one purpose is to get the information out there and have a chance to get some necessary paperwork and medical screenings done, its bigger purpose to ease the transition home. Going to work for a few hours a day for a week is far less jarring than being gone for a year to suddenly being home 24/7.
And as I've discovered this week, I need it just as much as he does. Maybe more. I might be the one who attempts to murder him.
I've been doing my own thing on my own schedule for the past year. If I wanted to see what my friends are up to on Facebook, I did. If I wanted to blog, I did. If I decided to shampoo the carpet some random morning, I could. But now he's home. Just hanging out. ALL THE TIME. Most of me wants to spend every second with him and soak up his being home-ness. But part of me wants to read blogs and Facebook for awhile without feeling guilty for neglecting him.
These hours he's at work give me time to myself. And I need it.
Also, now that the first heady days of reunion are over, the same things about him that annoyed me before he left are still annoying. (And I'm sure the same is true for him.) And living in a crap hole (literally!) for a year can lead to some bad habits. After his first dinner home, he swiped a big pile of crumbs from the table to the floor. Deliberately. Like our dining room was suddenly Medieval Times.
There may have been some yelling about common courtesy and what are you thinking, you barbarian??? I'll never tell.
He came home about 20 minutes ago. In that time he's interrupted me to show me a box (just a box...just because it was folded oddly), a cord, a stuffed dragon (really?), to tell me stories about riding the bus this morning at work, and to ask if we were out of chips.
I may have told him to PLEASE FOR THE LOVE ALL THINGS HOLY GIVE ME 15 MINUTES OF PEACE SO I CAN WRITE.
Ahem.
So the moral of the story?
They say the week of reintegration is for the soldier. I am discovering that it's more for me.
Now that I don't have to edit for the terrorists, I can tell you that Will got home on Sunday night.
You've all seen heart warming videos and pictures of homecomings, I'm sure. I've sobbed over seen them many times myself. And a lot of it was heartwarming and wonderful and tear inducing. But let me tell you, it is not all hugs and cheers. Really, by the time we were able to get in our van and drive home, I felt like it would have been better if they had just sent everyone home in cab and forgone the ceremony all together.
The first time he deployed, he was by himself--not deploying with a whole brigade like this time. When he got home, we drove to the airport and picked him up at the curb. I would take that any day over the ordeal Sunday night.
Before I get into all the sordid details of that night, let me give you the heart warming part. (The still shots are stolen from the brigade's Facebook page. Every electronic device I brought was mysteriously sapped of all power and died hours before the plane landed. The video was taken by Ben. My apologies.)
(The things in their hands are yellow roses.)
Now, the parts that sucked.
His flight was scheduled to land at 5:30 PM. We were told we had to be there by 3:30 for various reasons. So, we packed a couple of back packs with dinner and books and crayons and other stuff to keep three kids entertained for a couple of hours and off we went.
We arrived at the hangar and they had the heaters blowing full blast. That would have been great if it hadn't been 70 degrees outside with 90% humidity.
But, Will was coming home! It was totally worth sweating in a crowded room with several hundred other sweaty people for a couple of hours.
Fast forward two long hours. The kids are done. I'm done. Everyone in the whole hangar is done. And sweaty.
But, Will was coming home! It was totally worth being crammed onto uncomfortable bleachers for hours with cranky, tired kids and adults with zero common courtesy and other people's children who needed a roundhouse kick to the head.
And lo! We heard a plane land! We were a bit confused because they were supposed to send us out so we could see it land. But whatever. The plane had landed!
Except it didn't. Someone got on the microphone to tell us it was a different plane. And oh, by the way, the plane we were waiting for was delayed an hour in Indianapolis.
Finally they announced that they could see the plane approaching and we were all sent outside to watch it land and see the soldiers file off. And as we all stood there watching, the skies opened up and drenched us all in a torrential downpour.
We filed back in, wet and cold, but happy that it was all finally over.
The soldiers marched in, a General said a few words, and then they were released to be with their families for a few minutes.
I have no picture or video of this because Ben was in charge of filming. What I have is a five minute video of the floor.
After 15 minutes or so, they sent the soldiers off to turn in weapons and other assorted things and bused the families back to where our cars were and where the soldiers would be sent to pick up their baggage.
We knew it would take some time, but we did not expect it to take an hour and a half. Except that it did.
And after all that waiting, the soldiers finally arrived at the second location, only to discover that more than 100 bags were missing. Including Will's.
So, we waited another 45 minutes for him to fill out the necessary paperwork to get his bags back. Someday. If they ever found them.
Six hours after our arrival, we finally headed home. We were all exhausted. The kids were sent to bed. We went to bed.
And we all had a lovely, peaceful night's rest.
Except we didn't.
We were woken in the middle of the night by tornado sirens. So, the five of us crammed into our tiny half bath to wait out the storm. Will compared it to being in a bunker during rocket attacks.
To quote Ben, "Why are we cursed?"
So there you have it. Our heart warming, exhausting, frustrating, sweaty, tornado filled homecoming tale.
So, I was going to write about how I think there's a serial killer dressed as Santa hiding in my house, but I have a blinding migraine (maybe the killer is poisoning me!), so that will have to wait until tomorrow.
If he doesn't dismember me by then, that is.
But I did want to get this plea for your guest posts out there today.
My husband should finally be home sometime this weekend. Next week he has to go into work every single day (including the weekend), so I'll still be writing to keep myself occupied. But the following week he begins two weeks of leave. I don't plan to be on here very much during those two weeks. So, my dear internets, I need you. I need your guest posts.
They can be about anything you like. And you there--yeah, you! The one thinking you can't write very well--yes you CAN. You can write just fine.
And hey, the last time I had someone guest post, it was featured on BlogHer.
So, send them in! (brandidouglass@gmail.com)
Now I'm going to go lie in a dark room before my eyeballs explode.
If either is passed, the US government will have the power to--without trial or legal recourse--block any website it feels infringes in any way on a copyright. And we're not just talking about one individual site--we're talking the host as well.
For example, the title of my last post was "Crow: The other white meat." Anyone who has seen TV in the past 20 years knows that that was a play on the slogan for pork ("Pork: The other white meat"). If the people on the Pork Council [I dare you to say Pork Council out loud without giggling] decided that my title was somehow harmful to them or taking away their income, they could file a complaint.
The government would then have the power to not only block this blog, but ALL OF BLOGSPOT. All because my title is sorta kinda like the pork slogan.
And legally there is little that could be done if that happened.
Here's a video by some of your favorite internet people about what the bills mean and how they could--and WILL-- affect you.
And HERE'S a post from my internet boyfriend, Wil Wheaton, about it. I like his take on it because he is one of the people this bill is meant to protect.
Oh, and check out The Oatmeal, too. Just for the giggles.
This isn't some internet panic over something not likely to happen. These are real bills with millions of dollars in backing from the movie and music industries. They will be voted on in six days.
The internet is where I live. It's where my friends live. I will pretty much cease to exist if blogs and Facebook go away.
This picture has nothing to do with anything, but when I Googled "seedlings," this came up.
