We postponed our flight for a day which was a good thing all around, giving everyone an extra day to recover. Troy had to hang out at the hotel for an extra day and we missed out on spending a day with Troy’s mom and stepdad, but it wasn’t a big deal, and it couldn’t be helped. We’re having a low-key, relaxing (except for Elliora being fussy and clingy thanks to her incisors being jerks) visit.

On to the meme.

A. Age: 36 for another month and three days.

B. Bed size: King, which we bought a couple years ago because our queen-size bed had gotten too small for two adults, two cats, and a growing child. Now, Annalie sleeps in her own bed 99% of the time, and Elliora can’t be trusted to sleep in our bed without getting up and destroying things, and the cats are banned from the bedroom because they kept peeing on our laundry. It makes me kind of sad that no one else is sharing our giant bed, which we bought specifically to share, with us anymore.

C. Chore that you hate: Cleaning the litter box. Folding laundry. Raking leaves or shoveling snow.

D. Dogs: We don’t have one. Moving every two years with two cats is challenging enough.

E. Essential start to your day: Breakfast. When I wake up, I must eat ASAP.

F. Favorite color: Yellow (golden, not pastel) and orange.

G. Gold or Silver: Silver.

H. Height: 5’2″

I. Instruments you play: Piano, flute, violin. I also sing (mezzo-soprano).

J. Job title: Mom. Homeschool teacher.

K. Kids: Two girls, Annalie and Elliora, ages 7.75 and 14 months.

L. Live: D.C. metro. This summer we’ll be moving back to San Diego. We were originally supposed to move right about now. We’re happy to be going back to San Diego; not so thrilled about the extra six months in D.C., although we’re trying hard to look on the bright side.

M. Mother’s name: Debbie.

N. Nicknames: I don’t really have any. I used to go by Beth, but only a handful of people call me that anymore. I guess some people call me B.

O. Overnight hospital stays: For me, when I had babies. And also when Elliora had RSV when she was one month old, I stayed at the hospital with her for three days.

P. Pet peeves: The improper use of the word “cliché.” (It is a cliché. It is so clichéd.) People not pulling out into the intersection when they’re waiting to turn left on a green light. TV shows getting cancelled before they even had a chance.

Q. Quote from a movie: “Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”

R. Right- or left-handed: Right. But I have always wished I were left-handed.

S. Siblings: One brother, 17 months younger.

U. Underwear: Purple.

V. Vegetable(s) you hate: I don’t love eggplant or turnips, but I’ll eat both.

W. What makes you run late: I pretty much always underestimate how long it will take me to do everything. I know this and try to compensate by adding 10-30 minutes to my estimates, but it doesn’t always work.

X. X-Rays you’ve had: Just my teeth during regular checkups.

Y. Yummy food that you make: Extra-lemony eggs benedict. Homemade pizza with pesto and butternut squash. Roasted asparagus/broccoli/carrots/brussels sprouts. Pickled eggs, about which I weirdly had a dream last night. (The dream itself wasn’t weird; I just dreamed that we got home from our vacation and I was happy to realize we still had pickled eggs in the fridge. It’s just kind of weird that I was dreaming about pickled eggs at all.)

Z. Zoo animal: I always loved the goats in the petting zoo.

What happened to the T? It’s a mystery.

p.s. New banner. Thanks, Brenda!

My good friend Jen turned 40 a couple of months ago. I wanted to give her something special, but what? Jen knits and crochets beautiful things for money and for fun, so I didn’t feel the need to crochet her something. She and her husband already own several dottery mugs and things I’ve painted for them over the years. They live across the country from me, and they’re moving next summer so Jen has been in the process of paring down her family’s belongings for a while. I wanted to send something that she would really enjoy, something that wouldn’t be just one more thing she’d be annoyed to pack next summer.

I was pondering my options when I remembered the photo messages I used to send to far-away friends when I was a kid. My mom would take photos of me holding up a series of signs, each sign with a word or phrase on it. Put together, all the photos would make a complete message. I used to really have fun with it, dressing in different crazy outfits and posing in silly places. I’d send the photos one at a time over the course of a couple of weeks.

And then I had my brilliant idea. I would send Jen 40 pieces of mail for her birthday! Who doesn’t love getting mail? Who doesn’t feel that little thrill when they see an envelope in the mailbox that’s not a bill or a mailer advertising the new carpet-cleaning company? I could send postcards, letters, even the occasional small care package. It wouldn’t break the bank since stamps are relatively cheap, and I already own tons of rarely-used stationery. I would be extending the birthday joy for more than a month—almost two months, as it turned out. And Jen wouldn’t have a fragile or unwieldy new thing to pack (or to feel guilty about getting rid of). Win-win-win!

I didn’t tell Jen what I was doing. I just started sending her numbered mail. It only took her about three days to figure it out. She sent me an email (subject: “Stinker!”) that read:

You’ve been up to something, haven’t you?…It all started to make sense today as my mail started piling up. It was like the ending of an M. Night Shyamalan movie.

I think she meant one of the good M. Night Shyamalan movies. At least, I hope she did.

I sent homemade cookies.

Annalie helped out with a couple of drawings and a bookmark.

I sent a few postcards.

Well, lots of postcards, actually.

Lots and lots of postcards.

I helped Jen face her fear of glitter, because I’m a good friend like that.

I sent her a copy of the soundtrack to Scrubs: My Musical, so that the next time she’s stuck in traffic on the 805 with me and Sonja for four hours and we insist on singing “Everything Comes Down to Poo,” she’ll be able to sing along.

A dime bag of Canadian Smarties. (Inside joke. I told Jen I would send her a box of the Smarties that Jen Wilson had sent me, and Jen said she didn’t need a whole box, that I should just send her a little bag. I said I’d send her a dime bag. It…isn’t really that funny, I guess. But it was hilarious to us.)

A Nebraska care package, when I was visiting Omaha.

A little bag of jelly beans. This is one of those 13-ounces-or-less things, where I just stuck an address label and postage right on the package and dropped it in the mail.

We mailed a little bit of autumn.

I slowed down a lot towards the end. Several days went by between each of the last three or four pieces of mail I sent. I was a little sad it was coming to an end. I had a lot of fun with this project, even more fun than I expected. I think I’ll have to do something like this again sometime.

Finally, six weeks after Jen’s actual birthday, I was sending #40. And what else could possibly be good enough for the final piece of birthday mail except some really, really ridiculously good apricot cookies?

Happy birthday, Jen!

All the mail I sent is in the Flickr photoset 40 pieces of mail.

Okay, that’s a stretch. I’m basically ignoring the chocolate theme today, but this seemed more important. My favorite local pottery-painting studio, the one where I first painted six years ago, the one where dottery was born with this plate, is closing.

The owner doesn’t really want to close, but for various reasons (including her two young kids and the depressed economy) it’s the best thing for her to do right now. She’s still hoping that someone might buy the studio from her and re-open it, particularly because it’s the only pottery-painting studio in the area.

Today was the last day to paint. So we went and painted one last time. *sniff*

I thought it would be cool to have Elliora paint an ornament. I let her pick the paint colors and choose which ornament. Following her big sister’s example, she already has very definite, clear opinions about what she wants. (I don’t have a picture of E painting because I was too busy making sure she didn’t grab the ornament or palette and throw them onto the floor while simultaneously preventing her from smearing her painty hands all over her clothes, the table, the high chair…)

We sure will miss this place. I hope someone buys it soon and re-opens it.

For her photo today, Annalie posed in front of our Christmas tree with a chocolate-filled Advent calendar:

My mom let me eat the rest of the chocolate from Elliora’s Advent calendar to take my self-portrait. She doesn’t really eat the chocolate, anyway. She just gets a tiny bite and my mom and I eat the rest.

You know that life overload I wrote about a few days ago? All of those things are still true, but I’m feeling better about it all. I don’t know why, exactly. Maybe partly because Elliora likes to accessorize, which is adorable:

Elliora loves headbands for some reason. She’s forever picking up ones that Annalie has discarded around the house and attempting to put them on, usually just setting them on top of her head tiara-style. Today Annalie and I were both in the kitchen when Elliora came crawling in from the living room with this headband in place on her head. I asked Annalie if she’d helped her put it on, and Annalie said, “No, I was in here with you!” I guess that means Elliora managed to get it on all by herself. Not bad for a 1-year-old.

Also, I had a headache for three days on and off thanks to storms that were near us. Yesterday it finally rained here, and with the rain came relief from the headaches. And pretty Christmas-light reflections.

I was talking to Troy last night about how life just feels so…relentless lately. Of course having a toddler in the house, even one who (touchwoodfingerscrossedtwirlaroundthreetimesandclucklikeachicken) is mostly sleeping through the night, is a lot of work. Troy is still working long hours. I’m still homeschooling Annalie. And it’s the holidays, which means extra items on everyone’s to-do list. Especially with the days getting dark so early, it seems like I am constantly running behind, that I never reach the end of my list.

Troy suggested that maybe right now, just for a little while, I need to cut back on one or two things. I agreed that sounded good in theory. Then I realized: I’m two weeks behind on Flickring photos (which I do mainly for the grandparents, so I’m feeling bad about that). I hadn’t blogged in eight days. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d worked on any of the three big crocheting projects in progress. Aside from some Christmas treats, I’ve barely even cooked dinner in weeks.

Yes, I wrote backwards on my hand just to remind you. You’re welcome.

Now I’m thinking that part of my problem is that I have not been doing much of anything creative lately. Luckily, it’s almost time for 7 Days again. (Note that it starts in the middle of the week this time, this coming Wednesday, the 21st.) That always provides a much-needed jolt of creative energy, not to mention it’s like a quarterly reunion of old friends at this point.

Whatever. It’s life, sometimes it’s crazy, sometimes it’s CRAZY, and usually it’s fun. Christmas is only a week away, and (throwsaltovermyshoulderwishonastarwearsomegarlic) we’re all healthy. We’re not traveling this year so we’re avoiding that stress. Things will get better and I’ll crochet and blog and cook more again someday. This is only a season.

And hey, it’s a season with lots of pretty lights to enjoy.

I could easily make a list of my favorite hundred children’s books. But instead I’m going with the first one that leapt to mind.

The Saturdays, by Elizabeth Enright.

This book was so important to me as a kid that I can still remember coming across it on the shelf in my elementary-school library. I remember which bookcase it was on, and that I had to reach up to pull the book down. I remember reading the copy on the book jacket and having my interest piqued by the idea of a family of four kids—aspiring actress Mona, 13; mischeivous, piano-playing Rush, 12; dreamy artist and dancer Randy, 10; and solid, unflappable Oliver, 6—forming their own club. (I only have one brother, and although we love each other, we’re different enough that as kids we spent more time bickering and annoying each other than playing together. I could only barely imagine a family where your best friends were your siblings.) Then I opened the book and read the first page, and was immediately charmed by the description of these kids sitting in their attic, listening to the rain hissing and sizzling as it came down the chimney and complaining about how bored they were. I could relate to that! Also, I loved rain even back then, so that was guaranteed to pull me in.

Then I kept reading, as they discussed and rejected ways to relieve their boredom. They decided, at Randy’s suggestion, to pool their weekly allowances and take turns using the whole amount to have an adventure each Saturday afternoon. They came up with a clever name for their club: the Independent Saturday Afternoon Adventure Club, which they could airily refer to as “I.S.A.A.C.” around others. I goggled even back then in 1982 at the amount: adding up each of the older kids’ allowance of fifty cents each and Oliver’s ten cents, they would “have an adventure” every Saturday with the grand sum of $1.60. One dollar. And sixty cents. I don’t think any economics lesson could have taught me more memorably and clearly about inflation since 1941 (the year the book was published).

The adventures they had were fantastic to my seven-year-old Midwestern self, too. Randy went to the art museum and wound up having tea and petit fours (the first time I’d heard of those) at the cafe with a slightly mysterious old lady who’d known their father as a boy, and hearing all about the time she ran away with the circus when she was a girl in Paris. Rush took the bus to the Met to see an opera (a 12-year-old boy, voluntarily going to an opera!?) and ended up rescuing a bedraggled stray dog whom they adopted and named (natch) Isaac. Mona went to a beauty salon and recklessly decided to cut off her waist-length braids, accidentally winding up with a scandalous blood-red manicure which eventually had to be removed at home with perfume (you better believe I tried that a time or two). Oliver hoarded up the dimes the other kids gave him and calmly went to the circus all by himself one day, causing a panic at home when they realized it. After that they decided to go on their adventures as a group, for safety.

This book used to make me long to live in New York in 1941, when I would have been allowed to go operas and museums by myself at the age of 10 or 11. I still re-read The Saturdays and the other Melendy family books every year or so, and they still kind of make me feel that way. What strikes me most about them now, though, are two things in particular: (1) these children in 1941 aren’t really that different from kids now—they bickered and played with their siblings, complained about eating vegetables and doing their chores, swam in the summer and ate ice cream till their stomachs ached; and (2) they didn’t have a television. Sometimes I think my slight disdain for television might stem from reading these books about all the amazing things they did back when they didn’t have TV. I doubt I.S.A.A.C. would ever have been invented if there had been a little black-and-white television in their attic playroom that first rainy Saturday.

I’ve been waiting for seven and a half years for Annalie to be old enough for me to read The Saturdays out loud to her. I think 2012 might be the year. I can hardly wait.

I’m taking part in a blogging group called Reverb Broads that will be suggesting daily blogging prompts this December. I won’t do it every day, but I’ll be using them occasionally throughout the month as they tickle my fancy. If you want to join in, feel free! Go here or here to learn more.

The main reason I blog is because Brenda told me to.

:: The End ::

Just kidding. But this post almost could be that short. The main reason I finally started a blog, three years after abandoning the personal website I’d lovingly hand-coded from 1997 to 2004, was because Brenda kept telling me I should do it. She told me that I’m such a writer, and I take good photos, and I should just do it because I would be good at it and have a blast.

I already read and regularly commented on a few blogs, and had been part of the 7 Days community on Flickr for a while, so I knew that it would probably be fun, but I still hesitated, worried that non-internetty friends and relatives wouldn’t understand why I wanted to dedicate a website to talking about my life, that they would see it as a weird, navel-gazing kind of thing to do. I hemmed and hawed for months before I finally took the plunge (assisted by Heather and Jessica‘s excellent tutorials about how to ditch my blogging training wheels) with three posts about making my friends Erin and Rocco’s wedding cakes.

Once I’d started, I wondered why I’d been dragging my feet. Brenda was right; blogging was super fun, and useful! I could post photos and write about what we were up to for my and Troy’s parents, and all the friends and family we lived far away from thanks to the Navy. I could record moments and crafts and recipes I wanted to remember for future reference. I could ask questions and my readers would respond with advice, funny stories, recommendations.

But the best part of being a blogger is how many good friends I’ve made because of my blog. Comments led to emails, to hilarious late-night IM sessions, to in-person meet-ups, to exchanging Christmas cards and care packages, to stopping on road trips for a quick meal of Chinese with old friends I was meeting for the first time. Because of blogging, I have a friend like a sister who will help me unpack my house when I move and come stay with me for three weeks when I’m about to have a baby; and there is a woman in Australia whom I count as one of my best friends, on any continent. Because I blog, I have friends all over the world whom I otherwise never would have met or even known existed.

For a long time, it was seen as slightly shady and downright weird to admit that you had met a friend or significant other online. But as Brenda says (she says lots of good things, which is probably why she’s such a good blogger herself), the internet is better than homeroom. It actually makes more sense to meet friends online in communities you’re both into (blogs, Flickr, Star Trek forums, whatever) than to befriend people who just happen to be sitting next to you in your 3rd-period history class. The internet acts as a filter and leads you to the people who share common traits and values and interests with you. I’ve always had to laugh when I read news articles about the concern that people spending so much time online will lead to them not knowing how to interact with the real world. For me, the internet—including my blog—has been an amazing portal to the real world and some wonderful people.

I’m taking part in a blogging group called Reverb Broads that will be suggesting daily blogging prompts this December. I won’t do it every day, but I’ll be using them occasionally throughout the month as they tickle my fancy. If you want to join in, feel free! Go here or here to learn more.

Who or what makes you laugh so hard that milk shoots out of your nose and why? Slapstick, dry witty comedy, your kids, Monty Python? —Kassie

This could almost be a Wordless Wednesday post. I could just throw that photo up here and be done. There are lots of things that amuse me—Kids in the Hall (I actually saw them live once), Eddie Izzard (“Do you have a flag?”), Scrubs (“Frick on a stick!”), the parenting-illustrated-with-crappy-pictures blog, Better Off Dead (“Go that way, really fast. If something gets in your way, turn.”)—but the one person who is guaranteed to get a laugh out of me, no matter how stupid the joke, is Troy.

You know how with some people you just have that perfect laughter-inducing chemistry, that humor shorthand, so that things that would be mildly funny with someone else become utterly hilarious when you’re with them? That’s how we are. Sometimes all he has to do is raise an eyebrow and I crack up. I’ve known Troy for 17 years and have been married to him for nearly 16 years, and he still finds the spin on any situation to make me laugh, every single day.

I’m taking part in a blogging group called Reverb Broads that will be suggesting daily blogging prompts this December. I won’t do it every day, but I’ll be using them occasionally throughout the month as they tickle my fancy. If you want to join in, feel free! Go here or here to learn more.

Let’s do this Letterman-style, shall we?

10. Go deep-sea diving. The idea of being underneath that much water…no, thank you.

9. Eat brains, neither as a culinary delicacy or because I’m a zombie. (I’d be the rare vegetarian zombie.)

8. Live in a small, rural town on anything more than a very temporary basis. I’ve been there, done that, and you know what? I’m a city girl. I kind of love crowded urban sidewalks and driving on freeway overpasses and tall buildings and having multiple libraries and malls and movie theaters to choose from. I can see why some people like small towns or the country, but I just go stir-crazy.

7. Get a facial piercing. I love the way they look on other people, but they’re not for me.

6. Be on a reality TV show. I can’t even watch reality TV because many people on those shows annoy me so much that I want to hurl the TV out the nearest window. Troy banned me from watching reality shows years ago because I get so worked up. Luckily, there are plenty of good sci-fi shows to keep me occupied.

5. Illegal drugs. I’ve never smoked, I barely drink. I’m just too law-abiding and not thrill-seeking enough to do drugs. I grew up right smack in the middle of the Just Say No era, and the message sank in. Plus, did I mention that they’re illegal?

4. Have a Freebie Five list. Yes, I totally understand that people make those lists for fun and that most (some?) of the people who make them wouldn’t be expected to actually follow through in the unlikely event they had the chance with one of their Five, unless they were a character on a sitcom. Knowing someone has a List doesn’t make me think they’re a terrible person, or anything like that. It’s just one of those things I don’t do. My design doesn’t allow for it, kind of like how I have zero understanding of what makes gambling fun. (Sure, you go right ahead and blow that $50 on slots. I’d rather spend it on books or movies, or possibly yarn or pottery-painting or a new camera lens. Heck, even a nice dinner out makes light years more sense to me than handing it over to a casino.)

3. Go skydiving or bungee jumping. I like just a little bit of adrenaline. Driving on a busy freeway in a new city? Sounds like fun! Standing on a tall structure and looking down? I love heights. Make a new recipe for the first time when company is coming for dinner? Bring it on, I’m confident of my cooking ability. Go hang-gliding? Hmm…maybe. I’m definitely intrigued by the idea. Jumping out of a plane or off a bridge, even when I logically know I’m equipped with a parachute or safety cord? No. Just…no.

2. Go to a tanning booth. Skin cancer runs in my family. Not remotely worth the risk.

1. Say never. Hey, life can be unpredictable.

What’s something YOU would never do?

I’m taking part in a blogging group called Reverb Broads that will be suggesting daily blogging prompts this December. It’s unlikely that I’ll do it every day (I missed Days 3-5, including a prompt I suggested) but I’ll be using them occasionally throughout the month as they tickle my fancy. If you want to join in, feel free! Go here or here to learn more.

I have very healthy self-esteem which allows me to blithely forget the stupid things I do. At least, I assume that’s what happens, because I know for a fact that I do stupid stuff all the time (ask my husband, I’m sure he could tell you a story or ten), but nothing is jumping to mind from this past year.

However, I do vividly remember the moment I realized that looking stupid and being embarrassed was not only not gonna kill me, but that it in fact was even kinda fun. I was 10 years old, it was the last day of fourth grade, and my class was playing games and goofing off after we helped move the chairs and desks from our classroom to storage (I went to a small parochial school so the students were also occasionally slave labor). My friend Jenny, who was super outgoing and hilarious and had inexplicably picked me to be her best friend in our class, offered to lead everyone in the motions of some song we were singing, and without asking she grabbed my hand and dragged me to the front of the class with her.

Now, back then I was shy. I hated being the center of attention. I hated being looked at. I didn’t like being singled out for criticism or praise. I just wanted to be left alone to read my book and fade into the wallpaper. The fact that Jenny had dragged me up to the front of the class with her to wave my arms and jump around like a giant dork in front of everyone should have made me freeze and then run for the hills like a scared rabbit. But over the course of that year I had slowly changed.

Being friends with Jenny was a big part of that change. She was so confident and unafraid to be weird and silly, and she was awesome. If someone like her thought it was okay to risk being laughed at, maybe it wasn’t so bad after all. The other major component of that change was that I’d moved from a big public school where there were three classes of 30 kids in each grade to a small school where my entire grade only had 12 kids in it. So not only were there fewer people for me to embarrass myself in front of, but they were people who had not known me my whole life. They didn’t have preconceived notions of who I was and what I would or wouldn’t do. It’s always a little easier to break out of a rut when everyone around you doesn’t keep pushing you back into it.

When Jenny pulled me to the front of the class so I could sing and do the motions to a silly camp song with her, my heart was pounding and my mouth was dry and I felt like I might throw up. But I threw caution to the wind and did it. I sang the heck out of that song (strangely, although I can remember the moment perfectly in other ways, I have no memory of what the song was) and I acted out the stupid motions while everyone was looking at me and laughing good-naturedly as they sang along.

When we were done, I felt idiotic and shaky and completely exhilarated. I couldn’t believe that I’d done it. I’d looked moderately stupid in front of a bunch of my peers and I was still standing and breathing and if anyone was making fun of me I didn’t even care, because at that moment I started understanding that when you’re willing to risk looking stupid sometimes, life is a lot more fun.

I’m taking part in a blogging group called Reverb Broads that will be suggesting daily blogging prompts this December. It’s unlikely that I’ll do it every day, but I’ll be using them occasionally throughout the month as they tickle my fancy. If you want to join in, feel free! Go here or here to learn more.

Dear 18-year-old Bethany,

Look, I know that the rehearsals would take a lot of time and you’re a bit unsure how you’d feel about singing and possibly dancing up on stage in front of all those people, but just try out for your school musical. It’s one of your favorite musicals, one that you’re going to see almost a dozen times over the next 19 years—from a couple of high schools, to the Mount Helix amphitheater, to the nearly-professional performance at the Lawrence Welk Theater which included that guy from the Padres-on-Channel-4 commercial and the dude who was Dean Cain’s stand-in on “Lois and Clark”—and you are really, really going to regret missing the opportunity to do it when you had the chance. Just do the musical. You’ll have fun.

Sincerely,
36-year-old Bethany

I’m taking part in a blogging group called Reverb Broads that will be suggesting daily blogging prompts this December. It’s unlikely that I’ll do it every day, but I’ll be using them occasionally throughout the month as they tickle my fancy. If you want to join in, feel free! Go here or here to learn more.