Calling all babies in hats

Sean and Laura were taking a tour of Michigan, Illinois, and Ohio to show off Isobel and catch up with friends; thankfully our house was a scheduled stop. After meeting Isobel, I can understand their eagerness to take her her out and about. She smiles easily, wears cute baby stuff like hats with animal ears and footed sleepers, smells good, and doesn't cry much when I hold her. What more could you ask of a baby? I even ate a few of her Cheerios.



Sean and Laura were delightful guests, easy to please, and good to hug, since it had been a few years that we last visited together.

I was the only one who paid attention in English class, A.K.A. Having parents who are teachers made me into an angry nutjob.

I sometimes get in a froth about spelling errors such as confusing your for you're or adding an apostrophe instead of simply pluralizing. I'm not sure why the little things grate on me so.

Maybe it's just a safe place to release a little anger. We've all got to grow up someday, and in doing I've realized that for society to function, we can't fly off the handle whenever we feel the urge. But, dammit, it seems safe enough that I can break a sweat if you don't know the difference between than and then.

On a somewhat related note, Brenden and I were talking about The Troops who are in the news and so frequently spoken of by the Bush administration.

"Brenden, can I call just one of the troops a "troop"?

"No, then he's called soldier."

Why not? Why can't I call a troop a troop, if everyone else is saying crazier things like, "you welcome"? It could just be part of my charm.

The Chosen

Today at Chick-Fil-A I ordered a brownie. I wasn't really paying attention to the skinny geeky kid working the register until he said, "Which one? Which brownie?" as he glanced at the rather large, artfully arranged pile of brownies under a glass dome.

"Oh, um, it doesn't matter."

"You must choose one over all of the others...," he said, ceremoniously lifting the glass dome and readying his tongs.

So I slowed down and considered the brownies. Which one did I want, above all others? "That one," I said. I pointed to one with the gooiest looking icing.

"I knew it," he tenderly replied. He carefully removed the chosen brownie from the stack and wrapped it in tissue, forming a pleat in the paper.

Whoa, this was a strangely, unexpectedly calming brownie ordering experience.

Hear and Sniff

The closest things I have to time travel are scents and songs. Smells can awaken memories that had long since slipped into the fuzzy areas of my consciousness. On just the right hot, humid days, I can remember Texas as clear as yesterday. And, if I get the right whiff of building products and cinnamon, I feel like I am at Ikea.

Songs, they can take you back in time too...

When Katie and I were in France we met two traveling English girls at our hostel, Sophie and Heather. It was a great match and we traveled to a few other cities as a foursome, splitting to costs of hotel rooms. In Florence, the line to see David was long, so we filled the time with girl chatter. Sophie and Heather were talking about popular music in the UK; somehow Take That came up. We asked if they sang the song we were about to sing. Then Katie and I started in on "Back for Good" right there on the cobblestone streets of Italy. If I am remembering it right, we sang a whole verse, and we sang it with gusto. One of the English girls exclaimed, "have you two had singing lessons?!"

It's always the undeserved compliments I remember most! "Back for Good", you hold a special place in my time machine.

Happy Holidays, I mean it!

We've all heard the debate - is it "happy holidays!" or "merry Christmas!" Some people claim that "happy holidays" takes the Christ out of Christmas. I don't really care about that since Christ wasn't even in Christmas in the first place, if you do your research, and December 25th isn't his birthday. Christmas is a secular holiday for a lot of people (me!). Ooh, that sounds ranty and I don't mean it to be.

All along I've thought "happy holidays" was just an abbreviated way of saying "merry Christmas and a happy new year." After all, I am getting two days off of work for those reasons. Two holidays! Happy holidays indeed!

Or maybe it's a way to say, "I don't care if you celebrate Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, or Festivus - I hope you have a good time!" What could be wrong with that?

Three and a half movies later...

Yesterday we finally finished painting our living room. When we moved in, the paneling was dark brown and the ceiling was dingy white with rough, poorly stained beams in the ceiling, and there was a black mantle on the fireplace.

As soon as we moved in, the ceiling was painted light green, and the walls were painted a rich spring green. It looked like this:




Those brown beams were oppressively dark, and the fireplace mantle seemed better suited to a medieval castle when it was black. So now everything is "blonde." It seemed like it would be an easy task at the outset. After all, it is just a couple of boards, right?

Rough, dark wood is not easy to prime and paint. Then, I put spackle in where the top trim boards meet the wall. It was so jaggedy and gappy and the spackle really cleaned up the lines. The only drawback was that my index finger is still red and tender from poking spackle onto wood around the entire perimeter of the room.

Brenden and I put on some DVD's while we painted. I don't know the exact time of our labors, but we played Clerks, 28 Days Later, Pulp Fiction, and half of the Whale Rider. Whew!