bring it - i punch like a guy. just ask rob.

life is easier in smaller bites

My sweet mother isn't on Facebook. On one hand, I completely understand - she's almost reflexively anti-technology. On the other hand, she finds things out about me and others because her friends are on Facebook and read what I say and then tell her.

Thus, she heard from non-me that we have a very interested potential buyer looking into financing for our condo (no offer yet, and since the condos are not qualified for FHA loans, it's not looking good for that particular buyer). There are other things she's missed because they make a better two-line Facebook status update than a two-line blog post. So I've collected some from the past few months:

the higher i wear them, the magic-er i am

Click to enlarge.

trying to lead by example is awfully tough

Sometimes it feels like my main parenting role right now is preventing my son from putting himself into a sugar coma. He is awfully determined. Things I have turned down today:

• strawberry milk with breakfast (which was Lucky Charms)
• dessert after breakfast
• a snack of marshmallows before lunch
• a dessert of ice cream AND marshmallows after lunch
• Capri Sun for snack

It's only 5:00. We haven't had dinner, nor our typical after-dinner dessert negotiation. Thing is, I totally understand, having a wicked sweet tooth myself. If I could just inject processed sugar directly into my vein, I'd say no, because I LOVE to eat it. Why bypass the fun of the flavor and texture of your teeth rotting?

Mom, thanks for keeping me from a sugar coma all those years. You're a good woman.

this IS trying to play nice

Dear neighbors who are loudly and drunkenly enjoying your game of raucous ladderball,

I didn't know it was possible to have a raucous game of ladderball. Thank you for teaching me something new. Another new thing? After reading that Wikipedia article I just linked to, I discovered that ladderball is also called testicle toss. I didn't realize I was going back to school today! Thank you for also teaching me that I have to shut my son's window at night so that the loud drunkenness doesn't interrupt his sleep – haha! Yes, you got me.

The loud drunkenness coming from OUTSIDE THE HOUSE. He can totally sleep through it when it's coming from inside the house. Don't get smart with me when I'm lecturing you.

Your noises of dismay at missed throws sound alarming inappropriate. Like I cannot come ask you to quiet down because I won't realize until it's far too late that you are playing NAKED ladderball, and there are some things you can't unsee. I would rather not take the chance. Are your missed throws really THAT disappointing? The moaning is rather distracting and I almost feel badly for you and/or need to cut my ears off until you then make a good toss and the shrieking goes all shrill and echo-y across all the buildings and my ears bleed. Don't you know small children and cranky thirty-year-olds are trying to sleep?!

I mean, the very least you could do is invite me. I have a big-ass bottle of gin.

a great way to spend a lazy sunday

I finally edited a smattering (fewer than 10%) of wedding photos from only two of the contributing photographers. One was paid in potato chips, the other in undying gratitude. Some, from other photogs, are saved on another computer. Some haven't been sent to me (I'm looking at YOU, Esther!). Either way, I think we can agree: it was a ton of fun.

Reliving that day through my friends' eyes has been a reminder to me of all the people who made our wedding possible, from the food all given as gifts to the beer schlepped over from Billings to the wine made affordable via shared discount. And that's just what we ATE. The set up, the tear down, the clean up: everything was given for the love and joy of an event that many prayed for (on both Rob's and my sides) for many years.

Yikes, it's almost midnight. Now wonder I'm getting all nostalgic and misty. Night-night! Hope you like. Click to the Picasa album to see the pics full-size and read the captions without being rushed. I'm new to the whole Picasa thing!

have you seen my phone?

Blake woke us up this morning a little before 9:00, and we all got ready for church. I have a new playpen thingy for the nursery to either a) better contain the wild ones who try to escape the moment your back is turned or b) protect the tiniest babies from the aforementioned wild ones who tend to throw toys indiscriminately. Blake had his tithe in a little baggie and was excited about finally being there to give it. He was also hoping there would be a time during corporate prayer that he could stand up and tell everyone he'd asked Jesus into his heart and was a child of God. I was looking forward to church with the whole family for the first time in over a month, as we've either been gone or Rob's stayed home with Blake for a World Cup game and house-cleaning.

We got there to a surprisingly full parking lot/street at 10:25, and as we pulled up to the door, I looked down the hall and it was dead empty. No greeters, no friends filtering into the sanctuary (that's really a gym because we meet in a school).

"OH CRAP. Church starts at 9:30 during the summer!"

Rob didn't even come to a full stop. We continued through the roundabout and went home to change into shorts and tennis shoes, then went on a walk up South Cottonwood. I was in full micro-mode, finding wildflowers known and unknown, discovering tiny snails in their cinnamon-roll-shaped shells, and enjoying Blake telling us how stron he was for being on a hike and using his muscles because he didn't need us to carry him.

For someone who takes pride in being on top of things - being hip and with it - I can be remarkably absent-minded.

but i'll beat the pants off you in scrabble

Can't read my... can't read my...
No, he can't read my poker face.

HAHA! Yeah, right. Too bad I am an open book, and one of the most difficult things I've been learning over the last year or two is discretion. No matter how much something might affect me, if chatting about it affects someone else negatively, I get to shut my trap, at least publicly.

It's more gracious and generous than I'm accustomed to being. It requires less self-indulgent navel-gazing and more consideration about how whatever I might say hurt someone else. It's really hard!

Rather than hinting at anything epic or disastrous (because there's neither), I'll just say this: no, I will not play poker with you.

not r-rated, but not pg-13 either

A friend shared something today that, given my frankness about sexual intimacy, I had to share here.

It's an excellent blog post about grace-driven sex in marriage. Challenging, encouraging, and I highly recommend it.

stupid flavor blasted goldfish...

There a few precursors before I share this little story:

• It wasn't leather.
• It was old.
• I bought it quite large, but had moved to the smaller settings some time ago.

In order to use the facilities (ahem), I reached to unbuckle my belt and grasped... nothing.

I looked down and saw that I had broken it. The part that was buckled was still neatly buckled, except that the belt had torn clean through just past the hole. There they were, two ends of my belt, dangling slightly, waving at me.

Nothing makes you feel quite so svelte as having your tummy tear your belt in half.

a slightly frantic story wherein my neat-freakiness comes in handy

I was getting ready to pick Blake up from Peacemaker Clubs (my church's version of vacation Bible school), when I got a call from an unknown number. The realtor on the other end mentioned that we were listed as short notice, and he was wondering how short was too short.

I scanned my counter, littered with the debris of life: a loaf of bread, my planner, work papers, bananas, a laundry basket, breakfast dishes, and asked what he had in mind.

"We can be there in about ten minutes, but I do not want to put you out."

I made a quick calculation and said, "Nope! This is a perfect time. I have to pick my son up from somewhere, so I was going to be gone anyway."

Before I'd closed my phone, I'd grabbed that (freshly emptied) laundry basket and swept through the kitchen and living room. The little dish containing my wedding rings was unceremoniously dropped into the mop bucket, along with my purse and a newspaper. Blake's room was mostly okay, but they'd definitely know that a small boy who loves LEGOs lives there. Our room was also pretty good. I had time to put away shoes and clear off a desk and coffee table. I cleaned the kitchen counter off to bare bones. I turned on the lights and turned the bluegrass music playing down to an ambient level.

As I threw the (now full) laundry basket and mop bucket into the car, I called Rob and warned him not to come home, as it was being shown. He was as surprised as I was at the brevity of the notice, and asked how the house looked.

"I've finally found a purpose and reason for why I'm wound so tightly and have you and Blake stay so tidy! And thank you thank you THANK YOU for making the bed this morning and helping Blake make his."

celebrating america by blowing up tiny pieces of china

I grew up kind of a pyro. I get it from my dad, and I remember one Fourth of July where he packed us three girls into a big Suburban with one of his friends and the friend's kids. Because bottle rockets had been banned from being sold in Montana, we had to drive ALL THE WAY TO WYOMING for them. Going without just wasn't really an option.

We came back with several hundred dollars of bottle rockets and other assorted colorful explosives. Us girls would shoot the little bottle rockets down the street out of our hands, and we'd use the old school snaps (the ones these days are disappointingly wimpy) as mini-grenades, putting holes in each others' clothing as we tried to tag each other. Dad created a few structures for firing bottle rockets, because some of them were far too big for any bottle to contain and aim. One was a five-gallon bucket with concrete in the bottom for stability, a lid, and a PVC pipe going through the lid like a straw. We'd light one up, drop it down the PVC, and stand back.

Despite fireworks being illegal in town, none of our neighbors ever reported us, because they were all out on their lawns in their chairs, enjoying the show. Families would drive over, and the pile of firecrackers grew and grew. Myers girls were the only non-adults allowed to work the propane torch, and we did so with panache. The smell of black powder, the fun of small, controlled explosions, the excuse of patriotism to validate starting things on fire... I just love it.

When I asked Rob how much I could spend on fireworks this year, he was pretty vague. "Spend it from your vacation savings," he hedged. Clever man. I'm eager to go to Hawaii, and he must have known that making me borrow from one fun thing to have another fun thing would rein me in. Blake and I went to my favorite local stand yesterday (they use all their earnings from fireworks to send their two kids to a local Christian school - I just think that's cool), and we went a little nuts. By the time we were done, he saw the tanks and began to ask for one of them, too, but I had to say no.

"We've spent my budget for the fireworks. I literally do not have enough cash on me to buy a tank, unless we put stuff back, and that gets really confusing. Maybe Papaw has a tank in his stash." The young man who'd helped us grabbed his dad to take the money (you have to be 18 or older to physically receive the money from these sales), and once the father realized that the big pile on the counter was all mine, he threw in a tank for free.

I called Dad, "Just wanted to inform you that I just dropped a hundred bucks on fireworks."

"Ha! Oh, Addie, I've got you beat by a long shot."

"I was counting on it. Rob's going to faint at my number, but what he doesn't realize is that I'm restraining myself!"

Blake's fairly vibrating with excitement, and I've had to have stern lectures with him about safety with this stuff: "These are NOT TOYS. Explosives. Please do not play with anything until I've lit it on fire and handed it to you!"

that's what he said

A: Do you like your teachers?
B: Yes.
A: Why?
B: Because they teach us not to do stuff that's bad for you. And good stuff that's good for you.
...
And they let us play.

*****
B: I need to hang on a bar so my hands will be stron. They are pretty fragile right now, so I want them to be stron.
A: And hanging on a bar makes them stron?
B: Yeah. Right now they are fragile like little noodly things.
A: Can I write that down?
B: Yes. You should tell Grammie so she will laugh and hug me.

*****
B: I just wanted to say that I love you and I love tooting most of the time. But I don't like it when Dad toots.
A: Why not?
B: Because he copies me. All the time, he copies me.

*****
B: (after a sip of Dr. Pepper) Ooh, it's hot. Spicy, like pepper.
A: Yep. I love that part about it.
B: Me too. I love it. It's sugar.

*****
B: Mom, when I'm smoking once a day, a cigar a day, I have to just quit.
A: Uh, okay.
B: Because I heard that on T.V. (instructively) Mom, you gotta quit!
A: Blake, do I smoke?
B: No. (pointing at me with his forkful of French toast) Because you quit!