Baby did a bad bad thing

Brad's back! Check him out here and make lots of posts so that he will never stray from posting again. All he needs is a little attention, people, feed the ego.

Preparing for up north

The last few days have been a little crazy because i am preparing Olivia for two back-to-back trips, one to Grandma's and one to FL with me next week. in the midst of this the child has insisted on continuing to grow so I have had to buy her a new car seat and since Fall is apparently upon us all the sudden, a new Fall wardrobe. So that extra day of pre-school? Spent it shopping. And not in a good way.

So today I will drive her to my mother's and have the whole afternoon to myself, a very daunting thought. Then Chad comes home and we pack for his firm retreat four hours north of here. Then I'll cry and call my mother, and cry some more, then we are off. The most exciting part about out trip is getting to have four hours in the car together. The dirty little secret of parenting is that you don't get to have an actual conversation with your spouse, ever. You try and talk and are interrupted so many times that you give up and by the time the kid is asleep you want to exchange nothing but logistics for the next day and go to sleep. At least, this is the case if you have a child that is a monster in some very cute tights from H&M.

So tonight my hubby and i have a date with a half-empty bottle of Chardonnay and i might even be able to talk him into a movie. If I'm not too busy calling my mother. I'll see you all in a few days!

Happy Birthday, Baby!

So today you get another birthday post for someone else that is pretty incredible, my BFF Chad. i couldn't decide whether to go sappy or funny for this one so I guess I will have to split the difference. Chad and I met when i was nineteen and I knew then that he was the love of my life and everyone has heard the story about I spent the next year convincing him that I was right. Whenever i wonder why i haven't ever won on a scratch off, why I never get picked in drawings or why I never get to say, "BINGO!" I convince myself that I got very, very lucky one day when I was nineteen and not ready to know what true love was, so God spelled it out for me in the form of my husband.

Who is not just smart, but really brilliant, who is a very dry funny that I appreciate more than any other humor because I think is smarter and more rare, who is generous beyond any kind of logic, even-tempered and happy go-lucky, affectionate, unafraid to wear his passions on his sleeve (and a pink shirt to a Mormon graduation) always tells me he loves me before he hangs up the phone (even at work and when leaving messages), he is stubborn (even in some good ways). More than all this, I love my husband because I know all his thoughts before he has them and I know he gets up everyday and thinks about nothing other than making a better life for his family. That is a man, and the sum total of all my good luck for a lifetime. The kid is just a bonus because she is all the good parts of him. So, babe, I love you more than anything and I'm glad that you were born.

Where I was then

I was not planning on doing a 9/11 post today because today is my fabulous hubby's birthday and I hate the fact that he feels guilty for trying to celebrate the date of his birth on the day that makes a nation mourn. However, i read Barb's post over at Fancy Simple about where she was and it the fact that it brought back such vivid memories for me proves that 9/11 still needs posts.

Chad and I had a slightly different take on 9/11 because we were staring at the Pentagon footage, not the twin towers. We were getting ready for school and work and in the days before Olivia CNN was always on in every room of the house when we got ready in the morning. What can I say, we are info junkies. So, I'm in the bathroom and i hear him shout, "Holy shit! Come look at this!" I run out, half dressed and say, "Wow, air traffic control gone wrong." Then I went back to my routine and I heard Chad say as I walked away, "I don't know, hon. . ."

Sure enough, as i am pulling up to the law school the next plane hit the Pentagon. That's when sheer panic set in. We had just moved from DC, we still had a lot of friends there, friends that lived in Virginia, friends that worked right next to the White House, which is where we anticipated the next news to come from. We agreed to leave Chad's phone on, even in class and I would check in at work and then immediately call him to let him know what was going on. That's when i hit the phones. one by one, to make sure they were all okay. Some I couldn't get, so i was shaking when I got to work.

My co-workers were all glued to CNN.com when i got there and my boss informed me that they were saying Chicago was the next likely target. In the days afterward, this was probably a little remembered fact for most people, but for me, it was when i was so afraid that I couldn't even cry. My whole family, everyone was there. I called my mom, who is a nurse, who starts her shift at 6 AM, and had no idea what was going on. Dad was not in the downtown office, but now she was scared too. That's when my boss closed the office and we were all rudderless, at work, but afraid to go home alone. Some went home, the rest came up to the law school with me where most classes had been cancelled and we sat in the student lounge and watched CNN for hours, along with most of the law school. Later, we moved to professors' offices, or anywhere else that you could just be with a few people to try and digest and talk it through. Those first few hours, I remember nothing but the quiet.

Then I went back to work. What else could i do? i had found everyone by that point, CNN and gotten to be a repetitive loop, so i went back to the office, alone. More than anything i remember about those days I remember feeling very vulnerable, not because i felt unsafe I was pretty sure Madison would not make any hit list, but because politics were suddenly unavoidable. Your feelings about the President, diplomacy, our culpability, third world politics were suddenly expected conversation. I found this unnerving for reasons I can't explain, i have never really kept my politics to myself. However, every get-together, casual conversation with co-workers was like someone was stealing something from me. It felt like standing on the beach when the wave comes in and steals the sand right from underneath your feet.

I guess that is why you still need posts about 9/11.

How the mighty have fallen

Tonight's dinner: reduced fat peanut butter with low sugar jelly on whole wheat bread. All the joy has been sucked from my existence.

Happy Birthday Angie Oh!

Today is Angie's b-day. She is super-smart, SUPER-funny and the best gal pal a girl could have. What other girl can do fabulous shoe shopping and home improvement? Not many, I can tell you. I love to argue with her, because we never get mad. i love to cry to her because she knows how to give tough love and she'll never tell you something just to make you feel better (unless you really need it). Most of all I love to listen to her, because even when she is really down, she can never be brought down. She is the ultimate tough girl and an inspiration to all who love her. I am proud that I have earned her friendship.

Plus she has a man-candy husband who looks like David Beckham.

I'm that guy

So you know how when you drive past a jogger in the rain you think to yourself, "Flippin' idiot, it's raining, stay home." Well today, I was that flippin' idiot. it was my day to run and it was the first day since we started running that my turn landed on a raining and cold day. i rolled over to my spouse, who was super and the number one reason i got out of bed today and said, "it's cold and raining and that makes me crabby." He replied with a totally non-judgemental since he has been in the rain a few times, "I love you, you can do it!" What do you say to that? You drag your sorry ass out of bed.

Number two reason I actually did it? Good planning. A few weeks back I anticipated this day and bought a nice moisture repellent long-sleeved shirt that kept me warm and dry, yeah! it turned out that the bad mood was a great motivator; I ran farther and faster than ever before. I also did it with a smile on my face. So it is not so bad to be that guy, I'm now on my way to buy some cold weather gear, for future motivation.