five fantasy careers

Obviously, I haven't ever held any of these jobs, but I have this feeling that I would be completely AWESOME at them:

1. Talk show host. I think it would be awesome to do schtick with celebrities all day in front of a cheering audience. And I would be one of those extra-cool hosts that gives away totally amazing gifts to my audience, and everyone would jump up and down and cry in joy.

2. Personal shopper to really rich people. I hate shopping for myself - clothes, anyway. But I luvvvv shopping for other people... so then you give me money to buy you awesome things AND pay me on top of that? Seriously sweet.

3. Official taste-tester for Haagen-Daaz. Do I need to explain this one? I didn't think so.

4. Astronaut. I would love to see God's amazing creation from space. Also? That zero-gravity idea really appeals to me. There are no scales in space, yo.

5. Best-selling authoress. Fiction, probably. And I would have some romantic nom de plume, a mysterious photo on the back cover with heavily-made-up eyes, and legions of people wondering who I really am and where do I get my amazing inspiration. Also, I would have an adorable cottage in some remote scenic area where I hole myself to do my writing. And someone to clean up after me, too.

random updates: the day-before edition

It's official: tomorrow is my first day back to work. Am I looking forward to it? Yes. Am I dreading it? Yes. Right now as I type this, I am watching Aidan be unbelievably cute, something he does more and more each day... but I am also eager to hang out with adults, help other people, and earn a paycheck again. Because, you know, being broke? Le suck. But I am so, so going to miss my lil' peanut.

I bought a journal. I realized that what I post for you is maybe 1-2 percent of what my life encompasses, and some things are just not fit for publication, yo. So with the idea that only I read my journal - this could be tricky in a house that now contains children - I am reclaiming a bit of my teenagerhood and keeping a diary.

I started a Monday series, and once again, I am behind on it. This is not the first time this has happened. I realized that some of the stories from when I lived with Katie were actually much funnier if you were there when it happened. Maybe it's a deficit on my storytelling part, too, but I'm having a hard time really recapturing just how funny some of our hijinks were. So, this week's edition might be late.

Is this election OVER already? Sheesh.

Thanks to Kelly, every time I pass a Starbucks, I want to pull in and order a gallon of their salted caramel hot chocolate. It is seriously, sinfully, unbelievably yummy. And if you buy me one, well... there's no telling how far and wide my gratitude will reach.

frustrated: the diaper edition

Okay, so I tried the Thirsties all-in-one diapers my brother bought for Aidan. And they leaked. So I washed them as recommended, hot water, additive-free detergent (and only about 1/4 the normal amount), made sure they were super dry from the dryer. I tried them again. LEAK.

I re-did the whole process. Washing, drying, praying. STILL LEAKED.

And now I am beyond frustrated and wondering out loud to any of my cloth diapering mommy friends: what am I missing or doing wrong? Why are these diapers oozing out pee the minute Aidan pees? It's like it all wicks out to the legs and the top of his butt. The diaper looks like it fits right. I don't use fabric softeners or anything else in the laundry with them.

Grrrr. Stupid diapers.

Any suggestions, moms? Besides going back to my trusty, disposable, yet earth-stabbing Pampers?

five ways I am my father's daughter

Another idea shamelessly nicked from Kelly so that I can survive NaBloPoMo next month...

1. I was disappointed to find out that there was only Baby Mozart and Baby Bach in the Baby Einstein DVD series, and that there was no Baby R. Strauss, Baby Saint-Saens, or Baby Vaughn-Williams.

2. I am a champion napper. True naps are those that are at least three hours long and do not involve alarm clocks or other sleep-interrupting devices.

3. The burnt part is the best part of the food. Same deal with crusts and caramelized things.

4. There are few things better than making other people laugh. Or entrancing them by your performance.

5. Taking long drives in pensive, thoughtful silence is a great way to travel. Really. Talking just interrupts the excellent daydreaming.

adventures in poo

My brother Don is all about being ecologically friendly. He is even more all about spoiling his nephew. And when he gets to combine the two, well, there's no stopping that man.

Long after I'd thrown my hands up and said that cloth diapering was too hard, not for me, etc., he shows up to babysit Aidan with three cloth diapers. Not the traditional squares of cloth you have to fold and do all sorts of crazy maneuvering with (but they make AWESOME burp cloths, yo), but these babies:



Three. A red, a white, and a blue. (Yes, he's quite patriotic.)

These are like disposables, except instead of folding them and stuffing them down the diaper genie, you rinse off the poo and wash them in the washing machine. Aidan is at that wonderful point - thank you, formula - where his poo is mostly solid, so it's pretty easy to take care of. They even make these liner things where you put it in the diaper, the baby poos, and you just whisk the liner (and accompanying poo) away into the toilet.

I got frustrated the last time I tried all this, though, but I decided to give it another shot, just trying out the three Don got us. I put the red one on Aidan first. SO CUTE. (No, I forgot to take a picture. Sorry.) But then three hours later, when it was time to change him again, he had a huge wet spot up the back of his pajamas. Uh, turns out I'd forgotten to wash the diaper first so it can actually absorb stuff and not just transfer it out of the diaper.

I was tempted to take the pee flood as a bad sign that I should not do this. But no, I will persist. I love disposables but those things are getting expensive, so for economy's sake, at least, I'm giving it another shot. You know, so I can stop stabbing the earth. And my wallet.

I'll let you know how it goes...

the chronicles of slavia, part one

I used to live in a suburb of Orlando called Oviedo, in a little enclave of Oviedo called Slavia. Sounds exotic, but Slavia was pretty much a couple of streets: one that had some farms and a 70-year-old house with "SLAVIA" painted in big letters in front, and another that had a Christian school, a plant nursery, and an apartment complex, where I lived with my friend Katie. I've known Katie for over 13 years now, and she's still one of my best friends. However, we only lived in Slavia a couple of years together before she moved out to get married and I moved out to (unknowingly) meet my future husband one month later.

But we collected many a tale while we were there, and since I'm staring down the face of another yearly installment of NaBloPoMo next month, I thought I'd attempt another Monday regular feature: The Chronicles of Slavia.

Part One: The Geezer, The Survivor, and The Kamikaze Kid

Katie and I ended up with three goldfish one day. My memory is hazy as to how we ended up with three goldfish (Katie, I know you're reading, help me out here!), but there we were, two women with three goldfish.

Little did we know we truly had our hands full.

Things started out positive enough. We had three very cute goldfish. They were orange, they were little, they swam around in circles. We needed to name them. Being a Disney fan, I suggested that two of them be named "Nutsy" and "Trigger", in honor of the two goofball vultures from Disney's Robin Hood.



For whatever reason, we never came to the obvious conclusion of naming the third fish "Sheriff". Or any other Robin Hood-related name, and there were many of those options, too: Little John, Marian, Sir Hiss, Prince John, Friar Tuck. Instead, Katie's future-husband-then-boyfriend Kyle thought we ought to name the third goldfish Peter O'Toole.

Yes. PETER O'TOOLE.

Kyle thought it was a funny name. He thought it sounded like a porno star's name. And I can kinda give him that one, but now I'm wondering, doesn't Prince John - or, you could be all deep and paradoxical, Little John - qualify for that honor, too?

No. Not as much as PETER O'TOOLE.

All arguments about how Peter O'Toole, the human one (Kyle is now laughing), the non-porn-star one, was in fact SIR Peter O'Toole (even harder laughter - porn star with British accent visions) and was also in fact a very respected, decorated thespian (hysterics at this point - I gave up) with a long line of theatrical achievements (continued hysterics) were promptly ignored. And the laughter proved to be very contagious, so in the end, our third fish inherited the dubious honor of being named Peter O'Toole. It was also decreed that when referring to him, this fish would always be called by his full name, Peter O'Toole, because it was funnier that way.

Secretly, I called him Pete. I think he respected me for that.

We had Nutsy, Trigger, and Peter O'Toole in their separate little bowls, swimming around contentedly. In fact, for a while there, we couldn't remember which fish we'd named what, because they all looked the same after about ten minutes. And anyway, we also figured they would only live about a week, because our prior collective track records with fish were not terribly impressive.

A week later, they were still alive. Go figure.

Not too long after we started congratulating ourselves on our impressive fish-raising skillz, we had a floater. One of the fish had moved on to bigger and better vistas. We still didn't remember which name went with what fish, but we concluded that it must have been Peter O'Toole: being the elderly thespian (*snort, giggle*) that he was, he would probably be the first to kick the fishbowl. Poor Peter (*chortle*). Down the Porcelain Express he went.

Nutsy and Trigger continued to thrive. Or at least, they didn't die. "Thriving" and "not dying" look pretty much the same when you're a fish.

Eventually, it got into our heads that perhaps Nutsy and Trigger were lonely, and maybe they should share a bowl. Nutsy and Trigger promptly became roommates, another little bowl was emptied and cleaned, and there was much swimming in circles.

We thought they might be a bit crowded, so a shallow floating-candle bowl was cleaned and the brothers transferred to a new home. They swam in more circles. They continued to, er, thrive, long past our expectations. We congratulated ourselves more. They swam in more circles. A gripping life we led, no?

Little did we know the trouble that lay ahead.

We found out that perhaps there was trouble in paradise, and that maybe all those swam circles were, in fact, a desperate cry for help. We thought they were happy, but I guess we were wrong, or at least half wrong, because one morning, I stumbled out of bed, out to the living room to feed Nutsy and Trigger, and there swam Nutsy, solo, in the bowl. I blinked a few times before it occurred to me to look around for Trigger, that it was improbable that Nutsy devoured his own kin. And there was Trigger, still in the hush of death, lying on the carpet. Trigger had jumped to his death, right out of his shallow little fish condominium.

Here's where I show my true colors: I left him there. I did. I was traumatized, I didn't know how to get him off the floor, and it was really early in the morning and I just couldn't handle it. Yes, it's true: I left him there and went back into my room and pretended I never saw it all. Because, you know, ignoring something will always make it go away.

Twenty minutes later, I hear Katie come out of her room. Yes, that's right! I left Trigger there for her to find, okay? Go ahead and judge me! Argh!

So, okay, Katie came out of her room, and I hear her go, "Uh-oh." And she comes and gets me out of my room to see the carnage, and I was all wow! and surprised and I-never-thought-this-would-happen-how-sad. And even worse than me leaving him there the first time, both of us stand over him and just sort of stare at him. We then argue over who's going to be the brave one: "You pick him up." "No, YOU pick him up. This is creepy." "Hey, this is creepy for me, too - YOU do it."

And we continued on like this for several moments... and then we saw it: the wiggle. Trigger MOVED.

We both gasped. We continued to argue, more fervently now, over who would pick him up and put him back in the fishbowl (instead of the toilet). I think eventually Katie - clearly the better roommate, be quiet, okay? - picked him up and dropped him back into the bowl.

It was pathetic. Truly pathetic.

First, he wasn't quite dead. Dead fish are usually upside down or completely on their sides, and fish who are not dead are upright, swimming vigorously. Trigger, however, was positioned at a 45-degree angle. Not quite dead, not quite alive. He waved his fins every couple of seconds in a futile effort to move his body around, only he never worked up enough force to actually do so. He just sort of floated there at that weird angle.

Second, he was this ghastly grayish-orange color, instead of the bright orange he used to be. A piece of fuzz from the carpet stuck to his gills. And his eyes sort of bugged out, more than usual.

The worst part, though, was Nutsy. Imagine you're swimming around at home, minding your own business, occasionally stopping to eat the food that magically falls from above, and then your roommate leaps to his death in front of your eyes. Only maybe you weren't paying full attention and just thought he'd gone out for some potato chips or something, and just as you were thinking, man, he's been gone for a while... he drops back in, half-dead, a strange color, permanently tilted, with unnatural fuzz stuck to his sides. You would probably be swimming around frantically, freaking out, much like Nutsy. We were convinced that he would make a similar kamikaze leap, he was so spazzed out. But there wasn't anything we could do: we both had to leave for work. We mentally prepared ourselves to come home to one, possibly two, dead fish. It was a miracle that Trigger had any life left in him after at least twenty minutes outside of the water, and we didn't want to press our luck by hoping for recovery. We left the apartment.

We came back about the same time that night, and we were STUNNED: Both fish were still there. Nutsy had not leapt to his death. And Trigger was not only alive, but he was swimming around just as vigorously as before that morning's death leap. He was still a little pale, and the carpet piece was still stuck to his side, but there he was, quite alive. We were stunned.

And alive he stayed, along with Nutsy, for several more months, in fact. We moved them to a special fish tank, complete with a roof and a water filter and some fake fish habitat props. They thrived.

They continued to thrive after Katie and I moved out when she married Kyle, the infamous name suggester previously mentioned. They came in their fish tank with me to a different apartment, kept swimming around contentedly. They met Jason. We got engaged (Jason and I, not the fish and I). Eventually, they hit the goldfish jackpot and retired to a friend's fish pond, where they tripled in size and lived for another year before joining Pete(r O'Toole) in fish heaven.

Funny enough, even when he was at his biggest size, Trigger never regained his full color back. These are the scars we must bear, I suppose.

RIP, Pete, Nutsy, and Trigger. I hope heaven is deep, well-aerated, and full of floating food bits for you.

a stolen meme

I can't concentrate long enough to write a thoughtful post because Aidan is in front of me being so incredibly adorable - I keep giggling every time he does, which is often - so here's a meme I considerately nicked from Carissa. Have fun learning a little more about me:

I AM… (I'll just leave it at that: "I am".)
I WANT… a Dyson vacuum cleaner. A pink one, preferably.
I HAVE… a perfectly good vacuum cleaner, and a bad case of I-want-itis, apparently.
I KEEP... too much stuff. But I love making my twice-yearly trips to Goodwill to clean it all out - so therapeutic!
I WISH I COULD… redo some major decision/turning points in my life with the perspective I have now.
I HATE... cilantro. (I've said that many times, but so strong is my hatred, it bears repeating.)
I FEAR... something happening to either or both of my men.
I HEAR... Bach's Brandenburg Concerto, my husband's car pulling into the driveway, and Aidan's giggling. Awesome.
I DON’T THINK... it's right that political campaigns spend more time bashing the other candidate rather than truthfully present their proposed plan of action. It makes me not want to vote at all, really.
I REGRET... writing off so many people in school because I assumed they wouldn't like me.
I LOVE… cooler weather, and that some of it has arrived today.
I AM NOT... overspending this Christmas season.
I DANCE... like the stiff white woman that I am.
I SING… all. the. time. Love it.
I NEVER... sleep on my back.
I RARELY… watch scary movies. I don't like 99% of them.
I CRY WHEN I WATCH… Monsters Inc. When Sulley has to leave Boo behind in her room at the end, or when he roars and makes her cry - ugh. Big nasty tears.
I AM NOT ALWAYS... weepy when I watch Pixar films.
I HATE THAT... drivers are so bad around here.
I’M CONFUSED ABOUT… uh, pretty much everything.
I NEED... a nap. Oh pretty please?
I SHOULD… stop using the word "should" in so many sentences about myself.

TV fast: the outcome

I totally forgot to tell you guys about this - so sorry. Parenthood distracts you like that sometimes.

So, we went a whole week without TV, no cheating. No movies on the DVD. No reruns during the day. No TV on the Internet. Not even any Baby Einstein for my little munchkin, although we played Baby Bach for him yesterday, and I have never seen a two-month-old so transfixed in all my life. He was completely mesmerized.

(I know, I know. I'm completely setting myself up for a bazillion TV-is-baaaad-for-kids comments. He only watches it for a few minutes a day, I promise. Leave me alone.)

Okay, so back to the original idea: no TV for a week. It was interesting, to say the least.

I did get some good reading done, just like I had wanted. Among some other books, I read The Kite Runner, which was totally awesome and made me bawl lots of therapeutic tears.

I didn't spend too much time online, either, even though I'm mad guilty of that most of the time. I knew that would be just as useless as sitting in front of the TV all day, so I tried to reign myself in a bit.

I did get some nice time in with Aidan, and I even took some pictures of my little Sweet Pea that I'm really proud of. They are, of course, still stuck on the camera. I mean, I didn't get that productive, people.

What I was most looking forward to was the QT I would spend with Jason. All that uninterrupted quality time with no distracting elements.

Uh HUH.

It turned out that we did spend a lot of time together, but it was mostly silent. Is that so sad? We didn't talk a whole lot. In fact, I spent a lot of those meals - that were meant to be intimate reconnections - sulking or eating in stony silence. I didn't overdo it on the Internet overall... but in the evenings when we were at home together, yeah, we were sitting in the same room, TV off but completely absorbed in our own laptops. This was NOT the outcome I had wanted.

Apparently, turning the TV off meant dealing with a lot of crap we'd both either ignored, suppressed, or completely missed altogether. And maybe we weren't so good at that. I wasn't, at least. I'd had a lot of frustration about being a new mom, feeling lonely (gee, wonder why?) and sleep-deprived and left to do a lot of the parenting while Jason got to go to work and live his pre-baby life relatively uninterrupted. I should have talked with him about it, but I hadn't, not before that week. Maybe all those moments with the TV blocked it all out, I don't know. But during the TV fast week, it all came bubbling to the surface.

We really didn't talk about it all, actually, until Friday night when we were supposed to meet our friends for a night at Disney. We were headed down the road, all was good, I was feeling fine, and then... blaggggghhhh. It all came out. I'll spare you most of the gory details, but suffice to say, by the time we were in the parking lot at EPCOT, I was in tears and demanded to be brought home. Spent that night and most of the next day trying to run away from pressures that felt too overwhelming.

We talked that weekend and got everything out in the open, healed some sore spots, reconnected, snuggled a lot. It's all okay now, really. I'm not trying to run away anymore. And the TV fast turned out to be a really powerful lesson for us both, that we need more than just a week to pour the best parts of our days into each other instead of wasting them, so that when those critical moments happen, it isn't akin to a bullet train hitting us both in the heart. That we're not staring at each other, silent, wondering how to communicate when we don't have the constant drone of the TV to distract us. That we love each other, and love each other WELL, instead of loving our technology a little too much.

kids make liars out of you: the sequel

...and Aidan did NOT sleep through the night last night.

Maybe he'll prove me wrong tonight... and sleep until 7am?

Hmmmmm...

kids make liars out of you

Remember my last post? About how it was so hard to find joy at 4am?

Not 24 hours after I posted that, I found it. At 4 am. As I slept blissfully because - shock of all shocks - SO WAS AIDAN.

That's right. My little boy slept through the night last night, and I could not be prouder to be proven wrong about his sleeping habits.

We fed him a a big bottle at 10:15pm, got him all fed, burped, changed, and wrapped up in his swaddler (aka the Baby Strait Jacket), and put him down at 11pm. His eyelids were barely open, and he was ready for bed. 3:30 came along, I hear him fuss a little bit over the monitor, so I go in to pop his binky back in his mouth. It's been our routine, this binky-popping in the middle of the night. He'd fuss, I'd put the binky back in, then 15 minutes later, he'd fuss again, I'd get out of bed... you get the picture. Sort of like hitting the snooze button on my son. It's my way of trying to delay a feeding I don't really want to do, and lately, he'd only been taking 1 or 2 ounces anyway.

So, I popped the binky back in. Went back to bed. Next thing I know, Jason's getting up, and it's 5:30. The monitor is silent, but I'm too groggy to make a big deal about it. Maybe Jason fed him, I thought groggily. Back to sleep.

I wake up, no alarm, no sound over the monitor, at 7:15am. I had about 3 seconds of feeling well-rested before the panic set in: why didn't he wake up for his bottle? I threw myself out of bed, horror scenes flying through my brain, and ran into his nursery. And there he was, still swaddled, binky firmly planted between his lips, sleeping peacefully.

Friends, it was the parting of the clouds, the light shining from heaven, the angels singing sweet melodies. Oh, glorious moment that I realized my son slept through the night! All morning, I kept squeezing him, hugging him, saying "Good boy!", and Aidan gave me these withering looks like I was mentally unbalanced.

That's okay. I'm just grateful Aidan has joined his parents in a long family line of champion sleepers. Good boy!

finding joy...

...is a little hard to do at 4 in the morning, after just a few hours sleep. I think I dropped it somewhere in the dark, along with Aidan's binky.

Forgive me if I take tacit, bleary-eyed acceptance instead. Whoever coined the phrase "sleeping like a baby" never met my talkative, grunting, squirmy worm. Love him, but sheesh...

loved and forgiven

Shortly before I left work to go on maternity leave, I cared for a patient who had been the victim of a horrible accident. He was about my age, and one night, in a not-so-safe part of town, another person decided to run over my patient - repeatedly - with his car. It left him with brain injuries and swelling so severe that even some of our most calloused, experienced staff were open-mouthed at the CT scans of his head. He actually came into the hospital somewhat conscious and alert, nodding his head to questions, but within the night, the bleeding and swelling in his brain turned him completely unresponsive, and he never again acknowledged anyone's presence, not even his mother's.

He came to our unit a very, very broken man. A part of his skull needed to be removed because of the massive swelling, and the left side of his head bulged under the skin. We cared for him, treated his fevers, his erratic heart rate, bathed him, turned him so that he wouldn't get bedsores, fed him through a tube, and monitored his oxygen levels as a respirator kept his lungs going. The chances of recovery were nil. Doctors broke the news to his mother, first gently, then bluntly, as she refused to believe her son was really gone even though his heart was still beating. A hospital ethics committee wanted to end life support, and his mother adamantly refused. He was still there when I left for maternity leave, and the last news I'd heard was that he was moved to a nursing home. I thought perhaps he'd made some miraculous improvement, though I knew the quality of life after such an accident was bound to be poor.

Today, I read that he passed away this past Wednesday. He was 34 years old.

I'd seen a lot of patients like him in the year I worked in my burn/trauma unit. Their injuries are severe, their prognoses grim, but they start to blur together after a while. Maybe it's the brain's way of protecting you from the reality of so many hurt people, I don't know. But I don't remember all of them. You give the best nursing care you are capable of, and then you try to leave their stories and faces at the hospital and go home to be with your family.

This patient, however, is one I will never forget.

He was a career criminal, purportedly one of the biggest drug dealers in my city. He had a rap sheet a mile long, I was told - possession of narcotics, robbery, assault, etc. He was outside a nightclub when someone, clearly set to kill him, ran over him repeatedly with his car. Police had to use their own vehicles to barricade this guy from continuing to run my patient over, and the scene was reportedly so "unstable" (dangerous, I presume) that it took paramedics a full hour just to reach my patient. When news of his injuries broke and the newspaper published the story online, comments came flying in from all over, some mentioning the bravery of the officer who risked his own life to stop the other guy's car, but most saying that our city and the world in general would be better places because this guy was critically injured, off the streets, and would hopefully die. They used words like "scum" and "trash" and a few others that are too offensive for me to mention. People seemed pretty content that justice had been served to this guy, who, as one person wrote online, "got what was coming to him."

What people didn't see, or at least care to remember, was that my patient, however heinous the crimes he committed, was someone's son and father.

His room was full of bright posters and funny little crayon drawings from his son. A picture of a bright-faced little boy in a baseball uniform hung under the dry-erase board. Get-well cards and balloons were stashed in a corner of his room to make way for all the medical equipment to keep his body alive.

His mother came to visit her son every single day. She was a kind lady, strong and fairly stoic about the whole situation, given the gravity of her son's condition, though her eyes told me she was feeling every bit of pain that comes with seeing your son lying gravely ill in a hospital. She worked at the hospital in a different unit, and when she was at his side, she always helped the staff to care for him. She spoke to him, talked to him about his son, told him how much she loved him, asked him to move something - anything - or at least turn his glassy-eyed, blank gaze to her in recognition, which he never did.

This past weekend, she had to bury her son. No parent should ever have to go through such hell, burying their child. And though he may have been what many would call a bad person, a criminal, a detriment to society, he was still, after all, her son. Loved. Forgiven.

And I am reminded again and again, when I think of him, that no matter what I do or what other people think of me, or how many times I screw up, even when I screw up in huge, messy ways, that I, too, am always loved. Forgiven. Not just by my very awesome parents, but even more by my Papa in heaven. He comes to visit me every day, too, waiting for me to look His way and talk to Him.

falling in love... again

Welcome to the world, Kathryn Grace Vercillo! She's the beautiful new daughter of my awesome cousin Jen - born October 4, weighing in at 6 lbs, 12 oz, and 19 inches long.



Jason, Aidan, and I are sending buckets of love out to the proud parents and sweet-pea Kathryn - don't they look awesome?



(And she had a C-section, too. It should be criminal to look that good after major abdominal surgery.)

We love you!

fasting

The television is always on. It is the background noise during my days at home with Aidan. I watch enough ER reruns that I think Aidan's first words will be "get me 10 cc's of lidocaine, stat!" When Jason gets home, we watch Friends. We feed Aidan to the sounds of Charles Gibson and the nightly news. We eat dinner in front of the TV, or at the dinner table, looking over the couch to the TV (with the volume turned louder to compensate for our distance). We watch the primetime line-up for the night, or pop in a DVD. We almost always watch Family Guy at ten. And then the same pattern happens again the next day. Lather, rinse, repeat.

One of my friends only recently acquired a television set because she married a guy who owned one. Before then, she read books. Talked to friends. Had quiet time. Ate dinner and had meaningful conversation with her dinner guests. I imagine she still does that now, as she is still not a TV watcher. It really all made sense to me, but I just thought I liked seeing Monica, Chandler, Joey, Rachel, Phoebe, and Ross too much to give mine up.

And then on our date this past Friday, it just sort of hit me: I wanted to break away from the TV. It was probably inspired during date night, because when we are on date night, in a restaurant without TVs, sitting in the back of the truck at the beach, or even in the jumble of commotion at Disney, we have the best conversations. It's one of those perks when you marry your best friend, those excellent chats. But we don't have them as much at home, mostly because I think we're both more interested to see who gets kicked off The Biggest Loser than to really go into deep conversation.

Plus, I'm sitting here in amazement at how fast Aidan is growing up - two months old already! - and since I'm facing the return to work in just a few weeks, I don't want any moment with him to be wasted. I decided he deserved our full attention when we're with him, instead of dividing it between him and, say, Lennie Briscoe, Peter Griffin, or Dwight Schrute.

So this week, we're fasting. The TV is being turned off. No TV, no movies, nothing. And I predict one of two scenarios will happen: we will either reconnect with each other in fabulous new ways, deepen our walk of faith, and discover just how little we need that box... OR we will go certifiably insane and just stare at each other, drooling and glassy-eyed until the following Monday when we can end our fast.

Either way, it should be interesting.

So if you see me this week, and I'm just a little off: voice trailing off mid-sentence, foaming at the mouth, or else babbling incessantly about how I think saving the cheerleader will save the world, well... I guess just drive me to the nearest Best Buy and park me in front of the largest HD TV you can find there. Take away my credit card first, of course.

feel-good friday

A few of the reasons I'm smiling:

Aidan just flashed me a grin from his crib this morning. I am forever ruined!

Tonight is date night - I've been looking forward to it all week. It's the night that makes the rest of the week's trials so, so worth it. Plus, my husband is hawwwwt. And we have free babysitting, in the form of my awesome brother Don. Score!

Aforementioned Hawwwwt Husband took my middle-of-the-night feeding shift with Aidan last night instead of waking me up so that I could sleep. His heart is just like that, people. Huge and giving, even when he's tired himself.

I love the numbers of the sizes of clothes I can fit into.

My new awesome boss is totally working with me and my schedule so that I can make sure Aidan has someone taking care of him when I go back to work, and they're all FREE. Free childcare for all but one day of the week. That's no small blessing.

Before my date night tonight, I get to go on a little roadtrip (45 minutes) and meet up with one of my dearest friends for lunch, the one who calls me Anne Girl. I so miss her company, so today is a special treat.

finding joy

It's been a long time since I posted, hasn't it? I'm kind of amused at how little I've been writing and yet how great my husband is about posting on his blog - when I first started this blog, back in the day, I suggested to Jason that he might like to do the same. He didn't really warm up to the idea at first, but then he started posting a little in his own space... and now, well... I have some catching up to do!

Anyway, it's been a long time, but not because the inner wheels of my head haven't been busily turning all this time. I've been looking inside myself a lot lately. A lot of what I have found is stuff that I don't feel ready to post publicly. Some of it, I barely understand myself and find it hard to put into words. Soul searching is hard work, yo.

A friend of mine recently took me out to lunch - it was delicious and we had a good time, but it was a lunch with a purpose. You can sense when someone has a message to give you. And she said to me, "You know, Anne, for as long as I've known you, over these past 5-6 years, you've always wanted something. First you were sad because you didn't have a boyfriend, and you wanted a boyfriend. Then someone came along and you were sad because he didn't like you as much as you liked him. Then you met your husband to be and just wanted to get married, and you were sad because you wondered if he would ever propose. Then you got married, and you were wanting to have a baby, and sad that you didn't have one. Then, you wanted to have a house and were sad living in your apartment. And you have all these things now, and I just wanted to say to you: be happy. Don't keep "waiting" for the next thing. Whatever it is you have to do to be happy, do it. You've gotten everything you've wanted."

I have to admit that her words stung a little. Okay, a lot. But she's a friend because I know she won't sugar-coat anything, and she means what she says. Still, it's hard to realize that one of the lasting impressions you've left with people, especially those who are close to you, is one of sadness and longing and waiting for the next thing to start in your life. It made me, well... sad. It made me feel a little defensive inside, and I wanted to tell her that she had no idea what I'd been through, what I'm still trying to reconcile in my heart. I wanted to have a lunch where everything was surface-y and light-hearted and without agenda. Deep inside, though, I knew she spoke truth. This is not the legacy I wish to have. Sadness is not the impression I want to leave with people, especially when I am trying to impart just how awesome Jesus is to those who don't know. How much are you going to want the life of a Christian who is perpetually sad, longing, discontent? I didn't think so. It all made me sad to hear.

It also made me determined to go out there and find the joy.

The good news is, it's not that hard to find. God sprinkles it all over my life, most notably and recently in the form of the most terrific man in the world along with the most terrific little man in the world. When I choose to see the joy, I am delighted. Sometimes it's in little things, like getting the unexpected green light (score!) or a apologetic cashier giving you something free you expected to pay for (in this case, pink reusable grocery bags). Sometimes it's in the bigger things, like realizing just how freaking blessed I am to have my best friend as my husband, or that I will probably never be out of work in my career path, or how awesome it is to be a part of a dynamic, loving, life-changing community. And sometimes it's in all the other things: a morning run you dragged yourself out of bed for that connected you spiritually, your infant son flashing his first toothless grin at you, being the world's worst stinkin' bowler and laughing your head off over it, or finding out that Pei Wei is actually owned by PF Chang's. (Dude. I so didn't know. I am SO THERE.)

I know this probably sounds like the worst sugary get-happy drivel, but it's been a tiny shift in my thinking that has made such a huge difference. I haven't discovered some massive secret of the universe. I still have crappy moments. Seeing joy and being joyful is far from an automatic response for me, and sometimes I have to work pretty hard at it. I still think negatively and probably project that quite well to the world at times. I still have a lot of inner stuff I have to work through, scars and open wounds that surprise me with their depth and rawness despite their age, and thankfully, I've been blessed lately with the right people who can do that with me. But if I can find the joy in each day, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, it keeps my perspective in the right field, and the bonus is that I'm a lot more fun to be around. You can find joy in spite of those wounds, even if they are deep and painful.

So I ask you, for any of you still faithful enough to check if I post anymore: what are you putting out there to the world? Where do you find the joy?

And a belated thank you to a friend who lovingly shook me awake and told me to get over it already and go find some joy.