Bits and baubles

When I was a kid I thought Labor Day was the day all the babies were born. Except me. Because, you know, I was born on Jesus’ birthday instead.

Let’s all join hands and send these positive directives into the universe: Do not use the word “hate” when you mean “hatred.” Do not use the word “impact” when you mean “affect.” Do not say “regime” when you mean “regimen.”

I just wrote a long diatribe against the new Facebook picture viewer’s lack of a clickable X because I effing hate having to just click off to the side in negative space to get something to go away. Aaaaaand then I realized there is an X and I just didn’t see it because it’s way up in the right-hand corner. Internetting is so hard sometimes.

The Kids are in Portland this weekend to see Alana and Cox get hitched. I was originally going to be there but then I procreated and now my body exists in a permanent no-fly zone. Okay, not permanent, but for now I’m grounded. I’m sad to miss the festivities and the reunion. Sounds like I’ve already missed Patrick giving Cox a piggyback ride and falling and breaking his shoulder. I miss all the good stuff. Mazel tov, you crazy kids.

Does everyone do their best Words for Friends-ing and Instagram-ing on the toilet, or is that just me?

Speaking of toilets, we ran out of toilet paper but guess who had two complimentary thanks-for-setting-up-a-baby-registry packs of baby wipes in her pile of baby stuff?

I realize that sentence is not a question but it feels so weird ending it with a period.

Ray introduced me to this song last night and I cannot stop laughing at Elvis’ boats.

I can do this thing when I lie on my side where I can squeeze my knees together and make something in my hip region pop. It feels amazing.

Happiness is a Dunkin Donuts blueberry dougnnut.

Did you know that the creator of Caslon was a type designer and a gunsmith? Doesn’t that make Caslon all that much more beautiful, to know that its creator got his start engraving gun locks and barrels?

I broke my chair at work and totally tried to play it off like I meant to. Because people intentionally break chairs.

My body is looking so busted these days. The stretchmarks have woven their way across my belly, spreading from their initial parentheses shape and taking on the characteristics of a wall-crawling vine. The other day, I ran into this harsh metal piece that juts out of the side of the desk and gave myself one hell of a gnarly-looking bruise on my upper thigh. I feel like I am being smothered by cellulite. I’ve got bug bites and cuts that have carved dark scars into my skin that won’t go away. I can’t see below my waist. Scratch that — I don’t have a waist. I love that my body knows how to make another person but I am ready to get my old body back, the one where I could lounge on my tummy sometimes. Of course, I know it will never be quite the same. That’s OK. It wouldn’t have been anyway, baby or no. Because that’s just how bodies work. They start out so smooth, though …

Someone in the elevator at work asked me the other day when I’m due. No strangers had said anything about my belly up until that point. I haven’t been offered help pumping gas or carrying groceries or hauling things to my car. No one has given me an unsolicited belly rub yet, either, a fact I contribute to my chronic bitchface more than anything else.

I gushed about the Neutral Milk Hotel box set news when I heard about it but I am going to gush again. GUSH.

Sweet little lilies

29july5

This sweet candy lily and its sibling nearby don’t seem to be as put out by the relentless heat as much of the other stuff gasping blooms out there right now. This is another installment of the continuing Transplanted From @saraclark’s Garden Series.

Why I am not in charge of naming flowers

21july1

While hiking up Lookout Mountain last year, Nick Fowler and I for some reason started talking about black-eyed Susans and how they got their name. We pretty much settled on the only possibility that made sense to us at the time: That the black-eyed Susan was a flower insensitively and macabrely named for a domestic violence altercation of yore. That is not true, the internet tells me, and I am quite relieved.

Anyway, I have some sweet black-eyed Susans in the yard this year — another bright spot transplanted from Middle Tennessee to Memphis by @saraclark.

Fortune

I have good friends. Good, solid, generous friends. I’ve got a bedroom filling up with knick-knacks, furniture, clothes, toys, and more, given to me by people who know I will need it and who want to help. I’ve got a crib and changing table on the way thanks to a friend who thought enough of us to enter us in a contest and kick our nomination up a notch with a super creative entry. I’ve got so many people who will offer me comfort and advice and chocolate at the mere tremble of my lip. I often don’t feel like I deserve such kindness and I know I need to pay it forward at a high exchange rate.

No matter how much I say thanks, friends, know that it’s not nearly as much as I mean.

Tiny fireworks

19june41

Everyone say hello to the coneflowers that made it all the way from Nashville to Memphis via @saraclark. They are bustin’ out!

My doula Nick solves problems

Me: my mom is wanting me to have a baby shower in my hometown, and she wants to invite some childhood friends i haven’t seen in 10+ years

Nick: nice
that’ll be fun for you

here’s a plan
invite them
all of them
shove a water balloon up between your legs
bust it right when you walk in
be all like. oh no my water broke

leave
your good

Me: yes, i’m sure that will be the end of that

Nick: fill it with cherry koolaid to really freak everyone out

me: i’m revoking your license

Nick: i’m like dr. fucking phil
or vanilla ice
you got a problem
i’ll solve it
check out the hook
while my dj revolves it

Day 106/365: Strawberry Pickin’

17april7

Courtney was nice enough to invite me to go strawberry picking at Jones Orchard with her and Dustin, Daphne, and her sister Chelsea. The weather was amazing and I didn’t even break a sweat. That’s how I gauge good weather. Sunny? Check. Breezy? Check. Sweaty? Nope. EFFING FABULOUS. We let the munchkin go nuts, picking her own crop and sampling some of the pickins first — to make sure they met her quality standards, of course. This is what a qualified strawberry quality tester looks like after a hard day at the office:

17april14

I got a pretty good haul myself — a box of big, fat, red berries for $4 or so. And I picked up a little apple cake wrapped in plastic, which I disposed of easily AND WITHOUT SHAME later that night. I made quick stop at McCarter Coffee down the street to pick up some beans for the boyfriend (and for me, in my moments of weakness) and came out smelling like I’d bathed in the stuff. Mmmmm.

Millington is such a charmer when it wants to be.

[Project 365

Day 105/365: Kip’s Birthday Party

16april9

And so begins many months of being the sober one at parties. It’s actually not so bad. It keeps me out of trouble and I am permanently hangover-free, which is honestly one of the best feelings ever. Of course, my social anxiety does cartwheels around the room when I can’t get a couple of drinks in me, but I’m just going to have to get over that.

Things you can do while sober at a party: Sniff fancy tequila, Skype with a friend halfway across the world (and taunt him with Papa John’s pizza), drink lots of water, have ice cream cake shoved ceremoniously into your mouth by generous friends, whom I’ve missed bunches.

[Project 365]

Shameless self-promotion: Recorded yapping edition

Remember this bit of strategic foreshadowing? No? Well, that’s why Al Gore invented the hyperlink.

So my pal Ed and I sat down and had a little chat about the social web and what a sticky wicket it is, and we recorded that conversation for posterity and for a time capsule element I will one day beam into my children’s head pods’ humor modules. My one regret is that I was having such a mouth-stuffing love affair with my honey-slathered bagel that I didn’t make some of the points I should have. Good food gives me temporary amnesia, so what? But honestly, if you read this post, you get the gist of where I’m going with my thoughts anyway.

The point is that the social web has such amazing potential for connections that never before could have existed. But I am scared about where we are headed because companies looking to get in on a good thing are hell bent on fucking it all up. The image I keep getting in my head is of an over-eager chihuahua frantically humping a human leg. You are the leg, these companies seeking to infiltrate and control are the chihuahua. They want your attention, they want you to like them, they want your thumbs ups, they want you to opt into the game, but on the flipside, they want you to play by their rules and conduct yourself 24 hours a day as if you are a roaming ambassador for them. What you do is what the company is. Your living out loud on the web means you are subject to constant scrutiny and potential regulation by your employer. Doesn’t that scare you? It surely scares me, and I have a fairly boring life and a fairly lenient employer.

Anyway, listen to the conversation if that’s your bag, and then check back. I was Ed’s guinea pig, so I’m super excited to see where he takes his project once he starts sitting down with the really interesting people he knows.

Day 97/365: Boo-boo

8april6

Luke and Lilly hung out with me Friday morning, and I very nearly let them go home unscathed. And yet! We were outside picking flowers and Lilly took a tumble and skinned her knees a little bit. I had an ancient Kermit bandage — seriously, that thing had been kicking around my first aid kit for at least 10 or 15 years — that seemed to do the trick long enough for her to get distracted by the amazingness of my refrigerator magnets. Phew!

[Project 365]