Boring Can Be Fun

It's that time of year! You know--the end of it. Naturally, what I'm supposed to do is recap how my year was. Here you go: COOL. Have a nice 2016! You don't buy balloons to say bye to YOUR year? Rude. . . . . . . . . Okay fiiiinnnneeee. I'll write a little something else.  In order from start of the year to the end (clever way I've come up with to organize this list of events, don't you think? Start to finish? Man, I'm good at blogging), here are a few highlights of my Boring, Fun 2015: Celebrated 3rd wedding anniversary Celebrated Sutton's 1st birthday with a Button Bash Easter Consistently exercised and started to get abs Got knocked up again and lost abs Sutton's first trip to the beach (SO MUCH SUNSCREEN) Dad went through radiation for prostate cancer (treatment successful) Mom had "nose job" to remove skin cancer (treatment successful) Ate all the food Patrick had append...

Dearest, dearest  Food, It's not you, it's me.  That's not true, because actually it's you, too. It's both of us. Let me explain. I need you, you see. Like, literally. Without you, I'll die. No! Seriously! I'm not being dramatic. I'd literally die without you. Oh yum! Salad and water! But there's a catch. As we all are, you're nuanced. You come in many shades, flavors, and moods. And levels of nutrition. You're the crisp spinach salad, loaded with veggies and olives and feta, dressed in olive oil and lemon juice. You're the warm, fragrant, home-made yeast roll, served to me by my mother on Christmas day. You're the slice of Lane Cake, a delightful confection that teases the palate with hints of bourbon and nostalgia. You're the roasted vegetables. The ham. The sweet potato casserole. You're the PIZZA ALL THE PIZZA. You're a perfect clementine. You're a chewy, sugary concoction of high fructo...

You may (or not, whatever) recall that roughly (almost exactly) two years ago I found out I had the ol' G.D. Gestational DI-UH-BEETUS. Sugar is stupid anyway, so who wants it? (Meekly raises hand.) I do. I spun a tale about how much fun I had getting not one, but two glucose tolerance tests and how I was sosososoSO very excited to get gestational diabetes. If I may, and, excuse me, but I do sincerely hope you'll forgive me, and, please, please don't hold a grudge, but you probably didn't pick up on all the sarcasm in that post way back then.   You may have really thought I was, like, so stoked to get all in some finger-prickin', carb-countin' shenanigans. Well, I wasn't. It was a major pain in my over-pricked fingertips. So I essentially lied to you. And you probably shouldn't read any of my highly popular, critically acclaimed stuff anymore, because it's 90% sarcasm, 9% failed attempts at sarcasm, and 1% me being an actual, norma...

There once was a girl from Nantucket... No, wait. Wrong story. There once was a beautiful young woman who had fallen pregnant with her second child. With her first pregnancy, she found that though she wanted carbs a little more than usual, she didn't feel like there was a massive change in her appetite. She gained a very reasonable amount of weight and basically felt good about that. She had her baby and, eventually, got back to looking a way she felt comfortable. She had that pain in the butt gestational diabetes, of course, but that's neither here nor there. During this, her second pregnancy, one day as she approached her 22nd week, she took a long, hard look in the mirror. Was she still as lovely as the most delicate, pink rose found in nature? Naturally. Did her baby bump seem to be appropriately adorable? Yes it did. Did her legs seem to be a little bit heavier? . . . . Aw, snap. She began thinking about the way she'd been eating lately. The pasta. T...

Back in the dark ages  Early Aughts when I was in my early 20's, Girls' Night was such a thing to aspire to.  I went back in time and contacted myself from about a decade or so ago to see if I could get an insider's perspective on what a Girls' Night is all about. Me from 2003, take it away: Hi! I'm awkward, extra-skinny, big bangs 21-year-old Rebecca! I look 16, which sucks, because no one takes me seriously. The big bangs, total inability to dress myself well, and general awkward demeanor may have something to do with that. Old-As-Dirt-and-What-Happened-to-My-Boobs-Did-I-Have-Surgery-Rebecca asked me to talk to you about girls' night out. (Yes, even at 21, I want to use the proper apostrophe.)  Well let me tell you, I want to feel like and be perceived as the grown-up that I am! (Because, I definitely am a grown-up. Right? If you call yourself a grown-up, you probably are just that. Because 40 year olds often say,  "Hey, I'm a grown-up, and ...

You know how it is when it's the end of the day, you're ready to pick up your kid from daycare and get thee to your humble abode.  Well, you know how it is if you:  a) have at least one child and,  b) use day care.  If you have only one or none of those two things, then you probably don't  know how it is. But you're smart, and you can use your imagination to pretend you know, right? Right. Now that we've agreed that you either know how it is or you're capable of pretending to know how it is, walk with me through the rest of this story. The story that you're wondering if I'm going to actually get around to or not. And if I do ever get around to it, is it going to be worth the 120-180 seconds of your life that it took to read it? Only you can decide. Okay, okay, so, the tale I'm still not exactly telling. I'll tell it now. With no exaggeration whatsoever. As you may have surmised, it begins with me at the end of the work day, ready to ...

It's been a while since I've shared a pointless story with you, hasn't it? Well, lucky you, that's all about to change. Friday afternoon I left work early. It was the day of the FSU @ Boston College game, and hours before my sister's (early) 30th (THIRTIETH!!!!!!!!) birthday dinner. Plans:  Pick up sister's gift and b uy groceries. Go home and prep as much as possible. Collect spouse and child and drive to Perry. Throw party in my sister's own house. Try to prevent her from working, since she has some rogue gene that makes it nearly impossible for her to just. sit. and. relax. (I think maybe I got my share AND her share of that particular DNA.) Things went basically to plan (a small miracle in itself). Got to my sister's house. Prepped. Chopped. Set things out. Got sister to make tea. (She hates tea, but magically makes the most delicious tea, so... sorry not sorry.) People come over. We chill. We eat. We watch kids be silly and we watch foo...

Amazingly enough, around this time of year-- every year --I turn a year older. I call it a "birthday" because it's the anniversary of the day of my birth. Pretty clever, right? Right. I'll be 33 in a few short, wrinkly, creaky-jointed days. What do old people do to celebrate their birthdays? I'm not sure, but it probably involves facials and peels and botox.  Not for me, of course, because I'll ALWAYS look youthful. But for other people, they're totally up on that injectable botulism and dubious "fillers." I'm still holding strong with my crunchy, all-natural face care stuff . Except this morning I used one of my favorite old philosophy products and I'm like, yeah--some chemicals are totally worth it. Which makes me think, well, if this chemical is okay, another one would probably smooth away these fine lines. And another one would probably plump up the skin here. And I probably should just go dunk my head in a barrel of chemica...