Tag Archives: love

D is for my diggity dog!

Awesome Things, Recurring Themes, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Did you know that I have a dog?

NO?!

This must be the first time we’ve met. Because I do have one. And I love her… so much that I talk about her constantly. Even more than Harry Potter, the Civil War, and dinosaurs combined.

(That’s a lot.)

My dog is a double doodle– her mom was a golden doodle (golden retriever plus poodle), her dad was a labradoodle (labrador retriever plus poodle). So, ultimately, our designer mutt is half poodle, one quarter lab, and one quarter golden. 100% perfection 🙂

Curly 4

We kind of stumbled across the double doodle breed accidentally. My sister has a golden doodle named Grizzly that Seth and I are absolutely in love with, but Seth has always really wanted a lab. A quick Google search after jokingly mentioning a triple mix (and my mom’s serious question– how would they even do that???) revealed that it wasn’t actually a joke at all and we got real serious about finding one of these sweet pups to bring into our home.

The second we put an offer on a house, we applied for a puppy. We were ready!

Curly was born in southern Illinois on August 13, 2012 and came to live with us in October. I was in love with her from the very first picture the breeder sent. Her happy little face was just too much and I just love her more and more and more every day!

Curly 6

I used to think dogs were cool. That it would be nice to have one and that puppies sure were cute.

Now that I have one of my own, though? Dogs… are… everything!

Everything that is good and happy and sweet and fun and loving, and, and, and…

Curly 5

After the cat I grew up with (Callie) passed away, my parents got a dog. It was a total surprise and likely the result of my mom wandering off in a pet store and leaving my dad to his own devices. Oscar just showed up one day, completely out of the blue, and it was an absolute shock… but we were delighted.

(Side note: Oscar was not the name I would have chosen. So I call him Shobsky, because that’s what his name would have been if it had been my choice. But it wasn’t. So technically it’s Oscar, but he responds just as well to Shobsky if I use the right tone of voice.)

Unfortunately, Oscar didn’t come into our family until I was a junior in high school and I was very self-centered at the time and unable to really appreciate the doginess of our dog. I didn’t really get it.

Then we got Curly. And now I super get it.

Curly 3

My Curly girl is everything to me. I absolutely adore her and her sweet face. Everything she does is just so cute to me. She hangs with me when I’m depressed and gets excited with me when I’m happy. She’s such a trooper.

And Curly made me better at being around all dogs. I truly love them all now, even the grumpy old ones like my Oscar. I used to get nervous, I thought licking was super gross, and I was always a little bit uncomfortable. Not anymore!

Now, I can barely restrain myself from petting ALL the dogs. All of them. Every last one. And I thank puppies for licking me– “oh, so sweet! thank you for the kisses!! thank you!” And I’m much more comfortable with my dog than without. With any dog, though. I truly do love them all!

Believe it or not, Curly even made me love my husband MORE. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve loved him a whole heck of a lot since like 2002, but the way he interacts with my Curls leaves me absolutely enamored… all I can do is smile at those two. It’s like all of my heart is there before my eyes.

Curly and Seth

Life with my sweet, and somewhat troubled, dog has also shown me that I can handle anything– good times and bad, happiness and stress, the calm of uber-sedation and the cray cray of visitors. All of it. I can handle it. Because it’s totally worth it.

So as long as we’re hear, chatting about my Curly girl, how about a little update?

Curly 2

Seth and I took Curls to Madison for a follow-up last Monday. Granted, we’d had two visits to the emergency vet in the interim because the little punk can’t resist chewing on her cast, but those were relatively minor issues. On Monday, they removed the last bits of the fixator and now she’s just got a hard splint from toe to hip. She’s doing well, we’re feeling nervous. Her bone is essentially swiss cheese now that the pins are removed and we’ve lost our security blanket. Our next, and hopefully last, appointment is on June 11th. They anticipate removing everything at that point and we’re hoping to work out just some sort of temporary bracing situation for when she might need a little extra support (on walks, when people come over, when playing in the yard). So far so good and all signs suggest that things are going just about as well as they could possibly be going given the state of her knee when we started. It’s certainly not normal, but we’re on the right track. The best news is that even if this surgery fails completely, she’ll never be worse than she was before she started– in fact probably a little better considering they removed a bone chip that had come off of her patella and a wire that was just floating around in there doing nothing. So… win-win? A little?

Curly 1

Sunshine on a Cloudy Day

Things I Learned on TV, , , , , , , , ,

I’m feeling ridiculously down-and-out this morning. Valentine’s Day was lovely and everything (Seth says Curls learned how to use the phone just to send me flowers– she let Seth put his name on the card, too… very sweet), so it’s not a post-Valentine’s Day let-down or anything.

It’s personal, really. But suffice it to say: I feel like a loser. An idiot. Etc.

I was sad last night and spent the morning eating pancakes and lounging around with my pup… still sad. Still feeling completely stupid. Fortunately, Little Miss Sunshine came on tv and it’s on my list of movies-I-can’t-resist-anytime-they-are-on-tv-no-matter-how-many-times-I-have-seen-them.

{Source}
{Source}

I just love this movie, it’s so great– it’s about family and struggle and perseverance and love and the sweetest, most interesting little girl ever. One of my favorite scenes is so happy-sad I can barely stand it. Olive, the little girl, is getting ready to go to sleep and asks her Grandpa, “Am I pretty?” and then explains that she’s afraid of being a loser because her daddy hates losers (he’s a motivational speaker) and here’s what her grandpa says to her:

“Do you know what a loser is? A real loser is someone who’s so afraid of not winning, they don’t even try. Now you’re trying, right?… Well, then you’re not a loser!”

And I thought– yeah. I did try. I try to put myself out there over and over and over again, even though it’s scary to get close to people, to make new friends and grow new family. Fortunately, I have a sweet, sweet sister, Abby, who also serves as my very best friend, and she reminds me that trying to get close to people is totally worth it for those occasions when it works. It’s sad when it doesn’t of course, but you’re only a loser if you don’t try. And I always have my sister to console me when it doesn’t. Thank goodness for that!

So I guess that’s all  I can really be responsible for– trying. And that alone is enough to guarantee that I’m not a loser, just a girl putting herself out there, doing the best she can.

 

Ummm… also this just happened. Hard to be bummed at all in the face of such ridiculous cuteness!!!

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happy, happy Valentine’s day <3 <3 <3

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Hi friends! Happy Valentine’s Day! I LOVE YOU! (Really! I do! I love you all!)

I used to be something of a gloomy gus every Valentine’s day as I lamented my single-dom and whatnot (the drama, I was like 16)… but then I met Seth, fell in love, and every February the 14th is now roses and kisses and rainbows and…

I kid… if you’ve met Seth before, you knew that long ago. And if you know me, and most of you do pretty well by now, I’m not actually a super touchy feely kind of person. (My singular contribution to my fourth grade class suggestion box was a note asking the teacher not to call me “honey”… because I hated that.)

So what was it then that reversed my Valentine’s Day attitude, you may wonder…

It was my Grandma! What else???

I’m not sure when exactly she started doing it, but it’s been many years now. Every year, a couple weeks before Valentine’s Day, my Grandma sends me several homemade baggies with ribbon ties– hand sewn in a different Valentine-themed pattern every year. She sends the bags to me empty, she and I both fill our sets with candy, and then we hand them out to our friends. It’s so fun!

Just a small sampling of the various prints, patterns, and charm...
Just a small sampling of the various prints, patterns, and charm…

My husband and I love each other every single day– it’s a given. It’s an expectation. Sometimes it goes unsaid; most of the time it’s said. We’re a family, every single day, flowers or no, chocolate or… well, we like chocolate… Our pupster (who is not having surgery today, fyi… sigh) is our biggest Valentine this year and we’re headed out to dinner at the Belvedere (our favorite!) to celebrate the evening with Seth’s mom and dad. It’ll be lovely and perfect for us– love all around; love that’s a given.

So for me, Valentine’s Day isn’t really about me and Seth. Rather, it’s about telling the people that may not just know it that I love them, too! I do that with a handmade Valentine bag filled with chocolates and tied with a ribbon. And as an added bonus this year, I also made some Harry Potter-themed, totally nerdtastic Valentines to hand out to a couple people… nothing says I love you quite like a heart with wings and the phrase “wingardium leviosa” on the front. Nothing!

Wingardium Leviosa Valentine

Except maybe a heart with a key hole and the phrase “alohomora”, a flame and “incendio”, or a light and “lumos”…

HP Valentines

(Am I unreasonably thrilled with my cleverness right now? Yes. Yes I am.)

 

I hope you enjoy your Valentine’s Day and that you know that somebody, somewhere loves you– because I do! And even just me must be better than nobody, right?

xoxo

 

 

In other news: no surgery for my Curls today. We went down to Madison yesterday for an ultrasound of the patellar tendon (and there was some promising tissue on imaging that looked like tendon material that even if not usable, may provide some scaffolding for repair) and a joint tap to make sure there was no infection in the fluid pocket in her knee (the doctor really didn’t think there would be). But there was infection in that fluid pocket and we went back to Madison to pick our girl up and bring her home with antibiotics. In two weeks, we’ll try again. At least our sweet girl is home with us this weekend– everyone in our house is happy about that 🙂

Curly Lambeau, my sweet, silver-lined, puppy girl.

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At this point it’s pretty safe to assume that when I miss big chunks of blog time it’s for one of two reasons. (1) Work got crazy and life got insane or (2) something happened to my dog. Since work finally calmed down a bit, this absence can be attributed to reason number 2.

As you’re likely aware, I have not yet been blessed with any babies of the human variety (ugh, we should really chat about that at some point). But I do have a dog.

If you have any human children or find yourself lacking in love for all things puppy, you’re probably going to hate me a bit for saying this right now, but that’s ok… my dog is my baby, and I totally treat her like one.

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I absolutely adore my Curly girl and love her more than I love myself. I’m pretty sure that if a car were careening toward my Curls, I’d jump in front of it to save her without a second thought.

Curly came into our home in October 2012, the same weekend my friends Ellen and Rob got married (such a happy weekend!), and my husband and I have been absolutely in love with her ever since. She’s a high-energy, super happy, double doodle (her parents were a golden doodle and a labradoodle) with cream colored curls befitting of her name (although she’s actually named for Curly Lambeau, the founder of the Packers).

Last fall, we started noting problems with Curly’s knees and our local vet recommended surgery to repair patellar subluxation (her knee cap is not where it should be). Doing what we thought was best for our sweet girl, we took Curls to an orthopedic surgeon in Appleton where she had her first surgery in October 2013.

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It failed.

And so did the next.

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And the damage got worse after the second failure, necessitating a more extensive third surgery.

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Which also failed.

Last Thursday, I took Curly back to the surgeon noting a decrease in her willingness to use that leg and the x-ray painted a rather grim picture, worsted only by the picture the surgeon painted me. Essentially, I left with two options, including doing nothing and hoping for some sort of adaptation to the new anatomy that would allow Curls some function in that leg or… amputation.

Ugh, my stomach.

The surgeon was apologetic, but resigned. Those were our options as far as he was concerned and that was that.

I had to call Seth and tell him the news. And then I had to drive the 2 hours home from Appleton, mulling it over in my head and nursing a nagging stomachache. I called my sister on the way home and, forgetting she’s preggo, ended up making her cry (hormones and all…), but she really is the best pup-auntie (or p-auntie– read it out loud, ha!) ever and it really helped to chat with her. Later on I talked to the incredibly kind and generous animal-loving folks I work with who were super encouraging and suggested we seek a second opinion at the University of Wisconsin – Madison vet school.

And that’s where we spent our day yesterday. So glad we did! We don’t necessarily have good news, per se. But we do have a new found cautious optimism based on the extensive examination and imaging studies they performed, the shocking amount of time the orthopedic surgeon was willing to spend with us talking and drawing diagrams and showing us 3D models and such, and the willingness of the folks in Madison to collaborate with the previous surgeon in Appleton as well as others to really think this through and come up with some better options (better than amputation, anyway) for our girl.

It was a long and exhausting day, but it was definitely worth it. And while I’m constantly worrying about the decisions we have made (Curls is essentially worse off at this point than if we’d never done surgery at all all– did we make the right choice?! should we have gone to Madison sooner? would they have done anything differently if we had???), I had a long car ride last night on the way home to think about what this has taught us, Seth and me, as future parents to more fur babies (pleeeeease, Sethy?!), human babies (hopefully), and as leaders of our family unit (said in my dad’s alien/robot voice, usually reserved for comments such as “hello, daughter unit…”).

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  • Second opinions are a good thing, medically or otherwise. It never hurts to get someone else’s take on something. Especially something big and important. (Like a career change and cross country move.) But even sometimes things that aren’t. (Like whether or not you should include a funding statement on a poster if there was no funding.) Knowing what we know now, I think we would definitely have had an additional medical consultation for Curly earlier. But when I think about it, it’s the same thing for my GI woes– it wasn’t getting better, so I kept pursuing alternatives until finally I found someone who did the right tests and asked the right questions and got to a diagnosis. When I have questions, or am afraid that the doctor might have questions of his or her own, from now on, I’ll be more willing to seek alternative advice, opinions, or just general thoughts. It never hurts to ask.
  • Collaboration is so worthwhile. Oy, this is ironic. Seriously. Group work? I’ve never liked it. Never. I begged and pleaded my way out of it through elementary school, I stressed and worried my way through it in middle school and high school, I just did all the group work myself in college, and made sure I had a very solitary, dependent-on-no-one kind of thesis project in grad school. And then, I entered the real world and figured out why all those teachers had been trying so very, very hard to get me to participate in a team setting for all those years– because it’s necessary and it produces better results. Every project I work on now is a team effort and cultivating good team relationships has become a key aspect of my daily life– and thank goodness for it! I’d be l-o-s-t without the biostatisticians and programmers and budgeting folks who can do all those crazy things that just hurt my head to even think about. And I suppose it’s truly no different in medicine, human or veterinary. I’m sure Curly’s first surgeon is top notch and used to success. He should probably have consulted someone else or suggested that we do ourselves, if not after the first revision, than definitely after problems arose with the second. That’s what they’re doing for Curly down in Madison, because that’s what’s going to result in the best care. An introvert’s nightmare, true, but there’s definitely some merit to this whole collaborative practice thing.
  • You don’t need much to be truly happy. Curly has been through a lot. Her first surgery was October 16th and she’s spent the past 5 months cut open, stapled and stitched closed, bandaged up, wearing a cone, confined to her kennel, limited to short leash walks with a sling, and pretty much continuously drugged. I’ve pulled at mats in her fur and cut her hair myself (and even accidentally nicked her once! it was the worst!!! I felt so horrible!!), I’ve spent an entire night wiping her backside and washing her blankets, I’ve sprayed her with stuff that stings and fed her stuff that’s bitter. Yet, through all of that, Curly still loves us and she’s still ridiculously and unreasonably happy. She goes crazy and tries hard to sit still despite her frantically wagging tail every time we walk in the door. She brings us toys and blankets to play. She bounds through the snow stopping to eat a bite here and there. She gives kisses and nuzzles my hand when it falls over the edge of the bed at night. She’s just such a happy girl. And that’s what every veterinary employee we’ve seen in the past couple of months has been amazed by– she should, by all accounts, not be this resilient. But she is. And thank goodness! We love, love, love our happy girl!

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  • Pets are a great source for giving and getting unconditional love. I love my pup. I love her like crazy. I know she’s not a human (seriously, I do know that) even though I often treat her like one. My mind is on her constantly and even if she ends up with no back legs, I’ll feel bad only at the thought that it could be somehow my fault, never about her condition. Because it truly doesn’t matter to me. She’s perfect, exactly as she is, no matter how ultimately functional or irreparable her leg ends up being. Taking care of her after surgery can be hard, but it’s worth it. Even the tough cares (seriously, the diarrhea after surgery #2 was not a joke) are totally worth it and done without a second thought because they’re done for her and I love her. Curly has taught me, for certain, that Seth and I are capable of great love– both for one another and for our family, whether fur or flesh. It’s a reassuring thought!

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This has been a tough few months, for no one more so than Curly, I’m sure. But she’s just done so ridiculously well. We can’t explain it, but it seems like she knows we’re only trying to help her and that trust is amazing. (The only thing she doesn’t trust is that the treat your holding doesn’t have a pill inside of it– that still requires some trickery. Trickery or salami.) I’m certainly not glad for any of this, but I am grateful for the small reminders day in and day out that our household is a happy one, bum legs and all!

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Coming up in the near future (in no particular order):

  • A second look at STEMinity
  • A more inclusive definition of family
  • The adult version of “If You’re Happy and You Know it Clap Your Hands”
  • A book club quarterly review

 

 

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Did you see the unicorn porn?!

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So yesterday, I treated you to a hilarious picture of a unicorn with a unibrow on a unicycle. We all laughed. Remember?

Under the auspices of making sure that posts are being posted properly, but truly as the result of extreme narcissism, I subscribe to my own blog on Feedly. (It’s super satisfying to see the posts pop up in my feed– I get to see them how other people get to see them and I love it!) This morning, my unicorn picture popped up.

O-M-G

Any other Feedly subscribes out there? If so, my sincerest apologies!

Except obviously I’m not that sorry, because if I were, I wouldn’t be posting it here:

Unicorn Porn
Unicorn Porn

Oh dang. That bike seat plus cropping. Well, that’s just unfortunate.

And hilarious to me.

I’ll forgive you if you click unsubscribe now…

(please don’t unsubscribe… please don’t unsubscribe…)

Also yesterday, I want kind of crazy with alliteration. I just love writing that way! And I kept thinking about it all night last night… until the reason I love it so much popped into my head. One word:

Scattergories!

{Source-- because of course there's a whole Wiki page on it!}
{Source— because of course there’s a whole Wiki page on it!}

Growing up, this was truly my favorite game (and I totally want to play it right now… can we at our next game night, friends? I will buy it and bring it AND bring a bottle of wine so you don’t all hate me!) and we played it all. the. time.

It was a blast. For me, anyway. In large part though, the blast was had because I took advantage of young children. Let me tell you how.

My cousin Spruce and I are relatively close in age (fun fact: Spruce was born on the exact same day– month, day, and year!– as my husband!) and we loved more than anything to gang up on our little sisters. Fortunately for us, our little sisters pretty much worshiped us and were willing to play just about anything even if it meant that they had to be Swahili nerds that got electrocuted by a phone cord, run around as Dr. Pig and Dr. Snort, or get their butts handed to them in a rousing game of Scattergories.

Have you played Scattergories before? The basic premise is that you have to come up with words that start with a given letter and are in a certain category. For example, you roll the letter D, the category is Movies, you could write Die Hard for one point or Dirty Dancing for two. If someone else writes the same thing as you, they cancel each other out and neither of you gets any points. What you couldn’t write would be something like dumb Disney movies. The Disney might get you a point if your companions are feeling generous… the dumb? Not so much… it’s an adjective.

As an evil, conspiratorial child, the trick was knowing what adjectives were, how to use them, and how to lie. Spruce and I went nuts with the alliteration. Letter S, category scary things, our answer: seven slippery snakes slithering slowly (5 points!), but when our poor little sisters wrote down sand storm we’d scream adjective!!!!! and allow them, appearing to be benevolent, a point for the storm. Even though the sand would totally have been a point because it describe a particular type of storm. (For the purpose of distinction scary storm would legitimately not have counted).

We’ve chatted before about how I’m a jerk because I love (oy, my poor, poor little sister! she has put up with so much! and btw, you can click on the hyperlinked “jerk” if you want to see her underwear again… just saying…) and I think this is just another example of that. Because to be honest, there can’t possibly have been any pleasure in beating the pants off our little sister when we’d cheated against them so very, very badly… and yet… I remember these events with great, great joy. Therefore, it must have been the torture and the cheating itself that I loved. In-ter-es-an-te. (Dis-tur-ban-te???)

 

***All sample categories and answers are purely fictional, made up for the purpose of story telling and to protect the innocent. The letters? Not so much. Like a D needs any protection. Please.

A 30th Birthday Recap: The Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How

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Dang!

Dang! Dang! Dang!

(Dang! That’s what the back of my Lymphomaniacs softball jersey said… I suppose there’s a reason for that.)

Nothing quite like a birthday to make you feel L-O-V-E-D loved! And that is how I felt every second of the entire day yesterday!

There were cards, balloons, flowers, texts, emails, Facebook messages, phone calls, chocolates, a stuffed purple monkey (!), cookies, Tweets, songs, and more!!

Birthday Flowers and Balloons

And it just keeps coming! I got a message from my brother, who is the worstbest this afternoon…

Birthday Texts from Tom
Muppet Treasure Island reference for the win!

My niece sang to me in her absolutely, ridiculously, so-cute-I-can-barely-stand-it words…

Emma girl
She calls me “ee-chel” and tells me she “lubs” me… I melt.

And on Saturday, my mother- and father-in-law are coming over for dinner and CAKE! (cake! cake! cake!)

No photos yet, but it's going to look a little something like this.
No photos yet, but it’s going to look a little something like this.

Thirty?! Kind of awesome!

But the really cool thing about yesterday (and today and the rest of this week not to mention probably the rest of my life) is that I truly have AWESOME (awesome, awesome, awesome!) people in my life! And that makes me want to ask some serious, reporter-style questions!

The who, what, where, and when– that’s not quite so tough.

WHO You guys! My family, my friends, my family’s friends, my co-workers, my husband’s coworkers and their families, my friends’ friends and their families, internet-only (so far!) friends, and everyone in between!

WHAT A crazy amount of love and support! Well wishes, happy memories, good times… LOVE!

WHERE EVERYWHERE! Literally, everywhere I have ever been… from infancy to now, and even people I only really “know” in the virtual world. Truly, ev-er-y-where!

WHEN Obviously on my birthday, but also every other day. I had a happy thought about every single person that wished me a happy day yesterday– a specific moment in time, imprinted in a neuron (have you read about what scientists at MIT found about how memories are stored? so fascinating!) and recalled upon contact to bring a smile to my face and to make 30 that much better!

But then the tougher ones…

WHY Seriously, you guys, why?! I mean, I’m a nerd. I’ve always been a nerd. And there are so many things about myself that I’ve always disliked and struggled with. I’ve been made fun of, teased, picked on, dumped, and basically broken in so many ways… and I carry all of those things around with me, in a metaphorical hump on my back that some days makes me feel completely, 100%, Quasimodo-style unlovable. But then again, even the Q-man had himself an Esmeralda. And like Esmeralda, there you are! Loving me anyway. Why indeed? Emily had heard my tantrums from down the street since I was 2 and she was 3… but she texted me yesterday, 28 years later. Kelly watched me eat myself sick every day after school from like sixth through eighth grade… but she remembered an inside joke from high school and used it to wish me a happy “brithday” on FB yesterday, nearly 20 years after all of that. Aimee got escorted out of the Ojibwa Casino in Baraga on my 18th birthday… but she sent me an awesome email yesterday, 12 birthdays later. Jess had front row seats to six years worth of spectacular grad school meltdowns… but she sent me a message first thing yesterday morning. And my co-workers survived a complete disaster that I managed to bring down on all of their heads… and they still decorated my office and brought me balloons. Dang. Truly, why?

HOW So, yeah… how did I do it? How did I get Emily to look past the tantrums, Kelly the food, Aimee the security guards, Jess the tears (and mouse poop), my co-workers the drama? I have a feeling it has a lot more to do with all of them and their amazing, incredible, hearts of pure gold (or fat hearts, maybe???) than it does with any spectacularly redeeming quality I possess. (This isn’t about my square jaw, is it???) So how do you guys even? I don’t know… but I certainly hope that I have the “how” part down of being a good friend like you do!

 

So anyway, thanks a ton for all of the happy birthday wishes! It was a good one! (And you’re welcome for the hard hitting investigative journalism.) Now that I have prepared for 30, turned 30, and thanked people for the well wishes, we can certainly talk about something else for a while. No sense beating a 30-year-old horse, you know?

 

PS: Do you remember reading A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle? Tell me you read it, pretty please! It’s just so good! But so are all of Madeleine L’Engle’s books. I recently re-read many of them as an adult… still so good!! Anyway, in A Wrinkle in Time there are three women– Mrs. Who, Mrs. Which, and Mrs. Whatsit. This post reminded me of them. And reminded me of sweet Charles Wallace and his sister Meg, who always hit so close to home. And of the twins, Sandy and Dennys, who got themselves into such biblical-style trouble in another of the books. Seems like it may be time for another L’Engle binge!

Advent for Thirty: Icky, Scary, Love.

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Have you guys seen the movie Crazy, Stupid, Love? Emma Stone, Julianne Moore, and Melissa Tomei opposite Ryan Gossling (of “hey, girl…” Pinterest fame), Steve Carell, and Kevin Bacon. Seriously– what’s. not. to. love?!

(I read something recently that it’s not cool to say “feels” instead of feelings anymore. But I still think it’s funny, so I’m about to use it.  You were warned. And, to be honest, you kind of knew I was prone to use of lame words and phrases. It’s what I do.)

I loved this movie because it made me feel ALL the FEELS! All of them– the good ones and the bad ones, the happy ones and the sad ones, the victorious and the defeated, etc, etc, etc. Surprisingly, deliciously, hilarious and delightful! Highly recommend the watch.

Anyway, all of that just to say: I ripped off the title to title my Advent for Thirty post about l-o-v-e love! As promised! And I (almost) always keep my word!

The nice this about these Advent for Thirty posts is that I made some pretty lofty promises without a very concrete plan… incidentally, it ended up being a better advent that way because I actually had to reflect on all those things I promised. Good deal.

So love. Twuuuuu wuv. Thirty years of it, and lots more to come. And because of that… lots to think about. I have to admit, I’m kind of excited about the palindromic nature of my discovery! Who doesn’t like palindromes?!

Go hang a salami, I’m a lasagna hog! Never forget!

But my palindrome… kind of different.

Icky – Scary – Bliss – Scary – Icky

Of course there was lots and lots of love in my life right from the get go. I was my parents’ first child, which means that they’ll always love me best and in the most special way, but that’s not important to discuss right now. (Don’t worry Ab and Tom, I love you enough to make up for mom and dad’s inability to love you as much as they love me… there there.) But seriously, based on how much we all dote on my sweet and perfect niece Emma, I’m pretty certain that I was a very, very well-loved little girl. So that’s cool. But being pre-conscious memory at that point, I was pretty much unaware. (Lame baby…)

Once I finally did become aware of love, I knew I had it for my family. That was a given. I loved them, they loved me, and we always said it (and still do). We never end a phone conversation, walk out the door, or board a plane without saying we love each other. It’s just a thing we do. The end.

But love of other people? Ummmm… no. It was icky. K-i-s-s-i-n-g in trees and cooties and all of that. Icky.

As I got older, boys became interesting and friends were important. But love? Still scary. When I was in high school, for example, there was a guy from the band (I know, right? Very American Pie… band is like that. Stereotypes happen for a reason…) that I dated every year during football season. Pretty much every September through December, without fail. My freshman year, my sophomore year, and my junior year (then he graduated). I always broke up with him around New Years… it suddenly got too scary. The last time, he told me he loved me. I broke up with him the next day. I just couldn’t. Too much… too much! It was all Forrest Gump-like– “you don’t know what love is!” and I had to run and run and run. Whew. Close call. Scary.

But then I went to college. And in 2002, I met Seth. And that… that was not in the least bit scary. That was bliss. Bliss! That was the butterflies of a first date (you guys, he sang in the car while we drove to Watersmeet to see the Paulding Light– humoring my ghost obsession from day one!). That was watching the Northern Lights flicker and fade over Misery Bay and star gazing at Boston Pond. It was young, it was yooper-style (dang I love the UP!), and it was love… Bliss.

And then, things got kind of scary again. Because I really loved this guy. And slowly I realized: this was the man I was going to marry. This was the person I was going to spend my life with, that I was going to build my family around. His was the heart to which my heart would be tethered always. That’s kind of big. Kind of scary.

And that was in like 2004. So fast forward to 2010, we’d been dating for over 8 years, and the fear hit all over again as I thought that maybe, just maybe, grad school had broken me past the point of repair or redemption and Seth wanted out. That was also scary.

Turns out– Seth just gets weird when he has to keep a secret and he was bursting about the engagement ring he had picked out and worried that I suspected something. He always gives me too much credit… I’m oblivious more often than not. So we got engaged. We got married. We went on a honeymoon.

Because I told you this is a palindrome and you’re good at deducing patterns, I’m sure you know what’s coming back now: ICKY.

As lovely as our honeymoon was, it was also very, very icky. My poor new husband, man of my bliss, man of my fear, man of my heart, was sick. Oh so very, very sick. The kind of explosive sick that leaves you desperate for relief, but not sure which end to leave over the toilet. Highly un-romantic. Extraordinarily icky.

But as icky as it was, my heart was broken and I took care of my poor husband as best I could. (We were so lucky that our villa had a washer/dryer!) In sickness and in health, right? Love, real grown-up not scary love, means in sickness, too. This was sickness.

We’ve been home from our honeymoon for a while. We bought a house, we got ourselves a puppy, and now I have a little fur baby to love as though she were human (because yes, I’m one of those people), and love is still kind of icky. Have you ever seen a dog projectile vomit? It’s something spectacular– and I got to clean it up as Seth retched in the background. There’s no way I was going to clean up his vomit too at that point, one pile (pile, smear, disastrous explosion of sick all over my dog, her e-collar, the floor, the kennel, the wall, the closet door) is quite enough, thankyouverymuch. So I asked him to back away.

(Ok, don’t get me wrong– Seth is totally a trooper about cleaning up after Curls vomits– it’s usually not quite so horrifying as it was that night. Can’t really fault him for that.)

And what of love after 30? I imagine it’ll continue to be icky, scary, and blissful, all in turn. It will be shared with my husband, family, friends, co-workers, and pets. And despite any ick or fear, it will undoubtedly be sweet.

 

And now you know the truth: I am influenced far too much by movies and TV. I’ve confessed to you before that romantic comedies are my absolute favorite and that I refuse to apologize for it. I’m the girl the big movie execs add a love story for (even in Jurassic Park). Sorry about that if you’re not a fan– it was meeeeeeeee!!!

 

PS: I’m suddenly second guessing myself… this is not really a palindrome, just symmetry. And yet, I’ve gone too far with the palindrome theme to change it now. I’d rather be wrong than go back and change anything. Forgive me, please.

Advent for Thirty: Hope is the Thing With Feathers (and maybe dinosaurs, too)

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“Hope” is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

And sings the tune without the words –

And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the gale – is heard –

And sore must be the storm –

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –

And on the strangest Sea –

Yet – never – in Extremity,

It asked a crumb – of me.

Emily Dickinson

Ahhhh… hope. To discuss my thoughts on hope, I really have to start with what I consider the opposite.

Have you ever had a case of the eff-its? It’s a condition to which I am highly susceptible.

Never heard of it? Let me explain.

A case of the eff-its happens when you give up hope and just say EFF IT. So, essentially, it’s the opposite of hope.

I’ve been known to say eff it  with respect to eating (ok, especially eating), exercising, cleaning, studying, yard work, cooking, hair styling, grad schooling/experimenting, etc, etc, etc.  But if I’m totally honest with myself, as satisfying as screaming EFF IT and diving into some sort of lactose-laced decadence (sans lactaid, because I’m a glutton for punishment when I’m doing it to myself), hope is always better.

In 2013, I was presented with an occasion to choose hope and I hoped harder and more vehemently than I’d ever hoped for anything before. In May, my grandfather fell into a canal in Venice, Italy and took an enormous amount of contaminated water into his lungs. Given his age, lung condition, and long-term history of smoking, the Italian doctors gave him very little chance of survival. But you guys, he pulled through. Against all odds, and perhaps on the strength of hope and love alone. During that time, all I wanted was for my Grandpa to come home again and I hoped for it night and day for the entire month long ordeal. Never once did I feel a sense of despair, never once did I give up hope and say eff it. How could I? The thing I hoped for was worth it.

So perhaps, then, the secret to hope is making sure that the thing you’re hoping for is truly worth it?

When I contract the eff its about diet and exercise, it’s usually because I feel like I’ve eaten something “bad” or failed to work out hard enough, but recently, I embraced the notion of Health At Every Size (HAES) in combination with the idea of living the healthiest life you can enjoy. I can more reasonably hope for a healthy lifestyle and comfort in my own skin than I can hope for a body and/or lifestyle that’s simply not enjoyable for me to maintain.

After 30, I hope for a healthy and enjoyable life.

When I contract the eff its about cleaning, it’s usually because I’m tired and I’ve set unreasonable expectations for myself. I make a mile long to do list and become overwhelmed. But it’s amazing how nice it feels to wake up and make breakfast in a kitchen that’s been tidied up. Just one little thing. And I think I can hope for a basic level of maintenance clean, enough to keep my home a peaceful place for us to live, without feeling the need to edge the carpets and dust the blinds on a weekly basis.

After 30, I hope for a peaceful and comfortable home.

Grad school weakened my mental immune system and I was highly prone to the eff its during that time. In retrospect, I think that’s because the only thing I ever hoped for was to be done. I took no pleasure from the process because it was never the end. And suddenly, the magnet my Aunt Susan gave me during grad school makes so much sense:

Yes, it's very dirty... it's been magneted to a lot of different things in a lot of different places for a lot of years.
Yes, it’s very dirty… it’s been magneted to a lot of different things in a lot of different places for a lot of years.

Right. Happiness is not defined by getting to the destination, but rather by finding happiness in the moment. I need to hope for happiness rather than the thing I expect to bring it, because if I’ve learned anything in the last 30 years, it’s that happiness can be found in the most unexpected of places.

After 30, I hope for happiness, wherever it may be.

I suppose the place where hope has never really deserted me… no, let me rephrase that. The place where, in my life, I have been least likely to desert hope has been in relationships. There are a lot of people in this world that I love very, very much and as evidenced by the immense hope I held on to while my Grandpa, Grandma, and Aunt suffered through my grandfather’s terrible ordeal in Italy this spring, the hope I can feel for their safety, well-being, and happiness, is truly limitless.

After 30, I will continue to hope for all-things-good-and-faith-and-peace-when-they-are-not for all the people I love.

Hope truly is a thing with feathers and in my first 30 years (or perhaps in the last year of my first 30 years) I’ve learned to appropriately direct it to what truly matters in my life, regardless of the storm. Much like it’s cousin love, hope asks for nothing in return and is not in limited supply. Of course, it can be accompanied by disappointment should the thing you hope for not come to be, but hope for peace or recovery or strength or gratitude can simply take its place.

PS: You know what else was a thing with feathers? Even if only briefly? Dinosaurs. Excellent.

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A new and personal kind of advent… or here comes 30.

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According to Wikipedia (omg, a venue in which I can legitimately cite Wikipedia! hold on for a second while I savor this moment……….. consider it savored!), advent is “a season observed in many Western churches as a time of expectant waiting and preparation for the celebration of the Nativity of Jesus at Christmas.” Clearly, Wikipedia knows what’s up!

I’ve always liked advent, probably because of the candles, but have really latched on to it with greater fervor in the last year or two. Apparently, someone picked up on that because the day after I frantically scoured all of Marshfield looking for 3 purple candles and a pink one, my mother- and father-in-law dropped off a beautiful advent wreath as an early Christmas gift. (How did they know?! Seth swears he didn’t tell them…) Since I absolutely couldn’t stand the thought of candles that didn’t match, I had settled on four white, vanilla-scented glass votives clustered around a poinsettia. The advent wreath my in-laws gifted to me was much more beautiful and included its own little Nativity scene. I’m in love with it.

Advent Wreath

I have to be perfectly honest with you, I didn’t actually get to light all of the candles, and certainly not at the appropriate time. It just didn’t feel right to leave my kennel-bound puppy in the other room while we had a nice candlelit dinner (and she cannot be on linoleum right now without doing the whole Bambi-on-ice thing) so we mostly ate near the kennel as we waited for a miracle for the knee-that-simply-will-not-heal.

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Even though I didn’t get to light all the candles in my own home, I was still able to reflect on what they mean and how important those things are to this beautiful season.

Hope.

Peace.

Joy.

Love.

And lastly, on Christmas day, the Jesus candle, which is in my mind all of those things (hope, peace, joy, and love) wrapped into one.

I had a truly lovely Christmas, enjoying a brief time (marked by an unfortunate ice storm) at my parents’ house in Michigan and a day of gifts and food and warmth at my in-laws in Mosinee. But with Christmas come and gone, my thoughts, as usual, turn to my birthday, which is coming up mid-January.

On January 14th, I will turn 30. And I’ve had lots and lots of feelings about that number, which I plan to discuss later. Thirty feels like it should be something of a big deal. True, there are no new privileges connected to it, like a driver’s license or the ability to rent a car, no major milestones, like your sweet 16 or “adulthood” at 18. (Perhaps you reached the maturity of adulthood at the age of 18; I personally did not. Hence, the quotation marks.) So I’m going to have to do something else to make it a big deal– to reflect on those years between 1984 and 2014 and to decide how I want to enter this new phase of my life.

To use the exact advent imagery might be blasphemous or heretical or something like that (though that’s certainly not the intent). So I think I’ll write some blog posts instead.

This week, I will write about my hopes for 30.

During the week of December 29th, I will write about making peace with 30 and finding joy at 30.

During the week of January 6th, I will write about love at 30 and I will highlight 30 years of silver linings in my life.

And finally, on Tuesday, January 14th, I will welcome 30 with all of the hope, peace, joy, and love it deserves!

30!

And cake.

Because I love cake.

And I can’t imagine that 30 is going to change that.

Celebrating my fat heart!

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Have you guys seen the movie Pitch Perfect?!  I’ve seen lots of pins on Pinterest with quotes and “The Cup Song” has come up several times on my Pandora (love it!), but I never actually watched the movie until just this morning.

You see, I’m pretty much confined to within 10 feet or so of my sweet puppy girl’s kennel unless she falls asleep (like really asleep) or she whimpers and whines, so I resigned to spending the morning watching movies on the couch, including several made-for-tv Christmas movies (so much cheesiness! so very good!) and Pitch Perfect.

Pitch Perfect was awesome for a lot of reasons, but I recently got into Rebel Wilson in the show Super Fun Night and I’m extra in love with her now that I’ve seen her as Fat Amy. Seriously, she calls herself Fat Amy so “twig b*****es like you don’t do it behind my back.” And she had so many other gems! But my favorite was at the end of the movie when she says to her friends:

Even though some of you are pretty thin, you all have fat hearts – and that’s what matters.

That line– I LOVE IT!  I rewound and rewound to hear it over and over and over again because it made me laugh so hard!  But it also touched me– right in my big fat heart! I love the way Fat Amy embraced it, she loved her life, she worked her killer bod, and she showed us that “fat” is not a dirty word. (Despite the nearly constant fat shaming we get exposed to in the media.) Just brilliant!

Have I mentioned before that weight is a pretty big issue for me? Oh right, I titled an entire post “Mind. Body. Prison.” and a search for “weight” pulls up 5 separate posts, which is a lot considering that I’ve only actually published a grand total of 64. (But dang, let’s reflect on that number for a minute– 64?!  Awesome! We should totally plan a party for 100!)

So, yeah, I’ve mentioned that weight is a big deal to me. For most of my life I have desired very strongly to lose it, and when I did, I desired to lose more. I’ve recently shifted my focus, though, and am really working toward body acceptance, no matter it’s size, instead. No matter my weight loss goals, my biggest desire was always to be comfortable in my own skin. Is there any reason that can’t happen in my current skin? No.

I am a healthy, happy person and that’s what my friends and family care about. They love me for my fat heart! And so do I, I suppose!

People come in all shapes and sizes, colors and creeds.  You may have bushy hair, big feet, an extraordinarily square jaw (just some examples… ahem…), but it really is what’s inside that counts. That is what your friends and family love you for and it’s the same reason you should love yourself.

And you should love yourself, friend. (You can trust me, I’m a doctor.)

 

PS: I’m really loving some of these normal-sized women that are starting to show up more and more often on tv and in the movies! I will forever support The Mindy Project, Mike & Molly, Super Fun Night, and Parks and Rec for that reason. (I watch too much tv!)