Friday Show and Tell

Ooh fun! Mel over at Stirrup Queens, is having a Friday Show and Tell. And I loved show and tell when I was a kid. So why wouldn’t I still love it?

Today my show and tell item is a picture that I love. It was taken at our wedding.

In this picture on the right are my husband’s parents. The other man is my husband’s uncle and the lovely lady in gorgeous hot pink is my husband’s grandmother, affectionately known as Grandma Pat. Grandma Pat passed away in February of this year and it has left a huge hole in the family that honestly will never be filled. There will never be anyone like her. Anyway, the story behind this picture goes like this.

Jake’s paternal grandparents are divorced, and his grandfather remarried. Pat never remarried. When all the pomp and circumstance of a wedding rolls around, such situations can be a bit touchy because you certainly don’t want to offend anyone. Not that Grandma Pat would ever have been so petty as to be offended by something like this, but you still want to do the right thing. We made sure that all the grandmothers were treated equally with corsages and escorted to their seats by either my brother or my husband’s brother. But when it came time to recess, there were no ushers. Jake’s parents left their seats together and Grandma Pat went with them, as she was seated next to them. But she felt a bit weird about it since she was not the parent of the groom. True to his chivalrous nature, Jake’s dad put a lovely lady, his wife and mother, on each arm and started to whisk them up the aisle.

As they got a few rows back, Brian, Jake’s uncle and Pat’s youngest son, jumped up to take over the honor of escorting his mother up the aisle. As you can see by the look on her face, she is thrilled.

I love this photo for many reasons. I love to see photos of Grandma Pat and for some reason she hated having her picture taken, although I’ll never know why. She was so beautiful and her smile would light up a room. So even at the wedding, there are very few pictures of her. I love her dress. She was always such a stylish dresser. And most of all I love the moment this picture captures of her sons stepping up to make her happy. Not that it was at all unusual for Jake’s dad to do that - he was a true hero son and he and his mom were nuts about each other. Brian on the other hand… well, he loved his mom and she loved him and accepted him for who he is. However, I don’t think attentive to other’s needs will ever be  words used to describe Brian. But as this photo documents, he has his moments.

Two Movies in One Week!

Wow, that’s so exciting. Sadly I only went today because I was bored and had nothing else to do that wouldn’t require spending a lot of money. I couldn’t hang out too much at the house because the housekeepers were coming and I hate being here when they are.

Tuesday I saw Baby Mama. I love Tina Fey and Amy Poehler so I knew I’d like it at least a little bit. But note to self: seeing a movie about infertility when you are in the throes of baby wanting is not such a great idea. It was cute, but predictable.

Today I saw Made of Honor. Did I mention I was bored and desperate for cheap entertainment? It didn’t suck. Cute Patrick Dempsey in kind of a bad boy role. Again, cute but predictable.

I don’t think either of these are must-sees but if you find yourself needing a decent video rental in a couple of months, you could do much worse than these two.

Well This is New….

I know pregnancy has some really weird lasting effects on a woman’s body. Feet and hands grow and may not shrink back, for one thing. Stretch marks create a road map to nowhere on tummies and thighs. Belly flab seems to want to stick around no matter what.

Thankfully my feet did go back to normal size, which is good because they were already pretty big. But my stretch marks and belly flab are a badge of honor.  And my teeth were also something that changed - my teeth started shifting quite a bit pretty soon after Bridget was born, which prompted me to go ahead and get braces like my dentist had been harassing me to do for ten years.

But my hair has changed. My hair, while not what I would have called stick straight in the past, now has a distinct wave to it. I noticed it last spring some time. For the first time in my life, I had to purchase a flat iron. The wave is not enough to make my hair look cute. I can’t wash it and let it air dry to have a bouncy wave to it because it just looks silly.

Yesterday and today I had something happen that has never happened before. My hair was frizzy. In my almost 34 years on the planet, I have never had frizzy hair. What do you even do about this? Flat iron every day? Use some sort of product?

Honestly, in the midst of tantrums over teeth brushing, this is the last thing I need to worry about right now.

Cars I Hate

I’m not sure why I felt the need to do a whole blog post about vehicles that I hate. But then again, when you are trying to blog EVERY SINGLE DAY for a year, you start to run short on meaningful content. I’d say I passed that point about three months ago. Plus Helen wrote a post the other day about first cars so maybe that’s what gave me the idea.

Today sitting in the car, I noticed that I’d been seeing a bunch of these cars lately and I really really dislike the look of them.

The Infiniti EX35:

I can’t quite explain why I hate it. In this picture, it doesn’t look so bad. But the rear end of it just reminds me of the Batmobile, but in a far less cool way.

Now this next one, I think everyone hates. I’m not even sure why this car exists, except for people to pretend they are open-minded about car aesthetics because this thing is one not even a mother could love. This is the Scion xB

This will be widely unpopular, but I really hate the new VW Beetles. I know, I know. That’s like saying you hate candy. The old ones were kind of cool and I like to see the old ones that have been cared for that are still on the road. But the new ones just - blech. Completely impractical. It really bugs me (no pun intended) to see them with flowers in the little vase.

But far and away the car I hate more than all others is the PT Cruiser. It annoys me so much that when I see one on the street, I am so annoyed, it puts me in a bad mood. I just think this thing is absolutely ridiculous. I’m not sure what this car says about the person who willingly drives it, but it can’t be good.

Does anyone else out there have such visceral reactions to cars on the street? Which ones do you hate or love?

Say Hello to My Little Friend

I know that summer is coming not by the rising temperatures and the proportionate rise in our electric bill, but by the nightly arrival of our friend the lizard who lives on the outside of our bathroom window.

Every year like clockwork the little guy appears and drives the cat crazy. I know that it’s not the same lizard from year to year, or even from night to night. But the little guy is tiny reptilian harbinger of summer. And last week, he appeared.

So every night from now until probably October, we’ll see the underside of the little guy and have to shoo the cat away, because she can’t get it through her head that she can’t get to him.

Good times, good times.

Mother’s Day

It’s been a great day so far. We had our nieces overnight last night and it was so much fun. We ate pizza, went to Sonic for shakes and floats, played MarioKart and bowling on the Wii, and watched Enchanted, which I’d been interested in seeing but hadn’t gotten around to putting it on the Netflix queue yet. It was pretty good.

Today Jake got up with Bridget and I intended to sleep in, but I was wide awake so I got up and played more MarioKart. Jake got doughnuts (and remembered to get me coffee even though he doesn’t drink it himself!) {Can someone explain to me why the proper spelling of doughnuts is caught by spell checker? The word is not spelled donuts, for christ’s sake} and we all had breakfast together. The girls are gone now and Bridget is asleep. I might play some more MarioKart before showering and then we’ll be going out for Indian food. And I plan to take a nap too!

Jake made me the most beautiful book using Blurb, full of pictures of Bridget and me and Jake over this first 18 months, and using text from some of my blog posts. It is so incredible I can’t even begin to explain it.

Oh, and at Mother’s Day Out, Bridget “made” me a cute little card with her picture on it.

I like this day just as it is. Jake asked me earlier what I wanted and what I wanted to do. My gut instinct and immediate response was that I don’t want to turn this day into another Christmas or birthday. And I am loving it.

Happy Mother’s Day to those of you out there who are celebrating today.

Holy Mother of God

I swear, I swear, I swear that I will NEVER go this long between bikini waxes ever again.

<sobs>

I took three advil before I went. What I should have done was take two vicodin and had Jake drive me there and back. Oweeee….  It doesn’t even look pretty - it’s far to red and angry. I think that I might be bleeding in spots too.

We have errands to do but I think I’m just going to lay in bed with my legs in the air.

Iron Man

Yesterday Jake and I sneaked out to the movies while Bridget was at Mother’s Day Out. We saw Iron Man, which Jake had been itching to see. I was not exactly dying to see it, but I’m so glad we went. It was fantastic. Robert Downey Jr. was great, and I can tell you girls that if you had a crush on him in the eighties, you will have a new crush on him now. Most of the movie is really great, but it does have its moments where you’ll have to remind yourself that this is a comic book movie and just kind of go with it.  It was really done just right, though and is a great summer flick.

If you go see it, make sure you stay through the end of the credits. They are long and you’ll want to skeedaddle, but hang in.

Dealing With It

I know I mentioned before that I was starting to feel the urge to have another baby, and that it most likely will not happen.

I had been holding on to Bridget’s bedding because I loved it so much and it was such an important part of pregnancy for me, the choosing of her bedding with Jake and all the care and time we put into getting her room all ready for her. Slowly the bedding had to go away - the mobile when she was able to sit up and pull at it, the bumper pads went away when I no longer worried about her banging her head against the crib slats, the bed skirt went away when we had to lower her crib - and got moved to the guest bedroom because I couldn’t bear to part with it, and yet I had no other room to store it. But when we did some spring cleaning, and also preparing for someone to sleep in our guest room, I had to make some choices.

I put the bedding (with the exception of the comforter which I still have on the back of the glider and I intend to keep) in the give-away pile. And proceeded to cry for the rest of the day. A couple days later, I dropped it off at Goodwill with very little reluctance. I thought that perhaps by going through that exercise, I had worked through the issue.

But every day since, I seem to get a little bit sadder. Today I felt like I was on the verge of tears all day. I guess this is part of the process, just dealing with it, mourning this loss, even though it’s only the loss of a concept. Hopefully I can get through this soon. I hate feeling like this. The only thing better about it this go ’round is that I don’t have the monthly roller coaster of building hope and then crushing disappointment when my period comes. Since I have no expectation that I could be pregnant, I don’t feel disappointed when it’s confirmed I’m not.

I keep telling myself it’s better this way. I shouldn’t tempt fate. I had a dream pregnancy (apart from the work it took to get knocked up) and a dream delivery and we have a dream child. If we do this again, what are the odds that it’ll all go so well?

I have three good friends who are expecting baby girls all around the same time this summer and I’ll just try to satisfy myself sniffing their heads and buying them wee dresses and nibbling on their little toes. And I’ll hope that enough time will go by to make the longing subside. For now, though, I’m in my pity party.

I think I’ll go get some chocolate.

Fun With Graphs

I saw some of these today over at List of the Day and then I went to the source to see them all. I highly recommend you put down any liquids you might be drinking so as not to shoot it through your nose.

For my George Strait lovers out there:

This song has always driven me crazy because NO, IT’S NOT IRONIC!!!

There are so many more over on GraphJam Go look at them. Hilarious!