Holi-daze.

It’s the 2nd of October. What am I thinking about? Christmas stockings. That’s right, I said Christmas.

But, Jamie, we’re barely out of September. That’s ridiculous. I just hate it when stores put out Christmas decorations before we even have Halloween. Wahhh, wahhh, wahh….STICK IT!

Do you know why I am doing this? Because I’ve missed the boat on every holiday since Henning was born and before all that is holy, I’m not missing this one.

Technically, I am giving myself a free pass for St. Patrick’s Day and Easter. St. Patrick’s Day because it’s not fun unless you’re Irish or drink green beer and Easter because it was like three weeks after someone cut a baby out of my midsection. Plus, it’s really unnecessary to have an Easter basket for an infant, and it’s a pain in the ass to put them in dressy clothes. Looking back, all I can do is think, “Why don’t I have a picture of my kid in some bunny ears or lying next to a sheep?”

Halloween was going to be my chance to get back in the game. I obsessed over it all through August and just couldn’t make a decision. Truthfully, I was leaning towards Henning as Sweet Pea because Pete looks so much like Popeye, but I don’t know that enough people would get the reference. Then I decided we needed one of those baby animal costumes, but only a weird one. Like a baby goat. Then I came to my senses and realized that being without teeth or the ability to walk kind of limits Henning’s Halloween fun. So I figured I wouldn’t waste a good costume idea on a year the kid won’t even remember and just pick up something at Old Navy or Carters. I watched their Halloween email notices come, and thought “There’s almost two months until Halloween. I don’t need to order that yet.“ Then I saw the sale emails and thought, “It’s only September. I don’t need to order that yet.” In fact, it was at this point that my mother called to ask if I had thought about a stocking for Henning and my VERY WORDS to her were, “I haven’t even gotten him a Halloween costume yet. I don’t need to worry about that yet.”
 

YES. YES YOU DO need to worry about that. In fact, as soon as the stick turns blue, you should go on and just get yourself a Chasing Fireflies catalog and open that puppy up. Because mamas be crazy. Now, when it’s time to order a Halloween costume, all the good places are sold out. Old Navy, Carters, nothing but the leftovers from their stock of orange onesies. You know what’s left? Pottery Barn. Pottery Barn has greeeeeaaaat costumes. Pottery Barn has both Max AND the monster from Where the Wild Things Are and we read that book every night of my life. However, Pottery Barn reeeeeaaaaallly likes those costumes and I just cannot make myself pay $80 for a baby Halloween costume, free shipping or not.

Of course, I could still find all sorts of costumes at actual Halloween places and on Amazon.com, but they all look like that type or rayon/polyester that would catch on fire if it got too close to a hot cup of coffee, and I am a-feared of stuff like that. What we will probably do is obey the 836 people who have emailed, texted, and sent pictures of kids to let me know that bald babies seem to somewhat resemble Charlie Brown, and buy a yellow t-shirt and a black Sharpie.

Anyhow, this is how I wound up spending an alarming number of hours considering Christmas stockings. My family has matching knitted Christmas stockings that we have used since the early 80’s. Because stockings are for LIFE. Only Communists buy new stockings every year. (Communists who celebrate Christmas are kind of rare, I guess.) These stockings were very popular in town and I know several families who use the same ones – one friend of my mother had to ask the lady to come out of retirement so her last child could have a matching stocking. I used to think that if I ever had a kid, I would want him to have a stocking like ours, but that lady has been dead for years.

Enter etsy. I was looking at stockings and making a ridiculously large list of favorites when I saw my brother’s stocking. Turns out these stockings were not a LaGrange 80’s fad, but became a trend in the 1950’s and never went away. They are from Mary Maxim and you can still buy similar patterns on her website, although I don’t think the newer ones are as kitschy.

The fact that these stockings still exist – and are actually starting to sell out in some Etsy stores because I am obviously not the only 35 year old with an overdeveloped sense of nostalgia -  has resulted in an embarrassing amount of pondering: Do I get Henning a matching stocking? I could get him one in red or white since all ours are in green and it would mark him as a new generation. Of course, then I would have to get Pete one so we would all match. Wait – I don’t even have my stocking. Mom has my stocking. I wonder if she’s going to fill stockings for Pete and Brandon this year. Maybe I should get Pete a stocking for over there. Still, those stockings are kind of fugly except for being steeped in tradition so maybe I should just pick out something new for Henning. Especially since those stockings are red and green and all my Christmas stuff looks like Dr. Seuss and Whoville. But then what if Lulu or Mitchell has babies and they get the old school stockings and I am sorry I got these?

GOOD GRIEF. I realize this is ridiculous and I’m driving myself nuts. Although I did inquire into the stocking future of my newlywed sister’s non-existent, hypothetical, future children, and she assured me that she would be finding her own stockings. BUT, then came the Great Saga of Personalization. As you see, those old stockings have the name knitted right into them, which is really how stockings should be. But I can’t find a colorful, Dr. Seuss, Whoville, knitted stocking that has a name. And, obviously, all stockings should be knitted. There are rules to this sort of thing. So now I am stuck. I have, of course, found the perfect Whoville stocking with no name included.  WHAT IS A GIRL TO DO????

Maybe I can tack an initial onto the toe…..

I've Gain-ed some Guilt.

My mother is big on sayings. I cannot express to you how often she says “God works in mysterious ways” and “What goes around comes around.” Obviously, her choice of saying differs depending on whether she is riled up or not.

I have decided to join her and take up a new mantra. Really, it should also have been my old mantra. I have chosen to now live by these wise words: “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”

 See, I am rapidly learning about the wide world of parenting fails. For example, Henning turned 8 weeks old last Friday and I just realized I have yet to sit him beside a stuffed animal and track his growth for a scrapbook. I even bought this ginormous stuffed dragon shortly after finding out I was pregnant for this express purpose and now we are screwed. I guess I could start him off at three months, but that just seems like advertising my own idiocy.

He also drinks cold formula. MADE USING TAP WATER. I can’t figure out if I am the cool, laid back Mom or the ridiculously lazy Mom. I know I am not the only person who does these things. I know that because I stole both these ideas from other Moms, and if you don’t think I bless them every day when I am standing in the kitchen after midnight running cold tap water into my formula, you are sadly mistaken. But I still feel guilty about it.

As it turns out, there’s a lot of guilt that comes with motherhood. Maybe this is why mothers are notorious for laying guilt trips on their children. Maybe there is just so much guilt that it has to be spread around. The fact that Henning and I miserably failed at breastfeeding has happily become less of a worrying factor just in time for me to find out that I could be making my own floor cleaner. And detergent. And using cloth diapers.

 Truthfully, I would totally use cloth diapers if Pete would let me. I think those new covers are suuuuper cute. But even if we used cloth diapers, they would still be washed in Gain detergent because I am wholly indoctrinated to the chemical-laden world and I love that fresh, clean scent. We don't even buy Dreft for the baby clothes. Did I just choose a fragrance over the well-being of my child and planet?

 Yes, yes I did. And I feel TERRIBLE about it, but not terrible enough to wear clothes-scented clothes. Maybe I just feel terrible that I don't really feel terrible about it? Henning also has a used crib AND carseat, both of which I’m pretty sure are illegal in the state of Georgia.

 However, the thing that makes me feel most terrible is when I am busted mid-fail. My Dad, Big Daddy Lee, kept Henning for a while one afternoon last week. We were running through the list of things packed in the diaper bag and I was feeling mighty superior. Extra clothes? Check. Wipes? Check. Bottles? Check – I even packed one wet and one dry in case of emergency. Socks? FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, CHECK!!!!! (My parents are nuts about the socks. They don’t care if it’s 75 degrees outside. I can’t decide if they are old or I am uncaring.) Baby powder?

 Baby powder? Baby powder. Baaaaaaaby powder. Huh.

I look at Pete. Pete looks at me. Dad looks at us both like we are completely and totally inept.

 Do people still use baby powder? Is that still a thing? Did that not go away with Mad Men? We haven’t used any for over 8 weeks now and Henning has no sign of any rash or swamp-butt of any kind.

 Several people gave us bags of baby supplies at my showers. We have desitin. We have wipes for both sets of cheeks, and the face ones smell like grape kool-aid. We have gripe water and gas drops. We have creams and lotions, washes and soaps, medicines and remedies of all kinds. I could be mistaken, but I don’t remember any baby powder. Surely the diaper industry has become so advanced that baby powder has gone the way of Brylcreem.

 Apparently not.

 So there you go. Judge not, lest ye be judged. I’m not going to watch you, and you promise not to watch me, while my Gain-scented kid sits over here probably not properly buckled into a borrowed swing, while his gums are chattering from the cold formula and lack of socks.

 

I think he's onto us already.

 

Music Soothes the Savage Beast

Things that happened in the last fifteen months:

 Got a new job…Pete moved home….we bought a house…..we got married….oh, and this:

 

 

Henning Miles Daniel

7lbs. 2ozs. of pure sweetness!

 

Should you wonder if hindsight says this was a timeline more people should adopt, I can promise you that hindsight would slap you upside the head. With a mallet.

 So, even though Pete and I have absolutely no idea what we are doing, Henning seems to be thriving and I don’t think we have messed him up for life yet. I have discovered, however, that we have absolutely no consistency as to what either of us does with Henning when the other is not looking.

 Like when he sleeps.

 Generally, at six weeks of age, Henning will go to sleep around 9:15 pm and wake up anywhere between midnight and 1:30 am for a bottle. I give him a bottle and then we have a sing-a-long in the rocking chair. We have a regular playlist of 70’s singer-songwriters and children’s music, including Carole King, the Muppets, and that song Maid Marian sings in the Disney version of Robin Hood. And we always include Sweet Baby James. I think he’s actually starting to recognize that one, but it could be wishful thinking.

 Between the bottle and the rocking, there’s roughly an hour involved in this routine until he falls asleep and I can slide him into his crib. If he wakes up while I try to move him, we start over for a song or two. And I have been congratulating myself on getting this handled in the middle of the night with no fussing.

 He then sleeps until anywhere from 4:30 to – if we are very, very lucky – 6:00. If it’s nearer to 4:30,I will take the second shift, but the later it gets, the more likely that Pete will handle it. Fairly often on the weekend he will give me a break and take both night feedings, which is fantastic. Some mornings I wake up and he has given Henning a bath and fed him and they are watching tv in the den. It’s pretty awesome.

 Last night we made an important discovery. Henning stayed with his awesome Aunt Nicole yesterday, and playing with Amelia and Annie tired him out and he fell asleep on the way home. There was no waking the boy, and it was close to 9:30, so I put him down without worrying about a bedtime bottle. Mistake. Big mistake. He woke up around 11:00, which never happens, for his first bottle, drank it, and fell asleep before even finishing it. I put him in the crib – and actually felt sad that I really hadn’t spent much time with him between work and being out on the Ponderosa for dinner with the Comerfords after his afternoon out there.

At 2:39 am, he woke up and I stumbled into the nursery, to find Pete already at the crib. We did the late-night mumble: “You got it? Yeah? Umph. Bed.” And he took him, but I heard Henning whining a little while later and got up to investigate. Pete had fed him, dropped him in the crib and gone back to bed in the nursery twin bed. I’m trying to think of a word for what I felt, but I don’t have anything better than naked, blind, rage. I was cussing him out inside my head. “Why can’t he rock him if he’s going to feed him? What the hell does he do when I’m not looking? What kind of father does that……” So I picked up Henning and he was WIDE awake. Just looking at me with these huge eyes like he is ready to play. We got in the rocking chair and sang our whole playlist. Not even a blink. We rocked silently. Still looking at me. We started singing again and he finally closed his eyes, only to wake up when I moved him. It took FOREVER to get him to sleep, and I was SO mad.

 At 5:55 the same thing happened. Pete got up, fed Henning a bottle, and went back to bed. Henning started whining again and I stormed into the nursery, ready to do battle. After all, I had to be at work this morning! I needed my sleep! I got Henning out of the crib and got ready to get back into the rocking chair…again. Pete, who could see that I was steaming mad, rolled over and said, “Can he not go to bed without an hour of that?” and I said “He’s a BABY. OF COURSE he wants to be rocked. You can’t just feed him and dump him in there!”

 And my husband said, “If you lay him there for five minutes, he’ll go back to sleep. I usually just shut the door so you don’t hear him fuss.” And I laid the baby in the bed. And this child, who keeps me awake rocking and likes to be completely asleep before he is ever-so-gently placed in the crib, CLOSED HIS EYES AND SIGHED.

I think I got played by a 6 week old.  

Hay Fever

I am coughing.

I’ve been coughing since the July 4th weekend, and I can’t make it quit. One day, I had that little throat tickle that means your summer cold is about to arrive, and the next day I needed a little band of grade-school kids to follow me around saying, “Oooh, She POPPIN.!” Now it’s just this never ending, sinusy little cough and it’s driving me insane. We went to see Harry Potter over the weekend and I was so nervous that I was going to be the annoying theatre cougher who ruins the movie for everyone, and then I had a realization.

I sound just like Aunt Marian.

Aunt Marian kept a case of what she called “the hay fever” through all four seasons, 365 days each year. I could sit in the balcony at church and hear her coughing into her Kleenex all through the service, and know the back corner was taken care of for another day. The coughing was kind of comforting from a distance, because you knew she was in the building, but from an up close and personal perspective, it embarrassed the fool out of me. No matter where we were, people were offering her water, cough drops and handkerchiefs, and she would just smile and wave them away as she got herself under control. Restaurants, movies, department stores…it didn’t matter where we were, there always seemed to be someone who looked ready to jump her with the Heimlich Maneuver at any second.

It drove me CRAZY. And until now I didn’t realize how much I have missed it.

I’m not sure when exactly it happened, but somewhere early in her series of stokes she lost the cough, along with everything else that followed: her independence, her driving, her speech and her memory, as if she was being chipped away piece-by-piece. She was mostly confused, often ornery, and seemed to be stuck in Fayetteville, circa 1930. She loved to have visitors, but would get extremely frustrated with her inability to communicate and eventually tire herself out. The last time Pete and I were there, you could get the start of a sentence, with a patented AM catchphrase, “Well, I declare…” and then she would fade off to a soft whisper and we would ask her to repeat herself. But, then sometimes she was a pistol from the minute we walked in the door, adamant that she was going home – sometimes to her childhood home and sometimes to the home we have recently put up for sale – no matter that she could not drive, bathe herself, or move around without help.

And now she is gone.

I have been wondering for quite a while how I was going to handle this whole death thing. I’ve never lost anyone really close before, so I had figured she would be the first one. It’s not going particularly well, which I really find ridiculous especially taking into consideration the length of time we were given to prepare for this.

It’s not as though I don’t have any closure. I sat there at Hospice, both alone with her and beside the rest of the family, watching her fade away from us as we followed Lulu’s instruction that she not ever be left alone. Stubborn, determined Lulu, the most like Aunt Marian of all of us, was holding her hand when she died.

The memorial service captured her perfectly. The pastor, who knew her well and referred to her as “Aunt Marian” rather than “Mrs. Davis” talked about how much of a mother she was, although she had no children, and to me that was always her defining quality. When I was younger I always felt sorry for Aunt Marian, and once I asked her why she and Uncle Jack had never had children. Now I can see the flip side of the situation, and how she had the opportunity to be so important in the lives of so many more children – neighborhood children, church children, all of my Dad’s generation and their children – than she could have if she had been a parent, which is something I am starting to think is a superlative choice.

Now it’s been almost two months, and I think the old bird is haunting me. I dream we are at her old beach house, and can’t get a dial tone on the pay phone she kept in the hallway and I can’t find any change. I keep buying strawberries and those 6-packs of yellow shortcakes rounds to make for dessert. I pore over her datebook from 1981 and call my parents to explain mysterious entries, and wonder how anyone could have that many luncheons. Last weekend I saw a locust, which I thought had all died off earlier this summer, and I laughed, thinking how much she hated locusts and how religiously she stomped them. Pete has caught me crying several times over old photo albums that are supposed to be in storage at my parents’ house.

And now I have this cough. This stupid, annoying, “Jamie, do you want some water?” hay-fever sounding cough.

I get it, old woman. I miss you, too.

Foreign Language Fail.

Today, Mom and I stopped for lunch at our local McDonald’s. In our cosmopolitan city, there are now no less than four convenient McDonald’s locations, but the best by far is the original Commerce Ave. Mickey D’s. It might not be as clean as the others, or have a PlayPlace, or be new and fancy with that one-sideways-yellow-slash logo, but the fries are hot and crispy and the sweet tea is almost syrupy in its icy cold sweetness. Maybe it’s just me – I also exclusively patronize our original Wendy’s, even though at times they should probably be shut down and their staff looks greasier than the fries. I swear it tastes better. Just don’t look at the health department rating.

As we walked in the door, there was a Korean man at the counter trying to place his order. He had absolutely no English, so the cashier was using the time-tested method of yelling at him in hopes that he understood. “You want THREE DOUBLES? THREE?” The man ordered, paid, and the line moved on. Just after Mom and I placed our order, he received his. It was wrong. Way wrong.

No one seemed to be sure of what he wanted, but every person in line had an opinion on it. I suppose that’s the spirit of hospitality we have here in LaGrange, because he had plenty of people attempting translation. “He wants a NUMBER three, not THREE DOUBLES!!!”

Finally, the man took his extendable measuring tape out of his belt loop, stretched it out a remarkable distance that would have NEVER been able to stay straight had I been holding it, leaned waaaaaaay over the counter and started tapping the photo of the Number Eleven Value Meal. That’s a Filet-o-Fish meal, for those of you who are curious.

The cashier kept asking, “You wanna eleven? ELEVEN?” as he kept banging on the sign. He would tap chicken nuggets and say “NO” and then tap the Filet-O-Fish and make what looked like a sandwich with his little hands, and say “THREE.”

Because I have a full understanding, not of Korean, but of fast food ordering hand language, I can interpret this to mean that what he really wanted was three filet-o-fish sandwiches without the fries, just the sandwich.

Just as Mom and I received our food and headed towards the booths, the cashier threw her hands in the air and gave up.

She rolled her eyes and said, in a tone of complete and utter exhaustion, “LAW. And you KNOW I don’t know no Spanish.”

Only in the LG.

Jamie's So-Called Life

Sometimes I think my life is really a sitcom and nobody told me about it.

Lots of people used to tell me that the Sara Rue character from Less than Perfect, a slightly wacky administrative assistant at a TV station, was oh-so-exactly like me (this was before she became a spokesperson for Jenny Craig) which I never really understood, as I am not at all random and flighty and apt to tell long rambling stories at the office to people looking at me like…I…am…..Oh. Nevermind, then. Moving on.

Anyhow, the big news this week is the marriage of country singers Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert. I don’t really listen to much post-Shania country music anymore, because it’s mostly pop anyway and Pete hates it. So we compromise and I don’t make him listen to country if he doesn’t make me listen to Perfect Circle. I could write an entire blog post about my hatred for Perfect Circle. So I kept seeing all these articles about Blake and Miranda meeting at a CMT concert where they performed “You’re the Reason God Made Oklahoma” which I have now watched 8 billion times over the past week because I just love a cheesy 70’s country duet. Those late night Time-Life collection infomercials? Oh, I am there.

As a result of all this, I made myself a little Pandora country station and have spent the week trying to train it….Crystal Gayle, yes… Toby Keith, not so much. I have been just as happy as a little clam all week long. Until this morning.

It’s Friday. There is nobody here. So I turned my Pandora up and was singing along with my country station, and Bryan White started singing “Someone Else’s Star.” Oh, broken-hearted ballad of the late 90’s, how I missed you without even realizing it! That whole Bryan White album is like a playlist of old, unrequited crushes. So Bryan and I were just a-singing, and we went in for the last big chorus, “I guess I must be wishing on…..” and at some point in that chorus, the phone rang, and I, without even realizing what I was doing, automatically picked it up, and rather than answer “________ ______ ______ _____ ______” (my very long company name) I totally kept singing into the phone, until I realized what I was doing when someone said, “Hello?” and hung up on me.

Do you know how embarrassing that was? Hugely, hugely embarrassing. Stuff like this happens to me all the time. Remember the blog about when the hottie caught me trying to scratch my peeling, sunburned back with a spiral binder? All the time. I think I just got lost in the moment, because that’s just one of those (bazillion) songs that just puts you back in a very specific time, and I LOVE WHEN THAT HAPPENS!

Perhaps we each should have a playlist. Mine would have, in no particular order:

1. Anything from the Judds Heartland album sounds like riding down the road perched on the hard plastic middle compartment of my parents car, singing my little Dorothy-Hamill-hairstyled heart out while my brother and sister were passed out in the back seat.
2. Anything from the Indigo Girls Rites of Passage album sounds like power ballad-ing with my sister, competing over who can take the melody and who gets stuck with the harmony, which I lose every time. This guy I knew in college once said Lulu sounded powerful like Wynonna and I sound timid like Alison Krauss and she has been really cocky about it ever since.
3. Most of the Paul Simon Graceland album, but especially the song “Homeless” because my brother cracks me up every time he sings along with the choir from Zimbabwe.
4. “Another Lonely Day” by Ben Harper and David Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust” sound like one college year’s worth of house parties and Josh on acoustic guitar.
5. “Jezebel”, by Heritage Cherry (Shannon Wright before she was “The Wrights.” Townie shout out!) sounds like a Thanksgiving band night at the restaurant where I learned how to wait tables and how not to finish college.
6. That one album Oasis made and early Dave Matthews sound like long road trips in Becky’s red Saab convertible to various locations far and near.
7. Tonic, Danny’s Boy, and the “Once” soundtrack all sound like long afternoons on Leighton’s front porch.

I’m sure there are more, but lunch hour is nearly over and those are just off the top of my head. Do you have a list? If “You’re the Reason God Make Oklahoma” is on it, we have a duet coming up!

True Love and Hooters.

Here we are during the last week of January, and what did I see today?

Cadbury Eggs.

Normally, I am a huge proponent of keeping holiday items out of sight until their proper season. Like, I don’t like to see Christmas decorations in Wal-Mart before Halloween, you know? Cadbury Eggs are the exception to this. I may have mentioned this before, but Cadbury Eggs should really be available all year long.

Anyhow, the Cadbury eggs threw me for a loop, and all day I have been thinking Easter was next month and how great that was, because it would be warm by then. And then I woke up and realized that something was missing!

Valentine’s Day!!!!

I LOVE Valentine’s Day. (As I have previously discussed.) I love any holiday, really, especially if there is a Charlie Brown special about it, but Valentine’s Day really rocks my socks off. Do you know what I really wish we could do? I wish grown-ups could exchange Valentines. I think it would be so awesome. Valentines are a lot like school supplies. They both give me the same sort of giddiness. Don’t you think it would be fun for that one day a year if you just dropped all your friends a little card? We could make envelopes and put them on our doors. It would be great.

Really, I think kids Valentine’s Day is WAY better than adult Valentine’s Day. I think we try to make too much of it with the flowers and the candy and the restaurant reservations. The most memorable Valentine’s Day of my life occurred when I was in middle school. True story – that year, all five Seagraves piled in the car to go to Columbus. I don’t remember what we were doing down there, maybe we went to see a movie. Anyhow, after we finished doing whatever we were doing, it was dinner time and it dawned on Dad that we were never going to get a table anywhere on Valentine’s Day. There were hour-plus wait times at all every place we stopped. Where is the most embarrassing place a preteen girl can get trapped with her family on Valentine’s Day? Hooters. No joke. I couldn’t look anywhere, so I just kept my face in my sweet tea the whole time and consequently almost peed myself on the way home.

But now, I don’t think about how mortified my conventional little self was to be surrounded with big ol’ boobies at Hooter’s, with my parents and siblings, on Valentine’s Day, when I really wanted to be at some middle school party wearing a Skittles hairbow. I think about how awesome it was that my folks took us to go do whatever activity I am sure we enjoyed before the boobies totally took over the entire story. That’s awesome. That’s love.

That being said, do we think that, hypothetically, if someone saw two lockets on etsy that would make perfect Valentine’s presents and knew her boyfriend would never look there, is it tacky to have someone call him with this information? Because if it’s NOT tacky, please point Pete here and here.

Or were y’all down with making envelopes? Arts and craft party next week!

Out of the Closet

Well, there’s just no hiding it anymore.

I know this might come as a shock to most of you, but I am a big ol’ girl. I think the correct term is “plus-size” these days, although I prefer “zaftig” both because it’s a great Scrabble word and I think it’s Yiddish, and I have an inexplicable love for all things Jewish, especially for one raised in the heavily Baptist bible belt. Whatever term you use, let’s just say I wear a lot of tunics.

This is not a new thing for me. As an adult, I historically swing wildly between 170 lbs. and the lower 190’s, except for a short period in college when I started waitressing for a local bar & grill and dropped immediately down to 155 due to (a) running my ass off all day and (b) cutting out dinner in favor of the pink lemonade and vodka available when the bartender is a good friend. That was the only time the weight on my scale actually matched the weight on my driver’s license, and I cannot overstate how happy that made me.

When you are heavy, there are certain experiences you go through and never talk about again, even with other big girls, in the hopes that if you just push it into the back of your mind, it might go away after a while. (It doesn’t.)

· Having to go without Guess? jeans back in the day, because the only ones that would fit were in the men’s department……and they had a tell-tale green triangle logo on the back.
· The older cousin who you always looked up to stopping you on the stairs one Christmas to ask if you would “try to lose a little weight…..for me?”
· The Aunt who said in the midst of one of my diet attempts,“If that’s all you’re eating, I don’t see how you’re not reducing.” (She’s dead now, God rest her hateful soul.)
· The inevitable person who asks when you are due, which is always a fun thing.
· Attempting to find Jeans, swimsuits or cocktail dresses that don’t look like your grandmother bought them……for herself.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not something I dwell on every day. There are whole stretches of time when I am, amazingly enough, not thinking about whether I have a muffin top in these pants, or whether anybody is looking at me funny when I eat one of the doughnuts in the office break room. Sometimes I actually feel pretty damn awesome about myself. I’m creative. I’m funny. I’m smart. I know more about random 70’s cartoons than anyone besides my brother (perhaps that ought not go on this list). I have a rocking awesome boyfriend, who is actually normal-sized and STILL thinks I am hot. I have a large group of friends who make life so wonderfully, ridiculously fun. I have a big, funny, over-the-top family who are incredibly supportive - except for that cousin. I think about that “Can’t you try…for me?” remark at every family holiday we ever have.

But normally, I am a pretty happy person. Almost Pollyanna-like in my cheerful countenance at times.

But then yesterday, I found a link through Barefoot Foodie (Oh, please, please go read her blog. She’s the greatest ever, ever, ever.) to this post from the Marie Claire website. I always liked Marie Claire, because their magazine runs pretty decent articles that stray from the normal fashion magazine topics into areas like humanitarian efforts and the like.

Not anymore.

The post, by MC columnist Maura Kelly, is called Should “Fatties” Get A Room? (Even on TV?). The title alone just grabbed me by the throat. And as I continued to read the post, I actually felt choked. With anger? With sadness? Maybe both. Maybe even with shame.

The crux of the article involves how Kelly feels uncomfortable with the show “Mike & Molly” because she finds watching fat people in intimate situations disgusting. (“Mike & Molly” is a sitcom about a couple who meet at Overeaters Anonymous. I actually haven’t seen it, so I can’t give you much more than that.)

A quote from the article: ”So anyway, yes, I think I'd be grossed out if I had to watch two characters with rolls and rolls of fat kissing each other ... because I'd be grossed out if I had to watch them doing anything.”

Perhaps it’s just me (although, it really can’t be just me, as the post in question is standing at over 950 comments) and I am being overly sensitive, but that sentence really rocked me to the core. How fat is too fat? Do people think it looks odd or gross if my boyfriend leans over to kiss me on a date? Are they thinking, “What is he doing with the fat chick?” Kelly goes so far as to say that she doesn’t even like to watch fat people walk across the room.

Walk. Across. The Room.

I would like to say that this absolutely enraged me and that I immediately put pen to paper to ask Maura Kelly who she thought she was to say such things about ANYONE. But I didn’t.

Instead, I logged onto my Facebook account to make sure that I had the tagged photos set to “private” so I could make sure nobody could see anything that might make me look fat. I know, I’m embarrassed to admit it myself, but that’s the God’s honest truth.

Maybe deep inside every person lives a little piece of herself or himself that is the embodiment of all the bad thoughts and every negative self-image one has ever felt.

Maura Kelly, a woman I have never met, pulled mine out into the open yesterday and it’s pretty humbling to realize that a stupid blog post like that would matter so much to me.

So now I am going to count all my blessings and think about all the awesome things about me that have nothing to do with the size of my pants, and go on about my business.

Because Maura Kelly might not find me aesthetically pleasing, but I damn sure do.

My Main Man.

So, I'm alive. I know you were worried! But I have been ultra busy, and sometimes ultra relaxed, like during our recent Beach Trip, which I will tell you all about soon.

But at the moment, my boss (who reads this blog, so I am assuming that I am his inspiration) has decided we need a company blog.

If you are interested in Real Estate in the West Georgia/East Alabama area, check us out at http://www.spinksbrowndurand.com/.

But if you just want a quick Jamiedidit fix, and I hope you do, here is MY latest article about one of the great loves of my life, other than Pete, Jason Segel, and the Incredible Hulk: http://blog.spinksbrowndurand.com/uncategorized/everybody-needs-a-grandpa-like-this/#more-55

See you back here real soon!

Now, THIS is what I call crazy.

So. Let me tell you about my latest catastrophe.

I have a job. I have a good, possibly even great job. The only problem with my job is that there is no insurance. Realtors, being independent contractors, are unable to have group insurance, and there are not enough non-sales employees to warrant us having a group policy. Thus, the only medical insurance I have is a little supplemental policy from Aflac, because I have been dealing with my health from the “It’ll never happen to me” standpoint.

Recently, I rethought that attitude when my buddy Rhonda, the smartest woman in America, told me I could totally have a regular major medical policy for as much as I was paying for my craptastic supplemental policy. So I called up to my local insurance guru, who put me in touch with the agent who handles medical insurance for her office. This is where my trouble began.

As I know absolutely nothing about the insurance world, I had no idea what to ask about my coverage needs. The main two questions I had were whether maternity insurance was included (in case of an Act of God) and if my psychiatry appointments would be covered.

Here is your lesson for the day: Honesty is NOT always the best policy.

As soon as I said the word “psychiatry,” the red flags went up. The agent (Who, I might add, was nothing but helpful and I would highly recommend using her to anyone local who may read this post.)said that psychiatric appointments were generally not covered by individual policies, and if she were to find a carrier, my premiums would increase by 20% to 70%.

Twenty to Seventy percent.

TWENTY to SEVENTY percent.

So I told her to forget the mental health coverage and just run the numbers with “normal” coverage., but she was required to enter my specific diagnosis as a pre-existing condition.

Although my doctor says I have a “mild mood disorder,” there is no official diagnosis for that. My official chart reads “296.60, Bipolar I, D/O mixed unspecified.” Bipolar disorder is one of the mental health diagnosis with the “uh-oh” connotation. If somebody says they have anxiety issues, people think, “Eat a Xanax, you’ll be fine!” If you admit to having bipolar disorder, they look at you like you should be in a ward somewhere, or at the very least on heavy, heavy medication.

I am not remotely embarrassed by or ashamed of my diagnosis. I am thankful and happy that I have a very “light case” (for lack of a better term) of the disorder that can be handled with one tiny pill daily. There are horror stories about people who truly, truly suffer with Bipolar Disorder every day. One of the reasons it is so hard to get medical coverage with the disorder is the instability of many patients and the likelihood that they will harm themselves, costing the insurance company money. I am lucky in many, many ways.

However, my luck apparently ran out at the insurance counter. The agent tried to find a carrier who would accept me, and had no luck. The entire insurance community has given me the Heisman.

Let’s think about what this means:

Unless I choose to leave my very good job in this unstable economy and take a chance that I can find an employer offering group insurance, which does not have the same restrictions, I will have to pay out of pocket for any medical care I receive. Pap smears, regular visits to a GP if I get a cold, eye doctors, anything. A major procedure would, quite literally, bankrupt me. Bankrupt.

I am a college-educated, tax-paying, productive member of society with steady employment who has no insurance. Do you know who can receive medical care, including mental health benefits? People enrolled in the Medicare program. Here is a link to the government pamphlet explaining your mental health care benefits under Medicare: http://www.medicare.gov/publications/pubs/pdf/mental.pdf

Ideally, I would like for my insurance carrier to cover my once-every-three-months shrink appointment, but I could handle (because I am employed, remember?) shelling out for those visits, if I could pay a co-pay for things like the OB-GYN and the regular general physician. But I cannot even do that. All I have been thinking about lately is a long string of what if’s.

What if I got pregnant?
What if I broke my leg?
What if I were in a car accident?
What would I do?
How would I pay for it?
How would I pay for the rest of my bills?

Maybe I should quit my job…..

I had that Weekly Reader too, you know!

My name is Jamie, and I am a book-o-holic. And I’m sure most of you were already aware of that little fact. At the moment, I am completely sucked into the Kindle phenomenon. Oooh, it’s so great. I was originally of the opinion that I would never, ever, ever, ever feel the need for the Kindle. A book hoarder like me would never leave my actual paper pages for a digital screen. The whole tactile experience would be lost. The smell of a newly opened book, extinguished. Future generations would never be able to dig up a Kindle and learn about our culture. We can read the Dead Sea Scrolls, what are they going to do with a desiccated hunk of plastic?

Um. So. It turns out that I was just rationalizing to take the focus from the fact that I am cheap.

This Kindle thing is fabulous. El fabuloso. Most definitely the best gift I have ever, ever received, with the possible exception of the year Santa brought a puppy.

The first three books I bought for the kindle were:
1. Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer (Yeah, yeah.)
2. Shelf Discovery by Lizzie Skurnick
3. Best Friends Forever by Jennifer Weiner

First off, mad props to Lizzie Skurnick. Skurnick has a column on jezebel.com called “Fine Lines” in which she re-reads old Young Adult books, and reviews them based on her adult perspective combined with her reminiscences of her teen reading. Why do I not have ideas like this????? Do you realize how many books which are, as I type, residing in a closet somewhere in my parents’ house were reviewed in this collection of essays? Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret and Island of the Blue Dolphins and The Westing Game and even Flowers in the Attic. Freaking Flowers in the Attic! I can see me right now in the seventh grade, carrying a turquoise Liz Claiborne pocketbook within which was one of the (many, many) V.C. Andrews books and a tester for Polo Sport Cologne. I don’t know which the more confusing fad was: (a) compulsory reading of terrible, poorly written, often incestuous teen literature or (b) requiring that one’s purse smelled like men’s fragrance. Did we think we were growing boyfriends in our Liz Claiborne’s?

Second off, I’m struggling with Best Friends Forever. I love Jennifer Weiner. Love her long time. I bumped into a copy of her first book, Good in Bed, years ago and have been in love ever since. But I am not in love with this book. I started reading Weiner because she writes novels generally starring big girls, which is more of a rarity than you would realize. Carrie Bradshaw and Sookie Stackhouse don’t exactly shop at Lane Bryant, you know. But I stayed because she writes books that I would enjoy reading even if they did not have the weight angle. The plots are strong. The characters feel real, and flawed, and a lot of the time they remind me of people I know, if only we were a little smarter and had more snappy dialogue. Plus I am a big fan of Jennifer Weiner’s voice when she just writes as herself. There’s a link to her blog – A Moment of Jen – over there on the right. She also writes guest posts for various sites like the Huffington Post, and she actually wrote the essay on Judy Blume’s Blubber for Skurnik’s Shelf Discovery.

So what is it about this book?

I just can’t quite figure it out. I’m almost done with it and I am hoping for a last minute pass. I think it’s partly because the heroine reminds me a bit too much of myself in certain ways. Or me in a younger, less self-assured time, perhaps. I think it might be because I just cannot justify any investment in Valerie, the “frenemy". I find myself talking to the Kindle, saying “LADY, your friend there is obviously in need of heavy psychiatric medication and quite possibly some electroshock therapy as well” but thus far it is not working. Maybe I will give you a more detailed analysis when I finish. Like I said, I have high hopes for the end.

Maybe I should make that a regular feature, like Jamiereadit Day on Jamiedidit. A-ha! Coming next month…..September Book Club selection Same Kind of Different as Me.

Although, now that I think about it, V.C. Andrews might need a re-reading.

Things Will Be Great When You're DOWNTOWN!

So. As of today, the Todd and I have been together for seven years. Granted, there was a breakup in there if you are being technical, but who likes technicality in matters of the heart? So, seven years. Wow. That’s longer than quite a few marriages I could name. We’re like Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, except with much less collagen and no Academy Awards.

Did you know Goldie Hawn won a Best Supporting Actress award in 1969 for her role in Cactus Flower? From Laugh-In straight to the Oscars in one fell swoop. Now that is what I call a good career trajectory. And she gets Kurt Russell out of the bargain, and any man who voiced the lead character in a major Disney film (The Fox & the Hound’s Copper) would win my heart, too. Anyway, Kurt and Goldie have been together since 1983, so they have a good twenty-six years on the Todd and I. Let’s not look too far ahead, though, because it makes me nervous.

Last weekend, the Todd was home for the first time in three weeks and we decided to celebrate our anniversary a bit early. This was a serious, serious decision. We are, perhaps not “foodies” because that carries sort of a food snob connotation, but most definitely food lovers. You would not think our tiny little town would have much of a choice between restaurants, but you would be mistaken. Our Main Street area has five great, great little places to eat. Ou’ La La, where I recently hosted the baby shower for Nicole and Amelia, is a sweet little coffee shop with a killer dinner menu as well – often featuring the fabulous Tessa playing with Main Street Trio. C’Sons is a brand new place across from Ou’ La La. It’s all new and sparkly and the menu changes every day. And they have this fun covered porch balcony thing that makes me feel very L.A. Then, of course, our friend Tulla has not one…not two…but three restaurants, all with different specialties, all within walking distance from each other. Tulla’s Bayou Bar & Grill is (obviously) all about spicy Louisiana food. Venucci, Pete’s favorite, is all Italian, from the Chianti to the Cannoli. Finally, The Basil Leaf, the flagship restaurant, is billed as Upscale Contemporary. I mean, really, how does one choose?

I will tell you how one chooses. One goes to the Basil Leaf on Tuesday with the fabulous Brennan Sisters to make sure your allotment of Fried Green Tomatoes with goat cheese and white wine sauce (Mmm!) is met for the week and then you try out the new place, C’Sons. (Get it? SEASONS. Ha ha!)

Y’all. You just don’t know. We both wanted to get really dressed up, but his idea of dressed up and my idea of dressed up varies a bit. Example: at Chuck the Girl’s wedding, I had to be onsite early, as I was giving a reading. So after the wedding, all the guys took off their jackets because the reception was outside. The Todd kept wearing his…buttoned…way longer than he normally would have worn it. I knew something was wrong.

“Why don’t you take your jacket off?”
-- “I don’t want to take my jacket off.”
“Why don’t you want to take your jacket off?”
-- “I just don’t want to take my jacket off.”
“Dude, it’s hot. The guys are all playing football (Note: That’s right, we played football. It was the greatest wedding ever.) and you’re sitting here all sweating.
-- “I can’t take my jacket off.”
“What are you talking about?”
-- “I sort of left my dress belt in Atlanta.”
“What do you mean you…..Oh. My. Word.”

Ladies and Gentlemen, nothing says dressed up like a belt emblazoned with the Grateful Dead bears.

So we both dressed up – somewhat equally – and went out on the town. It was great. I had Wild Mushroom Ravioli with a red pepper coulis and all sorts of yummy goodness cooked within. The Todd had the Fried Alaskan Halibut with, I think, claw crabmeat, hollandaise sauce, grits and asparagus. I hate stuff that swims, but he said it was pretty much awesome. We were seated at a low table, which was really good, as the Todd was rocking his skateboard shoes with dress pants and a tie. This is how we roll, peeps.

It was fabulous. After dinner we walked around downtown on a useless hunt for Tiramisu. Venucci makes a killer Tiramisu, but it was sadly not on the menu that night. So we settled for a stroll around the square and an ice cream cone. There was supposed to be a post-dinner showing of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, but we were just too full to watch it! We postponed Harry until Sunday and, now that I have seen it twice, I have some serious bones to pick with that screenwriter. But I will wait on that, for the moment.

All in all, it was a lovely evening, and has been a lovely seven years. And will, I hope, continue to be just as lovely, because I can think of several more restaurants that need to host our anniversary dinners.

Don't hate on the octopus.

Back in my babysitting days, I used to have pregdar. I don’t know if you have heard about pregdar, but it is a really handy superpower giving one the ability to detect pregnancy at a very early date. I could always tell when one of my families was going to increase their ranks before I was supposed to know. I don’t know what it was. It could be that pregnant people so often unconsciously touch their bellies. It could be that they have some weird extra pheromone only dogs and Jamie can smell, I don’t know.

I can tell you that the magical pregdar ability faded when I stopped babysitting on a regular basis. And I used to miss having that particular superpower. It would have been useful (and possibly even profitable) in college. Like, maybe, right after Spring Break. I could have been the Oracle of LaGrange College.

Now, however, I am only too happy to be free from the pregdar. If I still had my pregdar, that sucker would be continuously beeping. Think of a cell phone that is just before losing all battery power. You know that little “boop boop boop” that sounds every five minutes or so? That is what my life would be like with pregdar.

Everybody I know is pregnant. People had warned me. They all said as soon as the bridal showers stopped…the baby showers would begin. And they were right. In fact, I just gave my first baby shower as a hostess, for my friend Nicole and her soon-to-be-here daughter Amelia. Paisley and I hosted and it was tres chic, if I do say so myself. I even made a diaper wreath.

But that’s only the tip of the ol’ iceberg. Pregnancy is running rampant throughout my group of friends. Scads of them. Three in my book club alone! (I hear Dave Matthews singing “Don’t Drink the Water” somewhere.) In fact, just a few minutes ago I got an email from another friend who is newly pregnant and due in February, but I am not going to tell you who Mystery Preggers is. I hate it when people ruin a surprise like that, don’t you?

And I am so happy for all these friends and so excited to meet all these new little people! And of course, this means I get to discuss baby names – glorious, glorious baby names!

But, secretly…well, secretly until I decided to put it in a blog…I am a little sad. Not so much sad as raging, out-of-control, green-eyed jealous. I have become the main character in a bad Lifetime movie. The one who looks longingly at large amounts of white eyelet and gingham. Who seriously considers buying a fabulously tacky octopus dress because maybe someday……you know?

I mean how cute is this? How fun would this be? My kid would be the anti-Lilly!

I was recently pleased to find that this crazy biological clock thing is not just happening to me. A friend summed it up like this, “There used to be a time when once a month I would think, ‘Whew!’, and now I find myself thinking, ‘Damn!’” I think there is a lot of truth in that. The funny thing is that we really aren’t “allowed” to think it. For example, my friend chose to remain anonymous because she did not want her boyfriend to see her name attached to the above statement. I don’t have to worry about that, because the Todd is just about as computer literate as Fred Flintstone. I love the man, but if he could make it work he would still use a rotary telephone. He doesn’t even have an email address. (Hi, honey!)

For some reason, my friend and I and women like us – even as women in our early thirties - are not supposed to think about or talk about having children while we remain unmarried. And that extends to our respective boyfriends. The Todd and I talk about having children in the abstract….like, “Hey, honey, does the name Jemima make you think of pancake syrup?” or “Hey, Babe, if we ever have a son, will you swear you will never make him wear one of those girly looking rompers?” (Answers: No and….perhaps.) But if I went home and said, “Honey, I think it’s time we bought an ovulation kit.” the Todd would turn 17 shades of green and probably have to lie down. And that’s not even a tiny little piece of what the folks would do. They would totally forget that I am nearing middle age with a quickness. They would act as though I had been found in the back seat of a car on prom night.

In reality, I know that this is not the time for us to have a baby. Not until the Todd can keep it to, maybe, five shades of green. We’re just not ready for it practically or financially. So, Mom, when you read this, I promise I am not pregnant or planning to be so anytime soon. But that doesn’t mean I don’t long for it sometimes.

So, now I am back to trying to stifle the baby jealousy. And I think I do a pretty good job, usually. I haven’t been caught in the nursery section of Walmart in at least six weeks. And I am happy for all my pregnant friends – absolutely, incandescently, radiantly ecstatic for them. But there is always that little piece of me that really, really wants to buy tacky octopus dresses off Etsy.

He wears a lot of hats.

This here, my friends, is the man who brought me into this world.



Later, I am sure on several occasions he thought about taking me back OUT of this world, and then thought, “Oh yeah. I am the man posing with a Budweiser in my swim trunks. Must be dominant genes.”

He has not sobered with age.

When I was little, I thought he was the coolest man ever, and I will tell you why. My Uncle Jack, husband of the great and ornery Aunt Marian, owned a concrete yard, which el Padre managed. After Uncle Jack’s death in 1981, Dad sort of inherited his office, which included a wet bar, a speakerphone under the desk, a dumbwaiter to send memos back and forth from the main office below, and his chair could swivel around from the desk and look out the window.

My dad was J.R. Ewing. Just not as skinny and he never hung out with Barbara Eden.

So down from the main office, there was a little building we called the “yard office,” on top of which was a giant cooler. During the fall, one could ride up on a forklift, open the giant cooler, and choose which big honking deer to take down and have processed. Which I supposed is perhaps a little weird, but very cool to a kindergartener. At least this one.

My dad was Pa Ingalls. Except with modern day things like refrigeration.

But here’s my favorite story. One day Dad says he wants to take me to a movie, which I thought was kind of odd, because movies were usually something the five of us did together, or else something we did with Mom and one or another of our buddies. Plus, we had to go to Atlanta, which I totally did not understand. We have a perfectly good theatre here, who wants to ride an hour to see a movie? And I had to dress up.

So the next day, I went to work with Dad, and after his day finished we get in the car and head to Atlanta, where we went to the Varsity and Dad told old stories about his high school days in Atlanta and old car-hops like the illustrious Flossie Mae. I started to feel pretty important.

Then we go downtown, and the magic began. I had no idea what the Fox Theatre was! There was a 50th Anniversary release of Gone With the Wind, a movie with which I had fallen in love. (I recently rewatched it and it had lost a great deal of its former luster, which makes me kind of sad yet very progressive.) But the movie paled in comparison to the Fox Theatre.

I had never seen anything like it. It was beautiful. Even the bathrooms were beautiful. Each room we passed through was even more opulent than the last. And the ceiling….oh, that ceiling. I couldn’t even pay half attention to the movie because I had to keep an eye on the clouds passing overhead! Were those REAL clouds? Wasn’t there a roof? It looked like there was a roof from the outside, but how do they have real stars twinkling on the ceiling?

Oh, I was mesmerized. Even Scarlett and her trials and tribulations and lyin; stealin’ cheatin’ and killin’ could not compete with that theatre.

So, in addition to being J.R. Ewing and Pa Ingalls, my Dad was also Gerald O’Hara.
But he really didn’t have to be any of those people, because he’s my Dad.

Is Proustian like Faustian? I hope not.

So. My Northern alter-ego, Layne over at Layne Street, tagged me in a blog survey. However, I was already halfway through this post, so since I think it covers both a post and a survey, it’s going to work for both today.

Each month, Vanity Fair uses the following questionnaire for their back page. Lest you think I am fashionable enough to read Vanity Fair, I stumbled onto this in a random series of events that began with John Cusack. Here is what Vanity Fair says:

The Proust Questionnaire has its origins in a parlor game popularized (though not devised) by Marcel Proust, the French essayist and novelist, who believed that, in answering these questions, an individual reveals his or her true nature. Here is the basic Proust Questionnaire.

Have I explained well enough that I did not write this? Vanity Fair wrote this? Good.

1. What is your idea of perfect happiness? I’m not quite sure. Pete, Disney World, a big fat novel and fried dill pickles would play a part in it, though.
2. What is your greatest fear? My credit score.
3. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? Also my credit score. And my total lack of willpower.
4. What is the trait you most deplore in others? Self-Importance. Not confidence, but diva-like behavior.
5. Which living person do you most admire? Is it bad that I can’t think of one? All the people popping into my head are dead. I need a new hero.
6. What is your greatest extravagance? Books. Not in monetary cost, but in time spent indulging my addiction.
7. What is your current state of mind? New York. What? You don’t like Billy Joel?
8. What do you consider the most overrated virtue? An overabundance of virtue. You have to be a little bad to appreciate being – well- virtuous.
9. On what occasion do you lie? Okay. Sometimes, but not often, I use The Todd’s well-known aversion to parties to get out of ones I don’t want to attend.
10. What do you most dislike about your appearance? Baby Sister and I have both inherited Aunt Marian’s unfortunate linebacker ribcage.
11. Which living person do you most despise? Oddly, unlike #5, I had an immediate answer…which I won’t share.
12. What is the quality you most like in a man? Staying away from the obvious….a really great vocabulary. Beat me at Scrabble and I am yours forever. The Todd reads faster than me and I find it WAY hot.
13. What is the quality you most like in a woman? A love for overanalyzation and a hint of sarcasm.
14. Which words or phrases do you most overuse? Either “Rock my face off” or “waste of flesh” depending on my mood.
15. What or who is the greatest love of your life? You would think The Todd, but you would be wrong. It’s the Incredible Hulk. First love never dies.
16. When and where were you happiest? Over this past weekend the girls and I went to Callaway Gardens to the beach. It wasn’t too hot and there were geese roaming the crowd. That was pretty stellar in itself.
17. Which talent would you most like to have? So. My friend Tessa learned how to play the cello while we were all taking piano. Tessa won much of her college tuition playing the cello. Tessa makes bank playing for weddings and symphonies. Tessa has recorded at a renowned studio, randomly sat-in with bands in Atlanta, and plays with some local bands regularly. And she loves it. Who’s teaching my kids the cello? Tessa.
18. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? Um, I would play the cello.
19. What do you consider your greatest achievement? I finished my untenably long quest for a diploma and started taking Zumba in the same year. What else do you require?
20. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be? A library book. But it would have to be a library, as opposed to a bookstore book.
21. Where would you most like to live? Hey, I have a brand spanking new diploma. I can live wherever the wind blows.
22. What is your most treasured possession? The Land of Cheese. (It’s a painting my folks had in their living room. It’s wonderfully hideous.)
23. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? The point where misery becomes the status quo and you don’t realize there are other states of mind.
24. What is your favorite occupation? The chick who swims with the dolphins at Sea World. That would rock. Also - a children’s librarian, for one that I would actually pursue.
25. What is your most marked characteristic? Overanalyzation.
26. What do you most value in your friends? Laundry Rooms. Just kidding.
27. Who are your favorite writers? Pat Conroy and Maud Hart Lovelace. And Audrey Niffenegger.
28. Who is your hero of fiction? As a child, Betsy Ray (The Betsy-Tacy Series – Lovelace). As an adult, Clare DeTamble (The Time Traveler’s Wife – Neffenegger – and I highly, HIGHLY encourage you to read it.)
29. Which historical figure do you most identify with? Madeleine.
30. Who are your heroes in real life? Little old people at the grocery store that still hold hands and Mr. Calvin, my boss’ father.
31. What are your favorite names? How long do you have? Have we covered my love for Jemima?
32. What is it that you most dislike? Peanut Butter and granddaddy-longlegs.
33. What is your greatest regret? The amount of money I have wasted on overdraft fees in my lifetime.
34. How would you like to die? In my sleep, after having a great supper, finishing a good book, then kissing my man goodnight.
35. What is your motto? Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. (I Peter 4:8) Also – “What goes around comes around” because my mama said so.

Three Stories, One Post.

How do you say “collegiate” in South Asian?

Remember me? I know….I’ve been a slacker. But it’s not without good reason. I have become (drumroll) a college graduate, after a long 12-year trek to a degree. Yes, slack, thy name is Jamie. What can I say? I just like to work, not school.

People have been congratulating me about the whole graduation thing, which really sort of makes me uncomfortable. (Unless there is cash gift involved. Those are always welcome.) I took SO LONG to finally get in gear and finish school that I really just wanted it to be a non-event. Example? I had the school mail me my diploma so that I didn’t have to walk. So I was pretty relieved to run into a buddy downtown last week and have him just lay it on the line. He asked what I had been doing, I said graduating, and he said…

“Well, hell, you’ve been going since Vietnam!”



Why I don’t cut hair.

We have previously discussed my inability to fix hair. I have long, vaguely straight hair. It has three styles: down, ponytail, and bun-with-pencil. Today I have a barrette on either side a la Natalie from The Facts of Life and I thought I was branching out.

Why then, you ask, did I think I could groom my dog? Because (Bachelor’s Degree notwithstanding) I am a fool. As is my boyfriend. The Todd has started shaving his head because he is, in his words, “follically challenged.” So he’s been living vicariously through Trey, our three-legged mutt. On the side of Trey’s missing leg, he (obviously) can’t scratch himself, and he gets sort of dreaded. Not dreaded as in “fear of the Dread Pirate Roberts” but dreaded as in “Dreaded Reggae legend Bob Marley.” The Todd thinks the dreads are cute and refuses to let me cut them.

We live in GA. It’s hot. The dog has DREADLOCKS. He is miserable. So miserable, in fact, that I come home and find he has chewed off what I am told was the “best” dread. I had reached the limit. I went to the magical place that is Wally World and purchased an entire deluxe pet grooming kit. Heavy duty. Some sort of carbon steel. And a DVD to show me how all this was going to go down.

If you ever find yourself in this type of predicament, let me advise you to do what I say, not what I do, and watch the DVD.

I thought I could just put a guard and the blade and go to town. Not such a good idea, it turns out. Trey is usually (except for the dreadlocks and missing leg) a silky, fluffy, pretty sort of dog. Now he looks like he has the mange. I wish I had a picture.



Blogger Etiquette.

So last week we had dinner for Angie’s “Dirty Thirty” birthday, and I got myself into a pickle. I never think I am going to see the people who write the blogs I read. Even though I live in Mayberry, GA and everyone knows everyone else. Even though I stumbled onto this particular blog through the blog of a MUTUAL FRIEND.

I love photography blogs. LOVE them. Especially the more modern ideas on wedding and baby and family photography that are common today. Growing up, everyone I knew was pretty much just the Olin Mills and Church Directory photo type, so I love that all these little families now are getting professional photo shoots done. Maybe when Trey’s mangey look grows out, The Todd and I should think about some family pictures.

Anyhow, there’s this lady in town who has a photography blog. It’s called Linden Tree Photography and she’s really great and there’s a link to her site over on the right hand side of the page. So after the Dirty Thirty dinner, we were all standing outside and I saw the Linden Tree Photography lady and her husband walking towards us and I totally stopped her and was all, “I love your blog” and went on and on as if she was Thomas Edison inventing the lightbulb. Pretty sure I looked like a freak. But if I ever have a photo shoot to do, she’s my top pick. So, sorry, Linden Tree Lady, if I offended you.

Have you ever had someone stop you and mention your blog? Does it freak you out (or did it freak you out when you were first writing) when you realized that people you didn’t know or didn’t think would see it were reading it?

My boss called me not too long ago at the office and asked me the address of my blog. (He’s read it. Luckily, I don’t have a boss I have to censor for. Much.) So I gave it to him, and then asked why. He was giving it to a friend of his…..who happens to be the company’s lawyer. I still haven’t figured out if he was passing it to the lawyer for some enjoyable reading or making sure I wasn’t going to get the company in any trouble.

Oh well, if he says anything mean about it, I’ll offer to cut his dog’s hair.

I'll tell my Mama on you.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about Mamas lately. Not just because this weekend is Mother’s Day, but just because Mamas have been everywhere this year in my world. And not always in a nice, happy, sunshine and lollypops way either.

I have a couple of friends who lost their mothers over the past year. One suddenly, at an advanced age. One at a younger age, but after a very lengthy fight with pancreatic cancer. Both of these women humble me with the strength they have shown in getting through, well, not having a Mama anymore. I don’t know how I would handle that and I realize it’s a part of life for which I am woefully unequipped. However, it makes me so thankful that I don’t have to go through such a loss now, and hopefully for many, many years. So I will be thinking of them this weekend, as they will be thinking of their precious Mamas who will not be here for Mother’s Day.

Another of my very close friends became a mother last month, and then lost her son two short weeks later. And this will be her first Mother’s Day, yet she will be without her child. I wish I was eloquent enough to write something comforting and profound, but this girl does not have the words. So I will be thinking of my friend this weekend also, even though I don’t have any words to offer her.

And then there is the ever expanding group of women I know who will be celebrating EXPECTANT Mother’s Day, including a cousin I dearly love. I think being a mommy-to-be on Mother’s Day must be just indescribable. You’re already a mother, but all of the “reality mommy” stuff is ahead of you and I think the anticipation of knowing that next year you’ll have a baby on Mother’s Day would almost be too much for me to bear. I don’t see how people can just go about their daily lives and not explode with excitement. So I will be thinking of these ladies too, as they prepare to bring these new little people into the world for me to cuddle and read to and spoil.

And me? What will I be doing? I will be hanging out with my wonderful Mommy, who is wonderfully witty, intensely protective and unfailingly supportive. The woman who taught me how to swim and how not to drive. The woman who introduced me not only to unicorns and the Betsy-Tacy series, but also to the value of a good cup of coffee and a cigarette. The one, the only, my Mama.

Rolling with the Holies.

So, I’ve been going to church. I even have The Todd going to church. Granted, he says he’s going for the IHOP meal we have with our folks (we all go together, like the Ingalls) after church, but I think he secretly enjoys it. I know for some of you church has always been a common occurrence, but this has not always been the deal around these parts.

As a small child, the fam was Methodist. I love the Methodist church for its rituals. Well, I guess they still have the same rituals…..but then it’s been over 20 years. I loved going up to the front of the church for communion – and they had communion with real bread, not those oyster crackers like the Baptists. And then we always sang the same hymn while people were walking to and from the front after their dose of grape juice. Grape juice still makes me feel all chaste and angelic. I used to get really excited when Dad would be an usher, because they all walked down the aisle in a double line and looked very stern and important. And I really, really like the Apostle’s Creed. The Apostle’s Creed almost makes me feel holy, much like a glass of grape juice. Although, I never really got the whole part about believing in the “holy Catholic church” being a Protestant and all.

Then, as teenagers, we switched to the Baptist Church, as they had a plethora of church activities for younguns. Mission trips, weekends at various Christian camps and trips to the beach. Most of these things involve a church bus. Singing contemporary praise songs in a prison is cool and all, but I don’t think that’s the main draw. You would be amazed at the things one can do on a church bus. Things like smuggling liquor across the Mexican Border. Liquor in bottles shaped like little men in sombreros.

You may have noticed that there is no faith mentioned in either of the above scenarios. In fact, I would go so far as to say the Baptist experience nearly killed any desire to remain in the world of organized religion. Boy howdy, you have not experienced a clique until you throw God into the mix. Cattiness gets a whole new flavor when mixed with righteous indignation.

Church attendance aside, my folks have a deep, yet very personal, faith. We as children knew about God and we knew Mom & Dad had a personal relationship with him, but it wasn’t something that was discussed. Mom would give us devotionals every Christmas that remained in unopened, pristine condition on my bookshelf for several years. If you are in need of a devotional book, let me tell you, I have it covered from age 12 to 30.

Oddly enough, when I was 15, a twisty series of events ended in a job in the nursery of a brand-spanking-new nondenominational church. It was the craziest thing I had ever seen. The church was held Sunday mornings in our old downtown theatre. Oh, and it was also multicultural, which I didn’t really think made much of a difference, but seemed to be the first thing people asked about when I told them where I worked. The entire childcare section consisted of three little rooms that had once housed the theatre offices. We would often find sneaky runaway kindergarteners in the balcony. So for the next several years I spent Wednesdays at the most traditional church possible and Sundays at this crazy experimental theatre church.

So this whole time, I kept running into the same problem. Being saved. Especially at the Baptist church, the whole dunking thing was a major deal. Now, as a Methodist, I had been baptized as a baby and confirmed in the fourth grade and, to me, this made me just as much of a Grade-A member of the God Squad as anybody else. Apparently this was not so, as I heard my youth minister talking to one of our Disciple Now leaders that he was worried about my soul. (See: Baptist Church and ruining one’s faith in organized religion) And these leaders kept telling us these stories about how they were stuck in the pit of despair due to (insert alcoholism, addiction, partying, depression, etc.) and they were on a rooftop screaming at God and all of a sudden this feeling of peace came over them and their life immediately changed. That’s a true story I heard at that Disciple Now session.

Dude, I must be missing out. Where was my awesome raging at God moment? I wanted a burning bush or something. But at the same time, I also felt very strongly that I was just as saved as they were.

And then I went to college and like many people drifted away from the church. I would think about going back to the church, but there were so many points to ponder. The rest of my family was still technically Baptist, and there was obviously no way in Hell (Get it? No way in Hell?) I would attend a service there ever again. Being soulless and un-dunked and pretty much lost and in the arms of the enemy and all, you know. I was technically Methodist, but that’s a pretty fancy church and I am a pretty casual person. God might not care what you look like but I was betting the Methodists might. And I didn’t really know anything about any other denominations. So for years I just quit thinking about it.

But then I remembered the little theatre church.

By this time, fifteen years later, the little theatre church was a big huge church. They even had a big pond…with ducks. Those three little office rooms had morphed from a nursery to two floors of full-fledged Sunday School classes. The church band had expanded from just a piano to an entire stage full of congregation members with a drum set, bongos, acoustic and electrical guitars, saxophone and flute. It was wild.

So I took a seat (With Mom, because I don’t even eat at McDonald’s alone, much less go in a whole room of people and pick a seat by myself. I knew there was a meet & greet coming and I didn’t want to be the “alone” person.) and sat back to see what God had to say. There was a preacher I was unfamiliar with and – y’all – he was incredible. I had never heard a sermon like that. He wasn’t dry and stiff. He didn’t hint that without a large donation I was headed for fire and brimstone. He didn’t make me feel that I would one day hear him tell someone he was worried about my soul. It was applicable! It was heartening! By golly, it was uplifting!

And, in all seriousness, as I have kept going, it’s made me want to do more, to be more. I finally opened those devotional books on my shelf. In fact, I open them every morning and every evening. And I have been surprised at the difference it has made in my life. I found my faith.

I mean, it’s not a burning bush….but I think I might be okay without one.

I kind of like Jethro.

Sometimes, I think the Internet is a sick, sick thing that the devil has put here to suck up my brainpower. Like Wikipedia. Wikipedia is like crack for me. It’s the world’s longest game of “6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon.” Last week I watched Love Actually (for the 427th time) and looked up Emma Thompson in Wikipedia to see what other roles were listed. Before I knew it I had gotten mired in an entry dealing with the divide between church and state. No kidding.

So I have been trying to curb the wiki-ing, but other brain sucking diversions have sprung up to take its place. Have y’all seen nymbler.com? One of my preggers buddies, Nicole, is having a girl and we (well, okay, just ME) have been fascinated with Nymbler. Check it out.

I like baby names. I am obsessed with baby names. I could discuss baby names for hours. Days, perhaps. I am not remotely ashamed that I have a collection of baby name books dating back to when I was 13. I was very upset at the original name of my Cabbage Patch kid and sent in the adoption certificate to have it changed from Heidi to Carla, after a character in the 80’s cartoon Kidd Video. If you remember Kidd Video, you are my new best friend because even Baby Brother could only muster up a vague recollection.

Oddly enough, this obsession does not extend to actual babies, just their names.

(Dear friends: This does not mean I don’t like your babies. I love your babies. I just don’t love them with a sick and freaky obsession, for which you should be relieved.)

As you can imagine, this tends to drive my friends (all of whom seem to be pregnant right now) batty. Especially when I break out the baby name rules…..which, let me explain, are only MY rules. You choose your names as you wish, more power to you. You want to name your kid Bronx Mowgli, Ashlee Simpson, float your own boat. Maybe he can grow up and hang out with Kal-El Cage and Pilot Inspektor Lee. (Then again, if Jason Lee wanted to have babies with me, I would let him name them Inspektor Gadget, if only he would get rid of that Earl mustache.)

Who named your baby? Jamiedidit.
1. No nickname names. Call her Katie. But make the birth certificate say Katherine. Unless, of course, there is a tradition of some sort.
2. If you fight over a family name, whoever pops the kid out first wins.
3. Last name-first names are great. I think this is because NOBODY will ever be able to use my last name as a first name and I am jealous of the rest of you.
4. Nicknames (as long as you have a regular name for formal use) are even better. Baby Sister has a rocking nickname, and I am way jealous. There is nothing one can do with Jamie except amend it to James. I have a great-aunt named Winifred, which is way up there on the list of World’s Most Hideous Names, but the nickname she has is so rockstar awesome that I will most likely use it one day, and therefore will not tell you people about it.
5. British names are great. In the UK you can use the name Jemima (LOVE Jemima) and they think Beatrix Potter’s Puddle-Duck, not Pancake Syrup. For that matter, you can use Beatrix!
6. (The Golden Rule) Spell it conventionally, people. Let me tell you, I spent the first half of my life hoping there would be stuff with “Jamie” preprinted on it at tacky Florida souvenir shops, and it never happened. There was always JAIME, but no JAMIE. So I know you think all those funky Kaitlyn, Katelin, Caytlan, etc. spellings are cute, but then your kid will never get any fun personalized stuff because nobody will be able to spell her name.

Oh, and Nicole? Decided on “Amelia Claire.” Very classy, very perfect. I think I will call her Millie.