When we first moved to Dallas, we made some colorful friends who were actors at Scarborough Renaissance Festival- King Henry and a Contessa, to be exact. During October, the Scarborough Fair grounds become a spooky maze of haunted houses, Scary-oke, expensive food vendors, and a throng of tweens looking to snuggle up to their crush …
Tuesday, 7/11/2023, Nashville Airport 2:08 pm I wasn’t anxious about this until we popped open the back of my sister’s van. It’s not the actual flying that concerns me. The Baby is almost chronically un-anxious, as in, he is not anxious even when he probably should be, like when he tries to drown himself by …
January 23, 2023 Dear Mr. Sedaris, My son, {The Baby}, came screeching into the world via an emergency c-section at 26 weeks- a two-pound potato whose vital organs needed lots of assistance to keep him alive. I met him for the first time four months later, when his birthmother invited me to visit the Neonatal …
I remember talking about atheism and agnosticism in my world religions class in high school. In my little conservative corner of West Texas, we didn’t spend much time talking about the godless heathens, but I remember the description of Clockmaker god, who designed the world, perfectly calibrated all of it’s gears and dials, and then …
Let me preface the beginning of this series with a few things: I’m gonna take weekends off for my “writing every day” goal in November. I can do this because I’m a grown ass woman and I want to. I want to explicitly acknowledge that I have AMAZING parents who did the best with what …
Last August, my little family met my parents in Estes Park. We have done this trip every couple of years since I was a kid. We stay in cabins and hike and explore and breathe in the fresh mountain air. COVID made things a little different, but we were just happy to escape Dallas for …
Well, today the Wise family said hello to a new bed and goodbye to two of The Baby’s teeth. A few months ago, we started the laborious process of getting a SleepSafe bed approved through The Baby’s insurance because his crib had become unsafe. He was able to stand up in it and when he …
The Baby turned five this week. It’s crazy. All of those five years tend to blur together. After all, time flies when you’re drowning in medical chaos (just kidding…kind of). On the night of his birthday, our dinner conversation centered around remembering all of his firsts- the first time he sat up, the first solid …
(You can listen to an audio version of this post here.) I went to David’s Bridal today to purchase a bridesmaid’s dress for a friend’s wedding next summer. She had a dress already picked out in the system so they pulled her profile up and I followed the very nice saleslady to the racks laden …
(I realize this is very lengthy so I have strategically placed pictures of smiling animals throughout the piece so that you can mark your place if you need to take a break and come back to it. At my sister’s suggestion, I’ve also made an audio version of this blog. You can download/stream it by …
I grew up in West Texas- land of wide-open spaces, sky high teen pregnancy rates, and a colorblind racial ideology that masks racism instead of confronting it. In colorblind ideology, it is impolite to talk about someone’s race. I remember hearing a story about a friend who was trying to tell her son which store …
I just got back from San Francisco. I went to (hides face) a Christian conference. I found myself hesitant to tell people that it was a Christian conference because of the connotations of that. My sense is that many Christian conferences are lame attempts at pep rallies for God, the adult version of church camp, …
“What was I thinking?” I thought as I stared forlornly into the mirror. I should have known better than to impulsively stop at the hair salon directly adjacent to the Tom Thumb, still clutching my bag of avocados. I was hoping for a cute haircut before I left on my 10th anniversary weekend trip. Instead, …
I was a mere 21 years old when I got married. My uncle officiated our wedding. Before the wedding, my then-fiancee, now-husband, Alex, and I drove down to Corpus to do some premarital counseling sessions and stay with my aunt and uncle. After one of these sessions, Alex and I got ready to leave and …
I went to a vigil in Balch Springs for Jordan Edwards last week. It was everything you would want a vigil to be- beautiful and sad and moving and comforting. Like most, I was horrified by Trayvon Martin and Tamir Rice’s deaths. I have been deeply affected before by deaths caused by police brutality, but …
An excerpt from A Year of Living Biblically, by A.J. Jacobs, in which a secular Jew attempts to live by all the laws in the Bible. On this particular day, he’s acknowledged that, even though he still doesn’t belive in God, he’s started to enjoy prayers where he gives thanks. Before he eats hummus and … Continue reading
We’ve been playing a really fun game with UPS this week called, “Why won’t you just leave the package on our porch like we asked you to?” so my training schedule got thrown off because I wanted to be home in case they decided to stop by while someone was actually at home. Don’t worry … Continue reading
Today I learned that, too often, I try to entertain people with my bitterness. I know that sounds weird but I can be funny and bitter at the same time and I often choose to do that because I want people to like me. I tried to watch my reaction to things today and when … Continue reading
I’m fairly certain that I came out of the womb writing thank you notes. My first probably said something like, “Hey mom! Thanks for the ride!” Being the first grandchild, my grandmother drilled it into me that you always wrote thank you notes. She probably let me off the hook until I was able to … Continue reading
My training program has hit its peak this week. Run #1: 1 hour 30 minutes Runt #2: 1 hour 50 minutes The result? Continue reading
Alex and I are getting tired of running. It’s to the point now where we’re running longer than my attention span for movies is so we tried something different tonight. We had a “family bootcamp”. THE SET-UP We set a timer for 30 minutes and put on Pandora’s Pop and Hip-Hop Workout station. If you … Continue reading
You probably already know that I love quirky t-shirts, so I really wanted to do something to raise funds for our adoption. Voila! This shirt was the brainchild of me, my husband, and my brother-in-law. We had a very serious meeting about graphics and fonts and this is what we came up with. What’s really … Continue reading
The theme of this week is “distraction”. (I wrote that first sentence, took a nap, went to lunch with my parents, and then came back 3 hours to finish this blog. Case in point.) There was a time during this training process when I felt pretty good, successful. I think I usually feel good when … Continue reading
My church got locked out of our building on Monday. There’s nothing we could have done differently: the seedy business park where we were renting was foreclosed upon and they changed the locks after church on Sunday. So, my church is homeless. Let me say that Alex and I have been looking for this group of … Continue reading
Well, I went running three times this week. I ran for an hour and forty minutes this morning but on Thursday, I may or may not have decided to “run” in my living room and watch an episode of….. Oh, look! See that shiny thing! Is it a metal butterfly? Oh, no? Just a gum … Continue reading
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