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 …
(Sigh, okay this is actually from last week but I’ve been busy) Gracie came with me on my interval run this week (six minutes of running/three minutes of walking x5). Luckily, I earned my place as the neighborhood lunatic in the process. Gracie is “leash trained” but she still goes psycho when she sees another … Continue reading
Usually we run on Sunday/Tuesday/Thursday, but our groove got thrown off this week so I ran this morning. Want to know what’s nice about Saturday morning runs? Garage sales. That’s right. I looked up garage sales in our zip code and plotted my course. I hit approximately 4 garage sales and one mislabeled estate sale … Continue reading
You know how buying a house makes you all suspicious? Any little new sounds means the plumbing’s going to explode and shoot you out the top of the chimney. The pseudo-drawer that covers up your kitchen sink falls off and stabs you in the shinbone and you think your kitchen is out to get you. You know, … Continue reading
Man. There is nothing like moving to remind you that you need to be a better housekeeper. Every time our movers (AKA our friends who volunteered to help us move) picked up another piece of furniture, I was mortified to find out what was beneath. It looked as though we had purchased a small, hairy … Continue reading
This week’s theme is “Wise Family Circus Takes it on the Road”. Yes, that’s right folks. Step on up and see these appropriately-dressed pseudo-runners as they attempt to follow a half-marathon training program. Let’s watch on: -While waiting for my run to begin, I noticed that my tennis shoes were untied. So I bent over to … Continue reading
A friend and I have been reading through 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess by Jen Hatmaker. It’s about pulling out of the system; disengaging from this consumeristic, stressed-out, distracted culture. It’s an excellent read and it will make you want to pull your hair out. Anyway, we got to the chapter on waste and … Continue reading
Dear Daughter, Your pops and I spent a few hours purchasing a house this morning. It’s big (not too big!) and beautiful (also, not too beautiful- it’ll get there!). It’s just down the street from your elementary school (which is attached to a park WITH TENNIS COURTS, btw) and across the street from a community … Continue reading
We’ve started training for this half-marathon this week. We’ve had multiple people say that they’re going to sign up, which is amazing and just reassures me that we have awesome people in our lives. I’ve had some very helpful advice about http://www.runnersworld.com. I am requesting citizenship to their world but they’re still not sure. I … Continue reading
Before I started this process, I wouldn’t have known what to say to an adoptive parent except, “Yay! Congratulations!” and I might jump up and down a little. For me, adoption was fairly foreign because I only know a few adopted people and even fewer adoptive parents. What do you say to people? How do … Continue reading
Alright. Alex and I are committed- to one another, to this adoption, and…to running a half-marathon at the end of October to raise money for aforementioned adoption. Wowee. If you knew my long, tawdry history with running, you would be surprised that I would commit to running anything anywhere. To be honest, some times I … Continue reading
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