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 …
I don’t have alot of embarassing moments-mostly because, in yet another trait I get from my fahter, I’m not usually self-aware enough to be embarassed when I should. For example, I should have been embarassed when I wore a white shirt and khaki pants every day for at least six weeks in middle school, but … Continue reading
Alex and I don’t fight alot- only if we’re both hungry or we’re playing board games. If we’re hungry and playing board games, then someone’s going to get their eyebrows scratched off. Sometimes we start off “play arguing” and then it escalates into a situation. EXAMPLE: My car is my sanctuary. My dirty teenage girl … Continue reading
You might think this is hard to believe, but people do not find me intimidating. Maybe it’s my freckles or my fat cheeks or my un-make-uped face or my unkept hair or my ill-fitting clothes. I dunno. People think that I am a pushover when they see me. I guess I used to be, once a long time … Continue reading
(Yesterday was my husband’s birthday. For his birthday present, I did not publicize (much) the fact that it is his birthday (since he hates celebrating it). But today, I am free to do as I please and I have decided to repost this blog. For those of you that don’t know, Alex and I met in late … Continue reading
You know that “I’m not being recognized for my efforts here” feeling you get in the pit of your stomach. It could really be in any part of your life- friends that ignore your nice guestures, bosses that deny the fact you’re doing good work, boys that refuse to like you even though you’re clearly in … Continue reading
I only had two Bridezilla moments before my wedding. At least that’s all I can remember. Birth control was pulsing through my system and so I may have had moments where I transformed into a hulking green bridal monster and ran through brick walls slicing through innocent bystanders’ arteries with my incisors. Maybe I did. … Continue reading
Remember that summer I spent working with those two kids while I was in high school? I forgot to mention, among all of the potty talk, that I also fielded about er, 2000 questions a day. Every direction I gave was accompanied by a “Why?” Every little move I made I had to explain what … Continue reading
So, my sister got engaged on Sunday. It was really sweet. Her boyfriend/now-fiance, Tyler, called me last week to tell me. I tried to help him out, but really I just did annoying things like send cryptic text messages about biking to communicate what time we were getting in to Abilene so that Leah wouldn’t read … Continue reading
A few years ago, I dragged a neighbor to a zumba class at a rec center. “It’ll be fun,” I told her. How could it not be? Our teacher was this middle-aged redhead who must have taught Shakira how to shake her hips. Sarah and I had so much fun laughing at ourselves. While our … Continue reading
{My younger sister went to Thailand to work at an orphanage this summer. You can read about her adventures here. She apparently found a t-shirt salesman who made t-shirts in English. Some of them are hilarious; some make no sense at all. She brought me 4 amazing little gems and I will blog about each of … Continue reading
welderbeth 