Moving back to the homestead.

18 Apr posted by

Starting Monday, I will be living at my parent’s house during the weekdays.  My new job (so freaking excited & nervous!) is even further from our for-the-love-of-God-please-sell-already house, which means that Harrison & I would need to leave the house by 6:30am to begin a roughly 2-hour commute including daycare drop-off.

That ain’t happening.  My sanity can’t take it & my Twitter stream cannot handle any more LOOK HOW LONG IT TOOK ME TO GET HOME! that they had this past winter.

So to cut back the time by roughly an hour each way, Harrison & I will be living out of suitcases on work nights & then trudging back to our home for the weekends.  Doug will be doing a 50/50 dance of checking on the house & staying with us.  I’m not looking forward to being without my husband so much, but we know it’s temporary.

photo 1024x764 Moving back to the homestead.

This is the room I’ll be staying in – one of the guest rooms that has zero of the personality it used to have with college banners & football trophies from when my brother lived in here.  I’ll be moving in my desk & computer & I switched out one of the nightstands for a bookcase (I love having my books close).  The Momma is clearing out space in the closet as I type.  But I’m at a loss as to what to do…I’ll be here 5 nights out of the week without my husband for who knows how long & I am wondering if I should try to bring a little of “us” to this room.  Bring pictures of our little family, use a bedspread from home.

I’ll need to remember to bring over Harry’s favorite bedtime books & toys for the evenings.  I’ll need to leave a post-it note reminding Doug to water the garden every night.  It’s going to be crazy-weird living under my parent’s roof again, except now I’m an adult & it’s so temporary.  Hopefully our house will sell this spring so that we can put all this nasty commuting mess behind us for good.

But for now, I guess I’m moving back to the homestead.

Y’all.

HeirtoBlair500x150 v41 Moving back to the homestead.

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Filed Under: Adult Club, All about BA, Finding Balance, I share DNA with these folks, Life in General, Moving on up, Outsourcing Parenting Skills, Potential for Doocing, The I Do's, Things that aren't perfect despite my best efforts

Starbucks Tribute

15 Mar posted by

coffee Starbucks Tribute

It was a hard morning, saying goodbye to our pup of sixteen years with a final scratch of the ears, knowing she was peaceful.

The Momma & I stood together outside the vet’s office, tears flowing freely in our sadness, & we wondered how to go on with our day & walk away from her. How we could pretend everything was normal, knowing that final goodbyes had just been said as an act of human selflessness, to let Missy go out of love?

It seemed natural to make a right out of the vet office towards our neighborhood Starbucks, where we ducked out of the drizzling rain & ordered our favorite blend.

Sitting at a small cafe table near the back, The Momma & I clicked our coffee cups to Missy & laughed about our sweetest memories of that little dog. Like the time we had to hose her out from under the deck with water or when she carried her pups in on Christmas morning by the scruff of their necks or how the vet thanked us that morning for giving her such a wonderful life.

The tears fell over our coffee cups, but they were tears of happiness, knowing we did the best we could over sixteen years.

So rather than a card with a scribbled note or a batch of brownies for the mourning, we shared our hearts over steaming cups & gave thanks for the little life that made such a big difference.

To our Missy & our family & the love we shared for sixteen years.

So that you may honor someone you love & pay tribute to joy in your life, I’m giving away one $100 gift card to Starbucks. That purchases roughly 25 grande lattes, which should make for a great girl’s morning out or keep you properly caffeinated for several months unless you have a serious addiction.

To be entered for a chance to win, simply tell me this: How do you pay tribute to those you love & the memories you share?

Sweepstakes Rules:
No duplicate comments.You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods:
a) Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt on this post
b) Tweet about this promotion and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post
c) Blog about this promotion and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post
d) For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry.
This sweepstakes is open to US Residents age 18 or older. Winners will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail. You have 72 hours to get back to me, otherwise a new winner will be selected.The Official Rules are available here.
This sweepstakes runs from March 15th to April 1st 2012.

Be sure to visit the Promotions & Prizes page on BlogHer.com where you can read other bloggers’ stories and find more chances to win!

You loved Tribute Blend so much, Starbucks brought it back. But, only for a limited time. Tribute Blend is a spicy, full-bodied blend with dark cherry notes, featuring four of our highest quality beans aged Sumatra, sun-dried Ethiopia, Papua New Guinea and Colombia beans.

Raise a cup once more to the limited-time return of Starbucks Tribute Blend. It’s still just for you, and still because of you. Available for a limited time in whole bean and Starbucks VIA.

418 Comments
Filed Under: Give Aways!, I have real-life friends, I share DNA with these folks, Life in General, Stuff I Love

Tomorrow.

28 Feb posted by

DSC 0316 1024x682 Tomorrow.

Tomorrow Missy will cross over the rainbow bridge, go to doggie Heaven, meet Jesus…any of those things we say to soften the blow but do no justice to the idea that come tomorrow morning, we won’t have our little girl anymore.  Tomorrow she will be just a memory, the kind we pull out at family dinners with a story of how she took a bite of The Momma’s sandwich one time with such a dainty bite.  We’ll laugh & talk about the day she joined our family, where we thought Daddy suprised The Momma with a mini doxie as a Christmas present & we named her “Mistletoe” because “Holly” was too obvious.

& then we called her Missy or Miss or even Fiest for the next sixteen years.

We’ll talk about that December 23rd at 11pm when she had a c-section & delivered 3 beautiful pups.  How we rubbed them like 101 Dalmations & they squeaked little barks & she nursed them so faithfully despite her scars.  There are pictures to remind us of the Christmas morning after the pups were born, where we opened presents with her in the middle because she never wanted to be without her family.

We’ll have those pictures.  & those memories.  But we won’t have her.  Although we’re all ready & we know it’s time, it hurts so badly that right now, I don’t think I can breathe fully.

78 Comments
Filed Under: Adult Club, All about BA, I share DNA with these folks, Life in General

Where I am a momma’s girl.

3 Nov posted by

Since I was a little girl with legs swinging milkshake 300x300 Where I am a mommas girl.under the table with a Happy Meal & wondering if all spinning wheels would make you sleep forever & ever, The Momma has been my most favorite person.

There was the year she was sick with cancer & I didn’t know how close I was to losing her, but I remember showing her my new plastic pony as she laid in a hospital bed & her telling me it was wonderful through the radiation burns.

There was the year I stubbornly refused to wear hair bows or open the car door to step into the ballet studio, & I know she felt like I was slipping away for the first time.  I remember that all I ever wanted in those days was her to simply love me.  & she did.

There were growing pains in college when I learned to stand independent from her, where I decided to drink beer too early & overdraft my account too often & be firm in my right to say “shit.”  Those years were charged with emotion & forgiveness on both ends, but we shifted from mother & daughter to the best of friends.

 She reminds me to wear lipstick & I’ve taught her that even the smallest babies matter forever, & she has remained the first person I call, only second to my husband.

Yesterday, we took vacation & drove to the outlet malls where we tried on blouses & fussed over jewelry & shared a cotton candy milkshake.  At the end of the day, I kissed her cheek & silently thanked God for making her my momma.

& when my heart yearns for another boy & the rough & tumble of being the queen of a pack, a little piece of me flips inside at the thought that if I don’t have a little girl, I won’t share the magic of a momma & daughter when my own momma is gone.

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Filed Under: Adult Club, All about BA, Fears, I share DNA with these folks, Life in General, nablopomo

That’s 112 in people years, so check it & respect it.

26 Oct posted by

If I should smile with sweet surprise
It’s just that you’ve grown up before my very eyes
You’ve turned into the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen
Happy Birthday, Sweet Sixteen.
~Neil Diamond

 DSC 0009 1024x682 Thats 112 in people years, so check it & respect it.

The Momma’s pup is sixteen years old.  SIXTEEN.  We love that ol’ girl.

Also, the best way to feel like the poser douche of the century is to roll into Whole Foods in your Subaru with your Kate Spade & iPhone, then clack into the store where you order a $20 organic cake FOR YOUR DOG.

Then realize that the only cake available is already decorated with skulls, which is so inappropriately ironic that you point it out to the cashier & remind her that it’s for your geriatric dog & she starts telling you how she has birthday parties for her four cats every year.  & then you wonder if you’ll ever get to be a crazy cat lady in your old age after you just don’t give a shit anymore & weight 500 lbs at the age of 80.

Really, I don’t know why I don’t have my own reality show.

21 Comments
Filed Under: I share DNA with these folks, Life in General
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