not that you asked...

Summer Strategy

I remember, back when I was a big, awful, inexperienced jerk, how much pleasure I took in rolling my eyes (HARD, too – I rolled those puppies HARD) at parents who constantly complained about having their kids home from school for spring break, or Christmas break, or for the summer. Honestly, I would think, what could be so hard about this? I have my kid home with me EVERY DAY OF THE YEAR and I'm doing okay. Why aren't people treasuring the delightful gift of TIME they've been delightfully given with their delightful offspring?

And then HA HA HA HA my kid got older and then I had two of them and while I had a noble stretch of almost TWO SOLID YEARS of having both of them home with me, by the time I got used to having Asher at preschool, I also lost the ability to handle having them home together for an entire week.

I am sorry, people I rolled my eyes at. I don't know if it's just that Asher is at an age where it is harder to keep entertained or if it's the fact that Lucy is now old enough to take stuff away from him and then taunt him with it and then smack him in the face when he takes it back, but finding ways to make the days fly by is getting harder and harder. I'm not exactly dreading summer break, but I am wondering if my Target runs/errands are going to have to take place after they go to bed at night. At this point in time, I do all my weekly errands while Asher is at school – that way I only have one child to deal with, and BONUS: it's the child that still fits nicely into the part of the cart that has a SEAT BELT. When I have both of them, one is in the cart seat and the other is in the big part of the cart and then there is fighting and arguing and also WHERE AM I GOING TO PUT THE PAPER TOWELS because there are BODIES taking up ALL AVAILABLE CART REAL ESTATE.

So I've come up with the beginnings of a strategy. I'm going to tell you how I'm going to survive summer, and you're going to tell me your secrets too, and then our kids are going to be home from school and we're all going to live happily ever after for three whole entire months, OKAY?

My first strategy is STRUCTURE. We are going to try to make and then stick to a routine of sorts. The predictability helps me feel like the whole week isn't stretching out before me with NOTHING TO DO. I feel most helpless when I have large stretches of time with nothing planned – I get more overwhelmed with big chunks of nothing than I do with 15 tasks to complete. (Personal preference.) It will be a loose routine, but for example, I'd like to have one morning early in the week set aside for grocery shopping/Target runs for basic necessities.

Under the STRUCTURE heading, another big goal for our summer is to do one big special outing each week. We're probably going to spend a lot of time at pools and playgrounds – I'd like to set aside one day per week to do something a little less ordinary. Maybe one week we'll hit the aquarium. Maybe another week we'll drive up to the train museum or take a special nature hike or go to the huge playground a few towns over. Maybe we'll go downtown to the Smithsonian. I want to commit to doing the things I always say I WISH we had time to do. I am not a total idiot – I know that there will be weeks we won't be able to pull it off, but my goal is to do as much as we can with the time we have. If I can be even more annoying here for a moment, I would also like to try to incorporate some kind of special activity to correspond with our special outing. I am thinking here of renting a movie about the ocean before we go to the aquarium, or reading a book about birds before we take a nature hike. Simple stuff, but stuff that (I hope) encourages creativity and expands their wee minds. (I know this will be hard to stay on top of, so I've started a list with outings I'd like to do and will be adding activities as I think of them, and am aiming to try to plan them out a week or so in advance.)

We're going to go hard core with a potty/chore chart, complete with prizes. I want Lucy TOTALLY trained, and I want Asher to start pulling his weight around here, without whining about it. Also totally going to adopt the even/odd days for whose turn it is to do things that are completely unimportant once you hit the age of eight, like turn on the light switch in the bathroom when it is bath time or time to choose the red cart or blue cart at the grocery store.

I am preparing backpacks and a summer storage bin for the trunk of the car. Each kid will have a backpack, and in that backpack will be items like binoculars, magnifying glasses, butterfly nets, etc., and each child will have their own camera. We have two relatively indestructible kid cameras courtesy of generous grandparents, and my Big Bright Idea is to have the backpacks/cameras on hand all the time so the kids can take pictures of the stuff we do all summer long, and then we can upload the photos and make them into a book at Shutterfly.com when September rolls around. Very boring storage bin will contain a blanket for spontaneous picnics as well as bug spray, sunscreen, lip balm, extra clothes/diapers/towels for messy situations, a couple of non-perishable snacks, and garbage bags (these are great for wet clothes storage or to put over car seats in case of wet children).

And here's perhaps the biggest one: I am going to seriously consider hiring some childcare. In the last few weeks my workload has tripled, and I am so happy to be able to earn a little money and do something I love doing, but it has been really hard to find the time to do it all AND take care of the kids AND keep the house clean AND do the laundry AND talk to my husband and so I am toying with the idea of working something out with the grandparents, as well as asking around to hire a mother's helper a couple of mornings a week. I am thinking tween-age girl, who could come to the house and play with the kids for two or three hours twice a week, while I am in the house working. The kids would love it and I could get some things done so that I can really pay attention to them and spend quality time with them instead of trying to do everything at once. I really don't like it when I'm trying to send an email while simultaneously scrambling eggs and switching the laundry to the dryer and guiding someone to the toilet and answering the phone. I would really love a few hours a week to concentrate on one thing at a time, without it also requiring the aid of the Bubble Guppies.

So how about you? I'd love to hear how you guys are planning to survive the summer. Are you planning weekly neighborhood cookouts with kids? Are you sending kids to camps or vacation Bible school? I really really want to know.

Book Review: The Long Goodbye, by Meghan O'Rourke

Ok, so how bizarre is it that I read this book months ago and only just realized I was scheduled to post about it today, on the heels of my last two posts about death? SIGH. Sorry, but this will make it three in a row.

Basic synopsis of the book from the publisher (because someone at a publishing house always writes it way better than I could):

“What does it mean to mourn today, in a culture that has largely set aside rituals that acknowledge grief? After her mother died of cancer at the age of fifty-five, Meghan O’Rourke found that nothing had prepared her for the intensity of her sorrow. In the first anguished days, she began to create a record of her interior life as a mourner, trying to capture the paradox of grief - its monumental agony and microscopic intimacies - an endeavor that ultimately bloomed into a profound look at how caring for her mother during her illness changed and strengthened their bond.”

So that's a bit wordy and heavy, agreed. Now, don't take this the wrong way, but I was a little bit thrown off by the fact that Meghan's sweet mom passes away before the halfway mark of the book. I was prepared for a memoir about caretaking. About preparing for death. About cancer, hospice, grief. This was not the memoir I thought I was getting, and I am so glad it wasn't. Honestly, I have read stacks and stacks of memoirs (you guys know how I feel about memoirs; I think they're my favorite genre) about losing loved ones, and I would say in the great majority of them, the story that unfolds is exactly what I expect it will be: a play-by-play of an illness, culminating in a heartwrenching emotional climax where the loved one finally passes away, followed by a chapter (maybe two or three?) about how the author learns to put his or her life back together.

But saying goodbye to a loved one isn't just about tying up loose ends and communicating as much love as possible in the days and weeks before they're gone. It's also about the journey: the closure that has to happen after they've gone, and how to deal with the grief, and learning how to function when your whole world feels like its fallen apart. And THAT'S what Meghan has written about, and her story is beautifully written and so raw at the same time. The thing that struck me most about it was the honesty she conveyed – she struggled with her mother's death for months and months and MONTHS – and I feel like this book would be such a comfort to someone going through the death of someone close to them.

I feel like in our society, a death occurs, and we either set or feel pressured into setting this imaginary timeline for Being Okay. You know what I mean? Sometimes it doesn't get easier for people, not for a long, long, long time, and yet, if you seem sad for TOO long, people want you to “suck it up” and “get over it.” And you don't have to! It's your own personal grieving process and it's okay to go about it any way you want to, and Meghan did just that, and documented her grief and her search for answers and comfort and I just thought it was such a brave thing to do. Dealing with the death of her mom dying was a tough, terrible thing, and what she has written is like a big fat permission slip for the rest of the world: MOURN. GRIEVE. COMFORT YOURSELF. Let yourself feel sad; don't be afraid to miss someone. Don't let other people tell you how to feel. Feel how you need to feel.

I enjoyed it. Sometimes I was a little run down by the literary quotes and passages she included, but those were of comfort to her, much like I imagine scripture would have comforted me. I did find myself skimming, occasionally. But on the whole, I thought it was beautifully written, it was never dull, and I really do think it would be a comfort to someone dealing with something similar – I have a feeling it would have that “now I don't feel so alone” kind of application. 

You should know that it isn't that hard to find a plush uterus; it's why Etsy was invented

Due to the funeral we attended last week and the upcoming Easter holiday, I've been forced to dip my very hesitant toe into the Talking To My Children About Death waters. This is one of the hardest things I've had to do as a parent – and I haven't really even DONE it yet, I've just THOUGHT about it and answered a few vague questions with very vague answers. They're still so young and innocent and of the mindset that guns knock things over (the concept of bullets was apparently not covered on the preschool playground) and I'm going to have to burst that little bubble of innocence and explain not only what death is (and OMG, where we put the bodies), but that everyone – GULP, yes, little four-year-old, even you – will eventually stop living.

Maybe this is harder for me because I remember being TERRIFIED of death when I was little. Scratch that, I wasn't terrified of death, I was terrified, quite specifically, of hell, but the two do seem to naturally go hand in hand. I was five years old when I decided Christianity was the path I would set myself down, with enormous enthusiasm, strictly to avoid hell. (I am a Christian still, but for entirely different reasons, though the general avoidance of hell is definitely a major perk.) There are a hundred million things I would rather do than say something that strikes irrational fear into my child's heart and mind, and causes him to lay awake at night, fraught with anxiety, AS I PERHAPS ONCE DID. Some of the things I would rather do: Eat live insects. Pull my teeth out with pliers. MAKE OUT WITH... I don't know... LARRY KING. I want to be straightforward, but I also want to be sensitive, kind, very non-scary. Death! A TOTAL NON-ISSUE, I swear, Asher. You think you have to wait a long time before we go to Disney World? You're going to have to wait a WHOLE LOT LONGER before you die. (How's that for reassuring?) (I am going to suck at this.)

Something that does amuse me about the whole thing is how Asher has not made any kind of connection to dead things, like when it comes to the animals we eat. He does not just naturally assume chicken nuggets come from a chicken – best I can tell is that he thinks chicken nuggets exist soley as chicken nuggets, perhaps growing delicately from a chicken nugget vine, because why would they be anything else? I mean, I kind of get that – unless someone tells you chicken nuggets are cut up pieces of an actual, live chicken – a chicken that has DIED, OMG HERE WE GO AGAIN – then he certainly isn't going to come up with that explanation on his own. To a four-year-old it must sound so ridiculously farfetched! The other afternoon the kids were in the stroller and I was suggesting some options for dinner just to make them giggle. Dandelion stew? (Noooooooo!) Fish pot pies? (Noooooooooo!) Mashed rutabagas? (Noooooooo!) And then Lucy piped up with, “What about a CROCODILE?” and Asher is all, “Lucy! You can't fit a crocodile inside your mouth; it's too BIG! And anyway, if it gets in your mouth, it will BITE you!”

See? No idea that the stuff we eat is already dead. No idea that we don't just cram it into our mouths and eat it whole, either. I kind of dread the day I have to even reveal THIS kind of information, even though I am firmly in the We Eat Meat and LIKE IT camp. Maybe I am making this into a bigger deal than it is? I mean, honestly, what are the chances that he is going to be devastated by this information? I am aware that it probably won't impact him much at all, what with the whole not really understanding what death is part of it. I certainly don't remember being impacted the first time I learned that hamburger comes from cows or that fish is actually... well, FISH – the actual same kind of fish that is swimming in this pet store tank/lake/ocean.

I don't know why it bothers me so much that he's going to learn this. Is it really that whole “bubble of innocence” thing? Is it really the first step to understanding that the world is way harsher than his little existence has so far proven to be? I would rather explain menstruation to him, I think. I would rather explain menstruation to him and his five best tween friends, seven or eight years in the future, with full-color visual aids and a plush uterus, I SWEAR I WOULD. 

I don't even think ASHER knows what swords are

I am going to start carrying around a little notebook for the sole purpose of writing down which child had the last turn at various events and outings. Such as, “Oh, see right here, Asher? It says that the last time you and Lucy both sat in the cart together, YOU were the one who got to sit at the very front. So it is most definitely her turn to sit up there. Now you can either shut it, or you can ride underneath, where I usually put 12-packs of Coke.” I feel this urgent need to be FAIR. Asher is old enough to understand taking turns (even if he protests) and while Lucy is NOT, it isn't fair to cop to her demands just because she doesn't really get it. That's not fair to the kid who DOES. Unfortunately, Asher has a pretty good memory, and the fact that he has recently shown his penchant for deviance (he BLATANTLY cheated and then lied about it when he was playing board games with Dave this afternoon) means that I cannot tell whether he really was the last one to have a turn riding the elephant on the stupid fifty-cent mall carousel or whether he's just telling me that so that I will override Lucy's request to be the one to ride the zebra today. See? I need a notebook.

We had a pretty crazy week last week, hence the lack of a post. A close family friend passed away, and attending the funeral and the viewing and the reception took up a good chunk of time, as did figuring out childcare and buying my husband a new suit to wear. Not to mention the emotional wear and tear of watching close friends grieve and worrying about what to say and how long to hold on to that hug and feeling completely inadequate in the area of offering comfort. I'll tell you what, though, when it's my time to go, I want there to be an open sharing time at my funeral, where anyone who wants to can stand up and tell a story about something stupid I did. I found that part of the service to be particularly heartwarming and almost joyous. It was a nice send-off.

The kids were shuttled around to various family members' homes and did fine. Lucy, UNFORTUNATELY and also WOE, has grown tired of using the potty, perhaps as a result of a shakeup in our routine. This isn't a huge deal to me – she started showing interest and then staying dry for long stretches at a time and initiating using the potty all by herself for a while, and frankly, I was just not ready. Potty training requires ME to pay lots of attention and last week – with the funeral and then a baby shower and me volunteering to bake eight dozen cookies for a church function and Asher having his Easter party at school AND AND AND – I was not in the frame of mind to escort her to the bathroom every 30 minutes. So while she can go in the potty, and does go in the potty when I remind her to, she's no longer in the mindframe of initiating it herself. EVEN FOR CANDY. And that's TOTALLY OKAY. It hasn't even gotten warm here, really, so if there is some sort of accident or if she pees in a pull-up, it requires the removal of shoes and pants before the undies/pull-up come off, and THAT IS ANNOYING, particularly if you're trying not to touch anything in a public bathroom, and if you're doing that thing where the kid is standing with their back to you while you bend over and redress them, TAKE OFF YOUR LONG NECKLACE, or when you stand back up after threading her legs through her pants, that thing is going to get caught around her neck AND CHOKE HER. I speak to you from experience. Actually, I speak to you from (embarrassingly) NUMEROUS experiences. Anyway, I feel like this potty training thing has been her idea from the start, so when she's ready to do it full throttle, she'll make it known to me.

Of note concerning Lucy: She now makes a “PSSSHHHHHT!” sound and points her finger in my face, before announcing, “This is my SWORD!” She also is currently sleeping with a plastic yak in her crib (“MAMA! I need my YAK!”). She is freaking awesome. For Easter Sunday she has a bunny purse to carry to church. I cannot WAIT to see what she tries to smuggle into her Sunday school classroom.

I fell off the Weight Watchers wagon over the last week and a half or so, but I'm still holding steady and I'm about four pounds from my goal weight. I can fit into every single thing in my closet, even though some of them technically aren't suitable for being worn outside of the house. Still: I can get the smallest pair of jeans in my closet on, AND BUTTON THEM. I am running a half-marathon in seven weeks so it helps that I am running in the neighborhood of 25-30 miles a week. That definitely helps when I have a rough week food-wise.

And hey, that's about it as far as this catch up/what-we've-been-doing post is concerned. Nothing crazy, nothing terrible, nothing particularly noteworthy. I DO have a post started about The Great Pregnancy Scare of 2011, which I still get nauseous just thinking about. I have never been so happy to have to buy a box of tampons in my ENTIRE LIFE, you guys. And the worst part was the fact that I had JUST WRITTEN that post about biological children and how nervous I would be to get pregnant again and OMG JUST THINKING ABOUT IT IS MAKING THE BILE RISE IN MY THROAT. And then after I found out I really and truly WASN'T pregnant, I thought I might die at the hands of my husband, who was pretty worn out from all of my panicking/what iffing/OMG WE'RE GOING TO HAVE TO CANCEL OUR DISNEY TRIP hysterics that I unleashed on him. I'll try to write that down in the next couple of days. I'll probably have to hold a bucket in one hand to heave into while I hunt and peck on the keyboard with the other just to get it out. The memories... THEY ARE STILL FRESH.

Lies, web of

Asher told me a lie today. It's not his FIRST lie – I've long been suspicious of some of the stuff he's been coming up with lately (“We eat hot dogs for snack at school sometimes!”) - but today I caught him in the act and there was no denying that he was trying to deceive me.

The rule in our house is that Asher must use the bathroom before he rests in his bed for naptime. I'd say 85 percent of the time, I don't even make him get into his bed for naptime, we just hang out downstairs together while Lucy naps, but there are times when A) he is horrible to be around due to lack of sleep and/or illness, or B) I have an important phone call concerning WORK and possibly making some MONEY that I need to attend to without someone yelling that HEY MOM, they've SEEN this episode of Bubble Guppies already, it's the one where they build the building and they showed it yesterday and hey MOM, WHERE IS TEAM UMIZOOMI, is Team Umizoomi coming on next? Today, to my delight, I needed to select C, for ALL OF THE ABOVE.

Anyway, Asher went into the bathroom, I stood outside in the hallway, and a few moments later he emerged, announcing, “I peed and flushed.” Except I hadn't heard a flush. “You... flushed?” I asked. “I flushed, but you just didn't hear it,” he told me. You guys, he was so confident in his answer. HIS LYING LIAR ANSWER. This feels different than it does when he hits Lucy out of frustration and then tells me he didn't. I don't know why, but it does.

We had a discussion, but I don't know that he was listening to me. The thing about Asher is that he is completely indifferent to punishment. I can take away toys, I can take away privileges, I can send him to time out, I can threaten and scream and yell or use my patented Stern and Disappointed Voice and he just looks right through me. Dave came home tonight and had another discussion with him and told him that as a punishment, he wouldn't be able to read books before bed tonight (thinking that would be pretty torturous) and do you know what he said? “That's okay, Dad, I'm too tired to read books tonight anyway.” I KID YOU NOT.

I will be honest with you, when I yell at Asher, most of the time it's simply because I'm just trying to get some sort of reaction from him; I'm trying to get the tiniest bit of reassurance that he is taking me seriously. I know a lot of parents yell at their kids and then feel awful because the kid bursts into tears or withers like a sad little dying flower and maybe this sounds horrible but I would LOVE to see my kid get emotional or worked up after I get in his face about something. But he doesn't, and he never will, because it's just how he's wired, and the hardest thing about the way he's wired is that I have yet to figure out how to make any kind of impression on him at all, at least, when it comes to consequences for his actions. And it is so frustrating, and I wish I didn't feel like yelling at him (I realize this makes it sound like all I do is yell at him, and I want to make sure you know that isn't true) but all I really want is to know whether or not he's LISTENING to me, and whether he respects my authority. I hate that “authority” phrase, because it reminds me of high school principals and law enforcement and trying to be the boss of someone just because you CAN be the boss of them, but I can't think of any other way to say it, and the truth is that I AM his authority, and I expect him to (oh here comes another word I really detest but can't get around) OBEY me.

So that's the issue when it comes to this lying thing. Ok, so I understand he is still a little kid and this is very likely a Big Gray Issue because I'm not even sure how much of the concept of truth he really and truly grasps, but we have to start somewhere, right? I'm not entirely sure he knows the difference between fantasy/imagination and deceit. I am so thankful that we are now at a place where the vast majority of the time, he is a wonderful, delightful, easygoing child. The challenges are just so difficult with him. I am trying to remember that he is so easy most of the time, so thoughtful and kind and sweet.

He had Wacky Wednesday today at school. The kids were supposed to dress crazy and they were going to do the school day backwards, you know, the usual WACKY stuff. I tried talking to Asher about what he was going to wear and it became clear, VERY QUICKLY, that he had absolutely ZERO IDEA what qualified as “wacky.” I'm all, maybe you could wear pajamas? Or your bathing suit? Or your circus hat? And Asher's going, You know what would be wacky? If I wear a shirt with a picture of a house with FEET COMING OUT OF THE BOTTOM HA HA HA HA HA and I'm all, ??? I tried explaining the concept of mismatching clothes and wearing things that were totally out of season or his Halloween costume on a regular day and how HILARIOUS that would be and he continued to create a fashionable line of weird, themed t-shirts in his head (“Two mice running on top of a bird!” “A dinosaur with WINGS! Wouldn't that be WACKY?!”). It's like he's planning to grow up to be a cartoonist or something. (Remember – my brother majored in sculpture. Cartooning wouldn't be all that weird in our family.)

Seriously, though, despite the quirks and the challenges and all the things that make me want to roll my eyes and rip my hair out, this is a kid who is helping me potty train his sister. I have found him, NUMEROUS TIMES, escorting her to the bathroom and helping her pull down her undies and handing her a wad of toilet paper for when she's finished. Then he helps her with her pants and helps her flush the potty and I just about die from how lucky I am to have a kid with such a big, wonderful heart. I can let the cartooning thing slide.

Hi! I went to Seattle! Without telling you!

Sometime last night – while I was sleeping? perhaps? - something terrible must have occurred because suddenly today I want to lop every inch of hair off of my head. Yesterday my hair was merely displeasing, today it is HORRIFIC. This has happened to you, yes? I don't know why it seems to happen so SUDDENLY, but it always does. I don't know what it is; one moment my hair seems workable, if maybe a little bit blah, and twelve hours later I am so ready to do something, ANYTHING with it that I have to restrain myself from getting out a pair of dull Ikea scissors and making something happen RIGHT THIS INSTANT.

Getting a haircut is one of those things that – once I decide I need one – I can think of nothing else. I guess this is because I routinely go three or four months between appointments? It is just alarming, the difference between the need for a haircut I had last night (on a scale of one to ten, last night I was at a three or four) and the need I have today, which is somewhere between an eleven and getting a match from the kitchen to BURN IT ALL OFF MY HEAD, HURRY.

The problem is that I have no stylist, no appointment, and very little money. It's hard to justify a $70 haircut this week when I just spent four whole days away from home in Seattle visiting friends. Oh! Did I not tell you? I went to Seattle! For fun! JUST BECAUSE! I didn't go anywhere NEAR Nintendo! I spent most of my time with Elizabeth and Maggie but I got to see a bunch of other bloggers-slash-friends too, and also I went on the Duck Tour (helpful hint for future Seattle Duck riders: The driver is SO TOTALLY NOT KIDDING when he tells you a big bump is coming up, you should SEE the current state of my left butt cheek) and I ate a donut as big as my head and I drank a lot of coffee even though coffee is SO not my bag but people in Seattle seem to view The Diet Coke as something that has been delivered straight from Satan himself. In one restaurant we went to, the menu listed Coke and Diet Coke with the footnote “By popular demand” but you totally got the feeling that there was supposed to be a footnote to THAT footnote that said “by TOURISTS, obvs.”

Anyway, I'm not going to go into excruciating detail about every little funny thing and inside joke that happened while I was vacationing on the other coast, but I will tell you that a group of us went to dinner on Thursday and when it was my turn to be carded, the completely humorless and void of personality waitress took my ID and then looked at me and said, in total seriousness, “1978? Huh. Wow. I guess you look pretty good for '78.” And she did not smile, like, even a LITTLE BIT, which leads me to believe she saw nothing wrong with what she said. But... something was wrong with what she said, right? I mean, I'm 33, not 108. 1978 was not THAT long ago, was it? WAS IT? Don't tell me if it was. (Seriously though. WAS IT?)

Also in Seattle I had a massage and a pedicure and then I went shopping in the disposable paper flip flops they give you because Elizabeth was itching to get out of the nail salon and my toes weren't dry enough to shove back into my sneakers. I am almost positive (ALMOST) that I looked ridiculous walking through the city in the pouring rain in 50 degree weather with what amounted to blue construction paper stuck to the bottoms of my feet but here is how I know Elizabeth is a good friend: SHE DIDN'T CARE. She also didn't mind when we spent the majority of Saturday night trying to find something to eat in the lovely city of Bellevue, and when I say “trying to find” I really mean we couldn't find a restaurant even though we had a MAP, an actual MAP, and the restaurant we were trying to get to was clearly marked RIGHT THERE ON IT. True story! I can't find my way to a STORE with a MALL MAP. I am so not cut out for the Great American Road Trip.

Wait, I said I wouldn't go into detail about everything, so I'll stop there, except to tell those of you who have blogs and haven't reached out to anyone you've met online: DO IT. It seems scary and weird and the people who know you in real life are bound to think you're off your rocker or will come home beheaded and in a body bag but let's be honest, the chances of that are so so slim. Listen to me, you guys: Those connections you've forged online – with people who have encouraged you through the hell of breastfeeding, who showed genuine care and concern when you miscarried, who cheered with you when you lost 30 pounds and ran your first half-marathon and sent your first-born to preschool successfully – those are REAL CONNECTIONS. Those are real friendships and those are real people behind the comments and the posts and the DMs and if you get the chance to make those friendships even more tangible than they already are, I want you to take it. It is worth it. My life has been enhanced and enlightened and made all the more wonderful as a result.

Thanks, girls. You know who you are, and while I hate that I only get to see you once or twice a year, I'm so thankful that I can call you my friends and that I can really, truly mean it.

(Even you, Maggie. Even though you own this CD.)