not that you asked...

Turns out, I'm going to run in a diaper

You know, if I needed some actual and reasonable excuses why I shouldn't run more than three whole miles wearing an oversized, costume diaper tomorrow, I'd have them. For starters, I am thousands of dollars short of my goal. For another thing, tomorrow it is supposed to SNOW and also RAIN and also the high is supposed to be something like FORTY DEGREES and I am going to do this with no pants on?

If I was going to give up and not do this, those two reasons alone would do great things to assuage my guilt.

But you know what? This week I came home from a great weekend in Austin and the next night, with my husband away on a business trip, I was awoken by a policeman banging on my door to let me know that someone had slashed the tires of seven cars in our neighborhood – and that mine was one of them. You know what? That sucks. Never mind that our insurance deductible will likely cover the majority of it and we'll only be out a hundred bucks (although granted, it's still $100). We're nice people. We don't deserve to be attacked or have our property damaged or spend three whole days fixing a mess we didn't create. We don't deserve crap like that.

And I started thinking about how there are a lot of people out there who don't have a lot of control over their circumstances. Maybe they lost their jobs. Maybe they never had a great job to begin with, or an opportunity to go to college. Maybe they've got sick parents to care for or kids with demanding special needs. Maybe their house burned down. The point is, crappy, hard stuff happens to people who don't deserve it every day of the week. Sometimes you can't control your circumstances, and you just have to live with it. You pick up the pieces, you feel irritated and annoyed and angry sometimes, but you keep on living and doing the best with what you've got.

Yeah, someone slashed my tires. It sucked. But in the grand scheme of things, it's a small thing. And to someone who is living below the poverty line, unable to care for their family the way they'd like to, my luxury of being able to throw $100 at something that SOMEONE ELSE RUINED is mind boggling.

So tomorrow I'm going to put on a giant, comical diaper and I'm going to run three miles and then? I'm going to take that money that everyone so generously gave (THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU) and I'm going to buy diapers that will go to help people whose circumstances are limiting and often unfair. Because those babies don't deserve it, either. Thank you again to everyone who gave so generously – I promise to share some photos of the haul and hopefully, some of the people who will benefit so greatly from your kindness. Thanks again to Huggies Every Little Bottom program for giving me the opportunity to do this. It has been so much fun, and so REWARDING to be a part of something that will directly impact local families.

In other news, can you believe October is ALREADY OVER? Every year when colder weather rolls around, I mourn the loss of being able to see my kids' arms and legs. I know that sounds stupid, and it gets easier the older they get, but when they were BABIES and they were so SMUSHY and CUTE and I had to hide NINETY PERCENT OF THEIR LITTLE BODIES IN OUTERWEAR THE WHOLD DAY? That's why I love summer.

(GOODBYE, LEGS. I HAVE LOVED YOU.)

Disclosure: I have partnered with the Huggies® brand to help promote the Huggies® Every Little Bottom program. I have been compensated for my time commitment to the program, which includes writing about it here. However, my opinions are entirely my own.

Blathering recap of sorts

I've never written much about the Blathering here. I can tell you exactly why, too: it's because I don't want the resulting post to read like a big inside joke or an opportunity to name-drop. It's because I am deeply afraid of offending someone by leaving them out of a recap, whether by accident or simply because the conversation we had was too personal to recount here. It's because I don't even want to come across as playing favorites within my circle of closest friends – I have a real aversion to dramatics and I can control exactly how much controversy is stirred up on this website by not saying anything at all.

That said, it is pretty amazing when a group of 50 women, most of whom have never met each other, can get together in a distant location, room together, eat together and hang out together for something like 48 hours and somehow NO ONE CRIES. This is a big deal when you're talking about this much estrogen crammed into one small living room. This is why the Blathering is so freaking MAGICAL.

The Blathering was born when a handful of bloggers who had grown close through comments, emails and other correspondence (okay, mostly care packages and venting about breastfeeding) decided we didn't want to attend Blogher and pay exorbitant fees for sessions we didn't want to attend and parties we didn't want to feel awkward at just so we could meet and talk to each other. So we picked a location and we bought plane tickets and made hotel reservations and then we just... showed up, like Elizabeth said, with nervous tummies and sweaty palms and no idea whether this was a great idea or our husbands' greatest fears. (Mine was convinced that everyone I'd “met online” was just a creepy old man posing as a young child's mother while lying in wait for the opportunity to MURDER ME. I said that's an awful lot of breastfeeding stress emails that guy had to suffer through; if that's the case, I've probably already killed HIM with BOREDOM.)

No one could have predicted the chemistry, the ease of conversation, the lasting friendships. And THAT'S why we felt like spreading the word and making it happen a second time in Chicago and then a third, last weekend in Austin.

The Blathering is a truly simple concept – let's get together and hang out. The organizers work to put together a few simple activities (most center around eating, naturally) and help those who want to attend locate roommates and become familiar with each other through links and questionnaires and Twitter and Facebook, and then we sit back and watch it happen and it's so rewarding and so much FUN. It is STRESSFUL to plan an event like this, especially since everyone coming has access to Twitter and the ability to inform hundreds of their followers that everything absolutely sucks. But no one did that, and I just want to take the opportunity to say a big thank you to everyone who attended, for coming with an open mind and an open heart and a brave face. Thanks for participating and wearing your handmade name tag even if it didn't match your carefully crafted outfit and smiling until your face hurt. Thank you for enjoying yourself and making new friends and leaving all the dramatics at home. Please, we'd love it if you came again next year with the exact same attitude and enthusiasm.

And to my dear, sweet friends, the ones who have put up with me now for more than two whole years (SHUT UP THEY LOVE IT), thank you for being exactly what I need, whenever I need it. I no longer need to classify them as friends I met online – they're just plain old FRIENDS, now. Friends I have supported and loved and who have done it in return for me, friends I have hugged and shared meals and hotel beds with, friends I am desperate to see more than one weekend a year. Friends who remember my kids' birthdays and who send me homemade lingerie (don't ask) and friends who just GET ME – and I, them. I am so so lucky, and so very blessed, and so terrible at communicating how much I love them, but I do, so very much. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

Ok, now here, have some pictures.

Nine days remaining!

Ok, you guys. As of the posting of this entry, there are only NINE DAYS REMAINING until the October 29 5k race and the possible humiliation of yours truly. A huge huge huge thank you to everyone who has donated so far – we're getting close to $2,000 and even if that doesn't get ME into a diaper, it makes it a possibility for so many needy babies in the Northern Virginia area.

I'm willing to cut you all a deal. Because I'm nice? Or because I'm a sucker for punishment? WE'LL NEVER REALLY KNOW. I know the previous deal was that if I could collect $5,000 in donations, I'd put on that diaper. I'm willing to go down a WHOLE EXTRA THOUSAND DOLLARS. If I can raise $4,000, I'll wear it. Four thousand! That's barely more than double what's already been raised, and I feel like it's totally possible.

Remember the payoff here: I will run more than three miles IN A DIAPER. A lot of people who know me in person and read this blog said things to me like, “Well, you'll be wearing something UNDER it, won't you? Like pants?” I assure you, there will be no pants. There will be some underwear, but you won't see it and neither will anyone else. And other than the unseen underwear, there will be nothing but a diaper. My bare, white legs and my jiggly thighs and a DIAPER. No pants, people. NO PANTS. Perhaps legwarmers, if the weather insists. Definitely a t-shirt of some type, possibly one with an explanation of why I'm making a fool of myself in absorbent underthings. But that's it.

I have this nightmare where I'm running and the diaper actually FALLS OFF but I promise you, if that happens and there is photo/video evidence, I will totally let you see it. But I will probably be using duct tape or something because I sweat a lot, and I am NOT going to sweat so much that the diaper sags and falls off of me, NO THANK YOU. (Still totally a possibility, but I am working to LESSEN IT.)

Again, thank you all for participating with me – this is a really great cause, and I'm so glad to be working with Huggies to eradicate diaper need in this country.

Disclosure: I have partnered with the Huggies® brand to help promote the Huggies® Every Little Bottom program. I have been compensated for my time commitment to the program, which includes writing about it here. However, my opinions are entirely my own.

This is a lesson on coconuts

Our weekend in Florida was filled with many surprises. Some were of the good variety, like the $25 upgrade at the car rental counter that magically transformed our reserved Ford Focus into a Corvette convertible. Some were of the lesser good variety, like remembering why a convertible is a really terrible idea if you wanted to have any semblance of good hair when you arrive at a five-star resort.

And what's classier than taking photos of your rental car parked on the fancy Hertz carpeting?

I KNEW our hotel was going to be a nice hotel; I was not prepared for exactly HOW NICE – it was most definitely the nicest place I have ever stayed in my entire life. It was probably the nicest hotel I have EVER SEEN IN PERSON in my entire life. And we were feeling very smug and very awesome with our hot rod convertible until we pulled up to the hotel and saw two Ferraris and a Lamborghini parked out front. Now, I'm not one of those people who thinks obscene wealth is the key to happiness or even that it would be awesome to OWN a Ferrari, but when you are already working hard to pretend you belong somewhere (cough, cough, a FIVE-STAR RESORT), finding out that you are still as far behind the curve as you were when the Corvette was a Ford Focus is... a bit demoralizing.

Anyway, the hotel was gorgeous, the staff were super courteous, and as far as I know, we didn't stick out like big, sore, hillbilly thumbs. We ate dinner in the fancy steakhouse one night and it was fine but I confess I got much more enjoyment out of the food we ate at two restaurants we decided to visit because they were featured on Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives. I credit Jennie for this idea – she does this kind of thing regularly and she is obviously a GENIUS, because the two places we ate were AMAZING and we didn't have to make a reservation or adhere to a dress code to get in. Sure, upon my return home I see that I'm dealing with a mild case of Vacation-Induced Muffintop, but at least I know how to fix that.

Sunday morning the weather was crappy and we had to drive more than an hour to get to the airport so we headed out early and drove down the coast in the fancy, above-our-means convertible. Then we stopped and walked on the beach for seven minutes. There were three reasons for this. The first reason was that we had to park in a metered spot, and we had approximately fifteen cents on us at the time, and fifteen cents in a meter gets you exactly seven minutes of parking time. (At least, in Delray Beach, Florida, it does.) Also, it was super windy and I don't like sand blowing in my eyes, as a general rule. Thirdly, my genius husband picked up a waterlogged coconut and smashed it open on a fencepost.

Before he smashed it, I will tell you that he asked me if I wanted to eat it. I said no, why would I want to eat it? I said this not because I am against coconut (although I AM, kind of) but because I am against waterlogged, washed-up-on-a-beach coconuts. I did not voice this concern; I assumed this was the kind of thing that did not NEED to be vocalized, thanks to a thing we like to call COMMON SENSE. But Dave's all, WHY NOT? They do it on Survivor all the time, and then BAM! He hits the coconut against the post and it explodes everywhere and the smell is like dead animals crossed with vomit mixed with a pig farm except its about 6,000 times stronger and even though the wind is blowing at 30 miles an hour we are GAGGING and CHOKING because the smell is so terrible. Dave has bits of rancid coconut all over his shirt and shorts and all over his hands and HA HA HA a few minutes later it starts to rain and we have to put the top up on the convertible. GOODBYE FRESH AIR; HELLO, WISHING FOR DEATH.

Dave changed clothes when we got to the airport (he had to go to the men's room twice, because he said the first time he went in, the stalls were full - “Everyone's pooping!” he told me) but because the coconut clothes were smashed into his suitcase with everything else, I had to wash everything in hot water the moment we stepped inside the door on Sunday evening because honestly, you guys, there is nothing in the world that smells worse than rotten, rancid coconut. I PROMISE YOU THIS. This also proves that Dave never really watched Survivor, except for that one season with Elisabeth Hasselbeck, because she was hot, and they were in the Australian outback WHERE THERE WERE NO COCONUTS ANYWAY.

Also, I didn't see a single alligator, but I did see two people standing by a grassy median near a Petco and Dave says they were catching a small alligator, which is weird, but seems Perfectly Florida and I'm just sorry I missed it. The end.

Yeah, the dumpster thing is really horrifying.

Each stage of parenting has its challenges. In the beginning, with little fragile newborns...

Wait, I remember that actually, I shouldn't say “fragile.” Dave reminds me of this every time I refer to newborn babies as fragile or helpless or impossibly small, because when we were in the hospital with Asher and were just learning how to handle a tiny baby, one of our nurses (in an attempt to make us feel more confident, I guess?) told us not to worry about being too careful or gentle with the baby, as “they find these things in dumpsters all the time and they're FINE.” True story. Well, the part about the nurse; I don't know much about babies in dumpsters statistically speaking.

Anyway, with newborns, I wanted sleep more than anything else, except maybe confidence that I was feeding the baby enough/correctly/without the crippling guilt associated with using formula. The toddler stage was fraught with keeping children from gnawing on electrical cords and falling down stairs and once we started moving into the three-year-old/preschool stage, we were exhausted by the emotional stuff – the tantrums, the defiance, the stomping of feet and declarations of, “But I don't WANT to!”

Ok, so we're STILL KIND OF THERE.

But you know what ELSE we're dealing with now that is KILLING ME? Herding. CHILD HERDING. Are you familiar with this concept?

For instance, in the last week we've been doing a lot of Very Cool Stuff. Last Thursday we went to a huge fall festival with big slides and a corn maze and a hayride and farm animals and then on Saturday we took the kids to Six Flags (again) for Asher's birthday, and all of this is so fun and the kids really are well-behaved when we're there and I love all the anticipation of DOING these fun things with them, except then we get there and I exhaust myself DIRECTING them. I don't even mean by telling them what to do; I mean that now that there are two of them (and in both of these instances, there were other kids hanging out with us, too), I spend all my energy mediating (“What do you want to do next? Well, Asher wants to do this first, and THEN we'll do what you want to do after that!”) and steering them (“Lucy! Lucy! Don't wander off that way; the slide we're going to is over there! No, we'll do goats in a minute, first we're doing the slides!”) and comforting them when one of them gets to choose the next activity (“You chose the last thing, now it is another kid's turn, okay? Your turn will be next, I promise.”) and on and on and on for something like SIX WHOLE HOURS.

It isn't the physical aspect of being places – I can walk for hours, I can carry children on my shoulders, I am happy to climb up hills and ride down slides and on bumpy hayrides and take you through the corn maze but I get so tired of herding people TO those activities. Constant reassurance, constant redirection, constant vigilance. Before I had kids I always thought going on outings to these kinds of places would be so much fun – the kids could run around and I could chat with my friends and HA HA HA HA THIS IS NOT THE CASE. There is nothing for an adult with children to do at an amusement park or large venue with lots of people except to keep one/both eyes on the child at ALL TIMES, especially if the number of children the adult is responsible for outnumbers the adult. WHICH IS THE CASE 90 PERCENT OF THE TIME.

As far as I'm concerned, we are taking the month of November off from anything that might involve me herding anyone from location to location because come December, I am going to be doing that for FIVE ENTIRE DAYS while we're at Disney. I need to rest up.

Not really related or anything but my kids have developed this really annoying new habit and I have to tell SOMEONE about it. What happens is they request something, like more pretzels or a cup of water and I say, “Ok, I'll get it, just wait one second while I finish...” here I am trying to do something like finish sweeping crumbs into a pile or finish typing a sentence on a Style Lush post that was due to Elizabeth about 12 hours earlier and WHILE I AM STILL DOING THE THING I HAVE ASKED FOR PATIENCE WHILE I COMPLETE, the child making the request says, “MOM! You're not getting my pretzels like I asked you to.”

I have nothing more to say, really, except that this happens six or eight times a day and I am pretty much feeling like throwing plates at the wall every time it does. Please, if your child is annoying you in some inane way, share it in the comments. It makes the world a brighter place for me.

Tomorrow I am off to Florida with everything from my closet I have deemed acceptable for Resort Wear. It includes white pants and a pair of really tall espadrilles and a bathing suit and... that's really it. I mean, I packed some shirts and stuff, but I do not have anything in the sarong category and I think this is going to limit me greatly. I'm not taking my computer with me but I will try to tweet while I'm gone, especially if Dave hits any elderly people with our rental car. Shut up, you've never met Dave. IT'S ENTIRELY POSSIBLE.

Five

He was born. He turned one, then two. Then suddenly he was three, and in the shadow of the loss of a beloved pet, he turned four.

Today, he is five. FIVE. Five whole years old.

He is sweet and charming, shy and reserved, thoughtful and kind and inquisitive. He is gifted and smart and loved and beautiful - oh, he's a beautiful, beautiful kid. I know that I'm biased, and that I'm SUPPOSED to be biased, but he is a delight and a pleasure and he's the person who changed me from the fattest pregnant woman in all the land into a mother, a real, honest-to-goodness MOTHER, with a real-life baby to call her own. He turned my world completely upside down and it was so so hard at first, but I claim it now - this is my life, and I love it, and I love this little person who made it this way, who paved the way for the life I live right this very second, and I love him more than I could ever possibly express.

Asher, your name means "blessed and happy" and if you can be even one eighty-sixth as blessed and happy as we are to have you as our own, I think you'll be doing pretty well. Love you, buddy.

After his birthday lunch (a chocolate milkshake and French fries at McDonald's), I briefly interviewed the birthday boy. You might die a little when you hear who his best friend is.

 

MY FIREPLACE IS FINISHED

The last remaining project in our downstairs (if you don't count my upcoming entertainment center upgrade and television mounting project, which I'm not sure I have really even notified Dave of) has been finished and JUST IN TIME, as we are hosting a brunch for Asher's birthday tomorrow morning at 9am.

Behold, what was our fireplace. (Here is where I kick myself for never remembering to take Official Before Pictures.)

I KNOW, but I can't find a BETTER PICTURE. I used to avoid taking photos in this general direction because of the tragedy that was our 1970's fireplace.

From the same angle:

This is our fireplace NOW, thanks to my awesome husband and what felt like 82 weekends of taking one eensy weensy baby step forward at a time. It felt like it took forever, but now that it is finished, I think it was worth it. I mean, there are still a few little things left, like adding trim around the travertine tile hearth, and I'm clearly not married to the items up there on the mantle, but we're getting somewhere. I feel like you can walk into the downstairs of this house now and feel like you're walking into a finished home, not just a house with a nice kitchen but a bunch of other heinous eyesores smacking you in the face.

And FINE, since I've already got iPhoto open...

Melancholy

We went for a walk yesterday, even though I appear to be suffering from an exercise-induced knee injury. Pushing the kids in the stroller and walking doesn't seem to increase my pain and is pretty low-impact, and the movement feels good. Not to mention it is physically impossible for me to sit around doing nothing when the weather is gorgeous. We'd been walking about three or four minutes, the kids sucking away on their bribery lollipops, when we passed a dog.

“Someday I want a dog like that,” Asher announced. This is normal, he wants a dog like EVERY dog we pass, even the crotchety elderly ones and the yippy hairless chihuahuas.

“I don't want a dog like that,” Lucy piped up. “I want our dog to be B.”

B. That's what they always called Hambone – just simply B, short for Mr. B, which was short for Mr. Bones, which was one of a thousand nicknames we'd given him over the years.

“But where IS B?” Asher asked me. He's asked me this many times, and every time over the last year I've gently reminded him that Hambone got really sick, and that we had to leave him at the vet. This is true; in technical terms, we did just that. But how long can I go on pretending that we left our sick pet in the care of a trained professional, with the kids perhaps harboring some kind of hope that we'd eventually bring him home? Or worse, that he's still living somewhere, and we haven't gone to GET him?

“Oh, buddy,” I said, trying to hold it together. “B died. B isn't ever going to come home, he was too sick and he died.” I started sobbing then, on the path, terrified that someone would happen along and feel the need to ask why I was crying or that my kids would notice and laugh at me again. Oddly, I wasn't worried at all about what else he might ask me; Asher is going to turn five on Monday. I can't hide the reality of death from him forever; after all, at the risk of going all Lion King on everyone, it is a part of life. I get that, I get why I need to be honest, even if it seems scary or foreign or weird to him. It's not like I'm going to talk about decomposing bodies or similarly horrifying things, but I think it's okay to be five and to understand that at some point, life comes to an end for every living thing. Not that he cared about that part.

“Ok, but where IS he?” he asked again. And I am the worst at explaining things to children. What do I say at this point? Obviously I'm not going with, Oh, he's been cremated – that means they burned his body - and someone scattered the ashes over a field in Maryland. Not that it ended up mattering at all, because in the next breath the kids are arguing about whose lollipop is bigger and the subject was dropped altogether.

It has been a hard week – I've got this stupid knee injury that is making me... I guess the right word here is blue, and it's been one whole year since we lost Hambone and I'm not even an OBSERVER of Bad Thing Anniversaries. The good part is that I still know we did the right thing. The good part is that all the awful memories have faded away – I still see him lying there on the floor of the vet's office, but the memory isn't raw and sharp anymore, it's faded and distant and simply just what happened.

But I still miss him. He was the best dog.

To round out my emotionally crippling week, we went and saw 50/50 last night. It was as close to perfection as a movie gets, in my own humble opinion. Dave and I were discussing whether screenwriters even bother WRITING LINES for Seth Rogen anymore – he appears to be portraying the exact same filthy-mouthed womanizer in every movie, which in this case was FINE, because his character totally worked, but other than general guidance, I seriously doubt that anyone is asking this guy to do anything anymore but ad lib. And don't get me wrong, he's GOOD at it – but, I mean, he's PLAYING THE SAME FREAKING CHARACTER practically every time, so how hard could it really be? For crying out loud, they dress him in the SAME FLANNEL SHIRT in every movie, too.

We also discussed whether I would ever belong in a courtroom. The answer is a resounding NO; I have zero logic skills, and even worse debate skills. We got in the car and Dave saw a bag on the floor and I'm all, OH, that's just something I need to return.

“You return a lot of stuff, you know.”

“Well, I have to buy it right THEN, because if I don't, and I decide I want it later, I have to drive ALL THE WAY BACK to get it, right? And that's a total waste of gas and time!”

[Emily is thinking this is a GREAT ARGUMENT FOR RETURNING THINGS. Emily is feeling smug and is probably visibly smirking, actually.]

“But... you have to drive all the way back to... return it, Emily.”

[CRAP. CRAP CRAP CRAP CRAP CRAAAAAAAAP.]

“Oh. Right. Well, but there's a chance if I went back to buy it later, it would be gone, so I have to take it home with me RIGHT THEN and consider it for a while in the comfort of my own home and...”

“Terrible argument. You have no business ever being in a courtroom.”

UPHELD. Sustained? I don't know. That's another reason I don't belong there.

****************************

Thank you to everyone who has contributed to the diaper drive! I cannot find a free counter anywhere, so I'm trying to keep track of donations up there under the donate button - I'll be updating it at least once a day, so please come by and see how things are going and feel free to spread the word. Thank you SO SO MUCH already - even $1,000 is going to make a huge difference in our community!