randomly thankful

Do you ever have moments when you're overwhelmed with thankfulness? Okay, but how about for something really, really silly?

Occasionally I try to take a break from my constant whining and complaining (okay, that's just what I feel like I do sometimes) and appreciate the smaller things in life.

The really small things.

Or rather, the lack thereof.

It hit me this morning as I was digging in a bottom cabinet (in the kitchen), trying to unearth my Pyrex Portable (LOVE LOVE LOVE) to take a dish to our potluck at church. I just plopped down on the floor, moved aside the bags of dog food, half-empty packages of dog treats, and the salad spinner (that thing is HUGE, where do you keep yours?) and rearranged things until I could reach the Pyrex Portable. As I sat there, on the floor, it occurred to me: I'm not afraid.

I'm not afraid.

A bottom cabinet? In a kitchen?? Whew buddy. For the last few years of my life, you couldn't have caught me dead digging around in a bottom kitchen cabinet. ESPECIALLY the one with dog food. That is PRIME roach territory...prime mouse territory...prime EVERY kind of critter territory. I mean, the place we used to live...pretty much the whole HOUSE was prime nastiness territory. And it's not for a lack of cleanliness...it's just the way it was. An old house in the woods. What do you expect. Well I for one expected LOTS of bugs, and that's exactly what I got.

I kept practically everything in my cabinets in tupperware boxes so that the roaches couldn't get in (or at least would have more of a challenge). And generally, digging in a kitchen cabinet was a conniption fit just waiting to happen. Expecting them though I was, I just can't encounter a roach without freaking out. It ain't gonna happen. I was frequently panicked in that house. Very frequently.

And I know this is a nasty story, not the kind of uplifting news you generally come here looking for...but I just can't tell you how thankful I was this morning when I realized how now I dig through cabinets so blissfully unworried about what I may find. In fact, we haven't seen a single roach since we moved here. It's been almost a year, too. Not even one. Not inside, not outside. NONE. Perhaps we live so far out in the country the roaches haven't even found us?? That's what I'm thinking. Ha.

Anyway...so, that's my Really Random Thing I'm Thankful For on this Sunday evening. What's yours?

SUYL: how we met

This week at Kelly's Korner the "Show us Your Life" theme is How I Met My Husband. It's a story I'll tell, if for no other reason than I love looking through (and sharing) old pictures. So here we go. [Editor's note: picture are not in any sort of order whatsoever and may have nothing at all to do with whatever I'm blabbering about.]

In summary, Matt and I met because of pirates.


It was fall of 2005. I had just graduated from the University of Georgia and started a full-time internship at the Wesley Foundation at UGA. There were about 35 other interns that year...most of them I knew, a few I didn't. The tall, dark, and handsome Matt was one of the few that I was not acquainted with. Please note that "not acquainted with" does not mean "never heard of." On the contrary, I had heard PLENTY about Matt a few years prior to this, when my then-roommate (but always-friend) Catherine had been madly in love with him. In fact, I'd actually partaken in some light stalking of said cute boy-- "pleeeeeease go with me to the mall, Matt's working there today!!" Like any good friend, I agreed-- begrudgingly. And with much mocking. ohhhhh Maatttttieeee..he's sooooo cuuuuute!!!! So when the internship started and I found that Cute Matt was now my co-worker...well, nothing. See, he had a picture of a girl on his desk. A large picture. Evidently Cute Matt had a girlfriend. Duly noted.


A few months went by. It was September 19, 2005-- International Talk Like a Pirate Day. I'm a pretty big fan of pirates. It's genetic, by the way-- my dad has always had a thing about pirates. So it's more like an inherited fascination. So I was pretty amped up about celebrating TLAP day that year. Especially since the work environment at Wesley really lent itself to celebrating such things. Much to my dismay, most people were not as interested in talking like pirates as I was. Most people got tired of it by like 11am. Most people suck. Matt doesn't. Cute Matt seemed to enjoy talking like a pirate all day long. Talking about pirates. Talking about lots of things. And that picture on his desk? I don't know what happened; suddenly I didn't see it there anymore.


Fast forward a few months. Fast forward this story, too-- I talk too much. Anyway, much hanging out and talking took place. All at work, though. No numbers were exchanged. No facebook friendage took place. But we talked. And I maybe had a teensy tinsy crush.



By January we found ourselves "running into" each other a lot. Oh, hey, funny I should see you here...at your house...I was just, um...in the neighborhood and thought I'd drop by to see...your roommate. Yeah. Then one night he invited me to come over to watch the Superbowl with him and a bunch of people. I happily accepted the invitation. And then he forgot to invite all the other people. Silly Mattie. So we watched the Superbowl alone, and he cooked me Jiffy cornbread muffins and some really disgusting pancakes and I guess that's what pretty much ruined me for anyone else. We start texting all the time (ahh, 21st century romance), finding excuses to run into each other (at our after-Wesley jobs, at restaurants....yeah), and a few days later, in the comfort of our separate cars and while sitting in the parking lot of the Cingular building, we made it official. We became us.
Ten months later, on the night before my 24th birthday, he proposed. I said yes.

We got married on June 30, 2007. It was wonderful. It is wonderful. I am so thankful for my crazy pirate husband. He was totally worth the wait.

That's the end. Well, really it's only the beginning, but I would never be so lame and cheesy as to actually say something like that.

And now I would like to apologize for the absolutely wacky format of the pictures in this blog. Blogger evidently hates me and I can't figure out what I broke or how to fix it, so pictures and text are just all over the place. So sorry. Also, looking at all these pictures has made me desperately miss my long hair. I think I will grow it back. The end.

waste my life

It's another stay-home-sick-from-work day. To keep my mind off the reason I'm sick, I've been immersing myself in learning the song I Will Waste My Life (by the lovely Misty Edwards) on piano and guitar. This involves a lot of going between Rhapsody on the computer (quickly running out of my 25 free listens per month!) and whatever the instrument of the moment is. And a lot of googling. It's easy to find the guitar chords for pretty much anything, but this song isn't even played on guitar-- it's a beautiful piano piece. And it's impossible to find the sheet music. So I'm having to figure it out. So today I have so ironically wasted my day on a song called Waste My Life. Every once in awhile I mix things up by throwing in a few rounds of How He Loves Us (by John Mark McMillan, recently re-released by David Crowder). It's always a crowd-pleaser. If by "crowd" you mean "an empty house and a lazy black lab."


In other noteworthy acts of productivity...I have been putting off calling DirecTV to cancel our movie channel package (it was free for 3 months and I have no plans of paying for it now) for like weeks. Flashbacks of horrible Comcast experiences keep me from picking up the phone. But I had no other excuses today so I did it and guess what. Four minutes and thirteen seconds. That was the entire phone call from please press 1 for English to thanks for calling, have a great day! Four minutes?? That's IT? I didn't have to pull out all my hair, listen to horrible hold music, or lose my religion? DirecTV, I love you.


Since that was such a positive experience it encouraged me to make two other phone calls of necessity: the library (renewing books, yay!) and the doctor (going to see her...yay?). I have an appointment for next week now to discuss this infertility thing...hopefully it will be a positive experience that will soon result in more positive experiences. Here's to hoping, anyway.

But let's on to the real reason you people came here today: pictures of my yard. I know, it's what you live for. ME TOO. First you need to see my azaleas. On the one hand I feel like I can't take much credit for them since they were here when we moved in. But they were completely grown over by weeds/grass (they weren't in a bed, that's an addition we made) since they were just planted on the side of the house. And our neighbors across the street say they never remember seeing them bloom like this before. So that makes me think that I have had at least a little something to do with them and I will now take all the credit for their beauty. And aren't they just perfect??


They're very tropical looking, in my opinion. OK, next on the list of things you need to see is the garden. Remember when we planted it? It was the day before Easter, so like April 3rd or something. Here's what it looked like that day.

And here's what it looked like last weekend, April 17th-ish.

Those huge things taking up the front left-hand corner? That would be the squash. It is...big. And if you'd like to take a few of these plants off my hands, feel free-- I've heard it will grow better if it's thinned out a little, so I am looking for a new home for at least a few of the little plants. Please! Before they take over my house! And get ready, cause in a few months I have a hunch I will be begging you for any and all squash recipes you've ever used/heard of/thought of/Googled.

And finally, the first true fruit of our labor: a strawberry. Last night we picked the little guy in the middle (his two neighbors need another day or 2) and Matt and I shared it and it was DELICIOUS!! And I'm not just saying that cause I raised it. It was so good! :) So I can't wait to have many more just like it!

Oh, and in NOT so uplifting news...we rented Precious last night. Um, now THAT was not uplifting in the least. It was good. But...disturbing. I had gone to the Red Box looking to rent The Blind Side (which was out) because I wanted to be inspired. This was what I ended up with and I was not so much inspired, but that's okay. It was still a really good movie. Also, Red Box is a really good invention and I wish I'd been the one to think of it.

Speaking of inventions, Matt had a great idea. We're going to invent (and by that I mean, I will talk about it here and never think about it again) a Yard-ba. It's like a Roomba, only it will travel around your yard mowing, finding weeds/shooting them with a laser to kill them/sucking them up. It may also have ant-killing abilities as well, we're not sure on that yet. Isn't that a great idea? We figured since they would probably be getting stolen a lot, we would also equip them with On Star ("now locating your stolen Yardba..."). I bet you think we are real ditzes based on the things I mention us talking about on this blog. I promise that we also talk about really deep and intelligent things...it's just those are not exciting at all for anyone else to read about. Um, or maybe we actually DON'T talk about anything that's not super lame. I guess you'll never really know.

Well, I think I've efficiently wasted another hour of my day now. In the time it's taken me to write this blog I have also managed to spill my brand-new bag of pretzels not just once but twice. As in, bag falls off the desk onto the floor, spilling pretzels everywhere. And while most dogs would find this to be a dream come true situation (free pretzels!), my dog is MUCH too terrified of the loud noise the pretzels made when colliding with the hard floors. In fact, as I said "come on Lola! Eat!!" and made gestures to the pretzels, she stood frozen in fear. Me??? Eat those loud scary things?? Ha! I actually had to pick them up off the floor and feed them to her. Is that lame or what? She is so spoiled. (Note: and then I threw the rest of the pretzels away. I said, "I am NOT hand-feeding you 85 pretzels! Maybe next til you will grow a pair and eat them off the floor like a normal dog!")

That's all, folks. I can only hope your rainy Tuesday has been as well-spent (hahahaha) as mine. Am I the only one who spends her sick days being torn between getting rest and getting things done? Do share.

just like her

I never planned to turn into my mom. It just didn’t seem like something that would be likely to happen. Don’t get me wrong—I love my mom. I think she is awesome. I just didn’t think I was all that much like her.

We’ve always had some obvious similarities, of course. We look very much alike. We have the same laugh. We have the exact same Myers-Briggs personality type. We both love mint chocolate chip ice cream, laying in the sun, and anthropomorphizing our pets. We prefer our husbands to do the driving.

She was (is!) a wonderful mom to grow up with. I couldn’t have asked for better parents, and I’ve always known that when I “grow up” and have kids of my own, I’ll want to be just like her. I just didn’t know that I already am.

(Sarah, mom, and I- 2007)

It started with the whole gardening thing. My mom LOVES her yard. She LOVES her flowers. I never got it. She would offer to pay my siblings and I to do yardwork (weeding, etc.) and I’d turn her down every time. Yard beautification? Who cares! Cut the grass and call it a day, woman. Whenever someone came to visit (our extended family all lives in Texas, half a country away) the first thing they’d do is take the lonnnng extended walking tour of our yard. “Now these azaleas, you know, they’re the ones that blah blah blah….and now look how the begonias are doing!! Can you even believe it? Oh, and what do you think we should do about these philodendron? Is the spotting on the leaves what I should expect?” And this nonsense would go on for quite possibly two entire cups of coffee, as they walked and talked about flowers, plants, soil, pests, and life. And I never got it. Who CARES?!?! I mean, I see a flower, I think…nice. Lovely. And I move on with my life. These people…my mom…they lived for this stuff. Boooorrrrring. I just knew that when I grew up, I would hire someone to cut my grass and that would be the end of it. No landscaping unless it was like, some maintenance-free shrubs. No nothing. It’s not that I didn’t like flowers…it’s just I didn’t like them enough to be so involved with them.

I never had much of a yard in college or after. When my mom would come visit, she would always bring me a potted indoor plant of some sort which I would inevitably kill within a week. A green thumb I had not. One summer she got me two potted tomatoes that lived on my front porch. Those I managed to keep alive, and I even loved the fact that I could snag some free veggies out of the deal. I decided in my heart that while I still did not love plants, I would make an exception for tomatoes. Those plants paid off.

When we started looking for houses, or thinking about starting to look, I just had this gut feeling that I didn’t want a condo. Something inside of me (even before we got Lola) wanted a yard—a place to call my own. As we looked at more and more houses, the need for “space” became even more desireable—all this, for a girl who has never so much as laid hands on a lawn mower. Who doesn’t know a weed from…well, anything.

As you know, we got our house and the 1.5 acres of yard that came with it. And in one fell swoop, I turned into my mom.

(Mom, I, and Dad- my wedding, 2007)

Don’t come visit me—I promise I will not let you leave until you walk allll over my lawn and look at every single sprouting thing. I will tell you every boring story about how I got my canna lilies from my mom’s yard who got them from my grandmother’s yard in Texas…so I have 3rd generation lilies, and I love it. I want you to look at every fledgling veggie and every half-chopped down blueberry bush. I am a curator and my yard is my museum and I feel like I’m shortchanging you if you don’t look at absolutely everything. Every morning I give my own self a speed-tour of the yard…just to make sure everything’s okay and nothing new is sprouting. I do the same thing when I get home from work. And sometimes I’ll do it again in the evening. I’m obsessed. And I don’t even know why, except to say that I am my mother. I had no say in the matter, the woman raised me and somehow shaped me to be this crazy lady who now talks not only to her pets, but her plants. What a legacy, right?

But on the other hand, it makes me happy. I love my mom. I think she is incredible. And if I am just now seeing a part of her show up in me (the crazy plant lady part), then who knows how else I will grow to be like her in the coming years? I want to get her patience, and I hope I’m as good of a cook as she is, and I really want to develop her self-control for portion controlling her food!

I want to pray for my kids the way I saw her praying for us. I want to love my husband the way she chooses to love hers.

I am my mother. I think I’m a pretty lucky girl.

(My front flower bed- June 2009)