Category Archives: Life in general

Funny text exchanges

Posted on May 30, 2012 | 13 comments

Because I don’t delete my text conversations, Simon rolls his eyes at me when I tell him the number it shows next to certain friends’ names which indicates the ridiculous number of texts we’ve sent back and forth to each other… but we all avoid talking on the phone and it’s much nicer to go back and forth with a friend in a non-public setting (people who have endless conversations on each other’s facebook walls, I’m looking at you). I was super sad when my phone up and died earlier this year, not just because it was a huge pain the rear, but also because I lost all my texts and that made me sad. Some awesome tidbits were in that back log… pregnancies, birthday wishes, unexpected relocations back to Michigan, silly exchanges… and they were lost. Woe to me (first world problems, I have them).

In the interest of not losing these things… here are some text exchanges that have amused me, names withheld to protect the innocent (a.k.a., my friends who share my texting “problem”).

Me: I’m baaack! [meaning, I got my phone back]
Her: Yes! Yes! Yes!
Her: Oh… and I’m pregnant?
Me: What… for real? This does not seem like a joke thing so OH MY GOODNESS!! SO HAPPY!
[same person, couple months later]
Me: You just butt-dialed me.
Her: Actually you were in my front pocket… so I baby-dialed you!

Her: Just remembered the downside to warmer weather… more baths. Ideally, that is.
Me: I was thinking the very same thing today… guess my kids will be stinky
Her: At least my kids will be in good company.

Her: Seeing you always warms the cockels of my heart. Except I talked too much. I hate when I do that.
Me: You did not talk too much… I wonder if this is a common misconception on both our parts.
Me: PS I feel the same way about the cockel-warming. 🙂
Her: Nothing worse that cold cockels. Except maybe finding egg drippings in your turtleneck two hours later.
Me: Better than two days later.

Me: In other news… Is it my archenemy, a squirrel?
Her: At least it’s not in your bed.
Me: Thank God for small favors (or relatively large ones, because a creature in my bed would freak me the frak out)

Her: Our friends just had a baby named Liam, joining his big brother Jack.
Me: This probably means I could never be friends with them.

Her: And the KY “date night” display at the end of the diaper aisle seems very out of place.
Me: Eww, why go there in the diaper aisle? No place I feel more in the mood. Really.

Her: I’m watching Oklahoma. I think I’m a nerd.

Her: We’re on a date but can send when I get home.
Me: Please, hurry home from your date and get me that recipe, woman., Where are your priorities?
Her: Told [hubby] we had to go 🙂

Me: Dawson (a.k.a., James vanderbeek) had a baby today and now I feel old.
Me: I follow the beek on Twitter, this is how I know. Sad.
Her: Did Dawson name his kid after a fruit or color??

Me: How ate you today?
Her: I ate ok…
[both of our autocorrects thwarted our efforts to type “are”]

Her: We ate neurotic crazy people.
Her: We ARE
Her: Didn’t take up cannibalism

Her: I’m blaming the time change for all of this bedtime angst.
Me: I’m blaming my crappy kids.

Her: Choice? Chioce? neither are looking right

Me: Just left the van door open while we were at Target.
Her: Did you check for stowaways.
Me: Didn’t but we just gave them a ride to Kava House
Her: Well, aren’t they lucky?

Her: How’s your night?
Me: Praying for the boys to finally fall asleep and drinking wine…
Her: Drinking crystal light
Her: You win.

Her: Top of my list of things I don’t love: grumpy husbands
Me: Trump card, you are making another human
Her: Exactly. 🙂
Me: Poo on him 🙂

Her: If I could go back and tell my college self some words of advice, one thing I would say would be to get some damn sleep already.
Me: And take up running.
Her: And don’t major in poli sci
Me: And don’t bother with premed
Her: Enjoy all the friend time. It will NEVER be like that again.
Her: Also, switch to diet coke ASAP, Sprite is going you no favors.

Me: What vibe am I putting out there?
Her: You’re crazy and you know it!

Her: [she] is annoying in all forms… maybe she can become a life coach?

Me: I dreamt two nights ago of Nathan Fillion, downton abbey, a bag of umbrellas and a rapid squirrel.
Her: A fast squirrel or a poisonous squirrel?

Me: Thanks for the diet coke PSA
Her: Just trying to help 🙂
Me: I’ll quit when you do.
Her: Maybe the week after we quit sugar?
Me: But first I need to give up coffee
Me: diet coke is safe for now
Her: Hooray!!

Her: Diet coke is good for the heart and the teeth.
Me: It’s practically a health food.

13 Comments

Posted in Life in general, Texting

Long weekends

Posted on May 29, 2012 | 5 comments

This was the first long weekend in a while where we packed it full of stuff (and still my kids don’t want to fall asleep – what is wrong with them? Don’t they know sleep is good? Again I reiterate my intention to wake them periodically when they are teenagers with loud noises and endless questions.) Despite the non-sleepers, we had so much fun – makes me excited for the rest of summer!

Most people count the weekend as starting on Friday, but not me since Simon isn’t home on Friday nights. Though he did get home slightly earlier than normal and got to laugh and me when my friend, Amy, and I texted each other good night. [This was similar to the reaction I used to get from my parents who would think the conversations I had on the phone – for hours – in high school were ridiculous. Girl friendships are awesome is what I’m saying.]

Saturday
Pancakes made by dad

Inaugural trip of the season to the newly-reopened Farmer’s Market. Sadly only asparagus and rhubarb were in season (they didn’t get strawberries until today). We did get to enjoy one of the food carts – Silver Spork – which I’ll be blogging about for grkids.com this week.

Lunch with Amy, Nick and Maggie (Jack calls her Maggie Moo, which makes me so happy) complete with marker makeup. Lovely. Thankfully the marker washed right off and didn’t get on any of the furniture.

I caught Liam licking the fridge… I don’t know why. Yes, I think that is ill-advised.

Here the children are pouting because we aren’t leaving yet for our friends’ house. Liam asked me not to show this picture to Sarah (Sarah – please avert your eyes) I told him I would just share it on Facebook – guess I lied since I’m instead putting it on my blog.

Saturday night we had delicious Chicken Tikka Masala with Sarah, Brian, Josiah, Miles and Wesley (Jack, of course, had leftover, reheated McDonald’s nuggets and fries) topped off with homemade vanilla ice cream topped with rhubarb sauce (fresh from the market). The adults were going to play Ticket to Ride after the kids went to bed but ours never went to sleep so we ended up having to take them home – boo on you children. And boo on having to follow through on threats with actual consequences.

Sunday
I gloriously got to sleep in on Sunday – though technically since I didn’t actually fall asleep until nearly 2 and woke up at 11, I got 9 hours of sleep (still a ton) but that’s about 3-4 more hours than I got each night the rest of the week so double bonus. [I have insomnia, I know not why. If you tell me it is related to Diet Coke, I will not listen to you.]

We met our small group at the park for a BBQ and kick ball. 10 adults, 15 children – good time had by all.

While the rest of the children happily ate hotdogs, Jack stated “I no yike hot dogs!” and instead chowed down on a variety of chip products and a whoopie pie (chocolate with salted peanut butter filling, from this recipe here). [My blog is perfect fodder for figuring out why Jack will have food issues later in life – I assure you, he does eat fruits and vegetables, just not much protein – or variety.]

The happiest grill master!

We played parents vs. kids and while the kids might have pulled out a win, the dads did not hold back or pull any punches when it came to striking the kids out while the mothers cheered everyone on and rolled our eyes at our husbands.

Monday
It’s a tradition to get together with my college friends and our families over Memorial Day weekend so we did it again (last year’s post). This year Andy smoked up a whole bunch of meat… we left with happy, fully tummies! I just love my friends and miss the ones who weren’t there. Here’s to a million more years as friends!

All-in-all, a wonderful weekend filled with lots of [yummy] grilled foods, even better friends and the perfect amount of Summer Shandy and sangria.

5 Comments

Posted in Friendship, Life in general

Music Monday: Relative Oldies

Posted on May 28, 2012 | Leave a comment

The photo above has nothing to do with anything in this post, but I found it going through my phone and thought I’d share – you should be used to the random by now.

I’ve been perusing my iTunes library, rediscovering some old favorites and thought I’d take a moment to share some with you…

Clocks | Coldplay – I’ve featured their music time and again on Music Monday so I guess I can freely admit that I rather love Coldplay. The best is still the song from Alias – as Sandy said, Vaughn = swoon. Yup.

The Wind | Cat Stevens – This one is an oldie but I first remember liking it after watching Almost Famous, way back before I found Kate Hudson insufferable – I wish she would do back to indie movies, she was brilliant in Almost Famous, or perhaps she just had a marvelous director.

Under the Bridge | Red Hot Chili Peppers – Yet another song with a great guitar intro. True story: Anthony Kiedis (the Chili Peppers’ lead singer) is from my current home town and in college I saw him at a local coffee shop; sadly I didn’t realize it was him but instead thought he was a guy from my college so I kept staring at him, waiting for him to recognize me and say hi – but since it was actually someone famous and not another college student, he just gave me a strange look. I’m sure he is used to people staring at him but after the fact, I wanted to chase after him and tell him that I wasn’t staring at him for the reason he thought I was… a brush with fame and I wasted it on thinking he was someone else. For the record, he looked pretty normal and darn handsome.

I Could Sing of Your Love Forever | Sonic Flood – The CD player in my Focus ate this CD, actually, it got stuck in the CD player when someone shoved another CD in the player on top of this one and I had to have the whole player removed and replaced. I was so sad about this CD.

Cruisin’ | Gwyneth Paltrow and Huey Lewis – Speaking of back when celebrities were less annoying – remember when Gwyneth was less toolish? Do you recall that she actually clued the world in that she could sing in a movie (Duets) and not on Glee… here’s a song she performed with Huey Lewis (who played her dad in the movie).

Thank You | Dido – And yet another song from a movie that starred Gwynnie (Sliding Doors – the movie where she has two freaking cute hairstyles)

Instagram, week eight

Posted on May 25, 2012 | 2 comments

Love a babysitter who plays outside with the kids and leaves us fun graffiti.

Date night… Oberon and sangria… perfect.

Play date with some of our favorite people…loved Jack’s take charge body language in this picture. He and Avery had great fun making “chocolate” soup (dirt, water and sticks).

A slew of silver vehicles at school pick up.

Jack zonked out way too late in the day.

McDonald’s Diet Coke… sometimes you just need one.

Summer… nothing warms my heart like seeing this.

Liam’s summer haircut.

2 Comments

Posted in Instagram, Life in general

Five Question Friday

Posted on May 25, 2012 | 4 comments

Yesterday, after a haircut and trip to the grocery store, Jack fell asleep in the car on the way home and didn’t wake up when I carried him into the house and plopped him in his bed, just rolled over and continued sleeping. If you know us at all, you’ll know that Jack is a non-napper – he stopped napping at 2 years old and hasn’t looked back (which is almost offensive to me because until I had him, I LOVED naps – more on that below) – but he has been napping at least once a week at daycare for the last month (much to everyone’s surprise). I decided to just let him sleep and worry about the consequences later because he had been super grumpy since Simon and I exchanged children/cars. Despite the possible impending doom that could stem from a toddler who napped too late in the day, Liam and I had a pleasant evening without Jack around to get into everything. After two hours (and nearly at bedtime) Jack emerged from the bedroom, bleary-eyed but in a much better mood than his pre-nap self. He proceeded to eat constantly for an hour and didn’t really fight me when I announced it was bedtime. Liam zonked out right away and Jack was mostly quiet, though he did come out of his room crying around 10 (I assume he was awake until then) but either way I couldn’t help but think that this must be what having a teenager is like. Mood swings, insatiable hunger and random sleep patterns.

1. Are you a napper?
I used to be a great napper, but I need a couple of hours for a good nap. My husband can power nap for 15 minutes and feel refreshed, I believe this is because he can fall asleep nearly on command. I, on the other hand, take at least 15-30 minutes to fall asleep, even when I’m dead tired. So I’ve had to give up on naps because when it takes that long to fall asleep, by the time I’ve finally nodded off, it’s time to get up and I’m more tired than when I began. I miss naps.

2. What was your favorite subject in school? Most hated?
If I’m being honest, my most hated subject was gym – so much so that I took it for summer school because the class was only 6 weeks instead of a whole semester. Plus I was such a nerd that I could take more academic classes rather than waste my time with a physical activity. And changing in the locker room did not at all appeal to me (clearly this was before having children which caused me to lose all sense of modesty).

My favorite subject… hmmm… everything other than gym, really. I liked school. I was smart and getting good grades came easily to me so I enjoyed most of my classes. Can I pick yearbook as a subject? Let’s call it media arts… that sounds better. I really loved yearbook and my senior year I was co-editor so I had three hours of yearbook in my schedule for the second semester (rough life, I know). Given how much I enjoyed graphic design, you’d have thought I wouldn’t have bothered being pre-med my first semester in college, but alas, at that stage in life I was still driven for greater success (at least until I realized I didn’t have it in me to be in school for nearly a decade before I ever got to be a doctor and help patients). Plus graphic design and communications so much more fun and thanks to ~~yearbook~~ media arts, I knew this to be true.

3. Did you have the something old new borrowed and blue at your wedding? What were they?
Considering this was just seven years ago, you’d think I’d remember but I’m quite certain I didn’t have all those things – though I can’t be 100% sure. I’m not very superstitious and while I like the idea of traditions, I’m not the best at actually following them.

4. What one thing are you determined to do this summer
Go to the beach and eat ice cream at The General Store on Ottawa Beach Road. Which leads us to the next question…

5. Ice cream or Popsicle?
Ice cream. I really don’t know who would pick a Popsicle over ice cream – I mean, really, there’s no comparison. (Hopefully I don’t offend you Popsicle-lovers out there, but your love for frozen, flavored water confuses me. Maybe you are lactose intolerant?) My favorite ice cream treat… a sundae (preferably with coffee ice cream) with butterscotch and salty pecans. Yes, please.

Linking up with Mama M for Five Question Friday.