poop breath when shane's gone

shane is home and i am happy. this has been a hard month for us. he has to go to trade shows for his job about 6 times a year and they are usually pretty spaced out. this month, however, there were two trade shows with only a week in between. this is how it usually works: he leaves early in the morning -giving me a kiss before he goes - and i am usually too asleep to say more than a mumbled "luhhbbuuuu honey"(i am sad that i never get it together enough to wake up with him and make him breakfast or do something special for him - my excuse lately is "the baby" - but bologna, she is the best baby and doesn't wake up till 6 or 7!) everyday i get up, take lewy out, get baby up, feed baby disgusting pureed things, and wait for shane to call. the entire time he is gone i wait for him to call or text me. i try and pass my days as quickly as possible. i miss him like i would if i had lost a lung or some other vital organ. it's hard to breathe when he's not here. i feel out of breath like i am running a marathon at 15,000 ft - well, just walking at that altitude will wind you! when he is gone, i realize how much he does for me (see below) and how much god desires us to be united with someone. it's also impossible to fall asleep quickly when he is not there next me. i am cold - and usually smelling dog farts, because lewy sleeps with me when shane is gone and prefers his butt to be in my face - not that his face would be any better - he has poop breath and snores - anyways, i am cold and my mind races with every strange creak or sound. so i usually turn the light back on, try and get lewy to reposition himself, and read something until my eyes are so heavy that i have to sleep. making dinner is not fun either without someone to share it with. so i usually just eat something microwaveable or ramen noodles. life is not nearly as fun without my hunny bunny there by my side.

but strangely enough, most times when shane gets home, i treat him horribly, like he went away on purpose just to make me feel lonely and inadequate at doing a two person job. i know this isn't the case and that he is heartbroken whenever he has to leave me and the baby and even poop face lewy. but for some reason i retaliate to the wrong person and treat him like dirt. i am working on being loving and respectful when he gets back, because i love him and truly never want him to feel unloved or unwanted! i don't know why i wrote that - i guess i just need to put down a visual reminder to myself to not take out my frustrations on him.

so now life is back to normal. my feet are warm at night and i only have soft breath on the back of my neck and i can make dinner for two!

things shane does that i take for granted (a partial list):

• takes lewy out everyday before i get up
• turns the bathroom light on AFTER he closes the door
• wakes up every other morning to feed the baby
• buy dog food on the way home from work so i don't have to make a special trip
• picks up milk or some other various grocery
• rents me movies on saturdays when he is gone most of the day to keep me occupied
• gives me his onions and pepperoccinis (sp?) from salads
• calls me everyday on his way home for lunch
• texts me every afternoon about 3 to say he loves me
• takes the baby on a walk when he gets home from work so that i can have 10 minutes to do whatever the heck i want
• folds the laundry - i help too
• does dishes - again i help too
• rubs my back
• plays with my hair
• makes up silly songs and jokes to make me laugh
• works at a job that he doesn't love to make enough for us to live on
• remembers my favorite thing at restaurants and orders it for me
• doesn't complain about how things are going - even though sometimes i wish he would
• whispers or mouths "olive juice" and funny weird times
• gets along with my parents like he truly is their son
• can't cook but for boiling water but would try if you asked him to

i could and should write more but it's time to go home - you get the idea i'm sure - he does everything for me!

calming a cough

i saw a woman, while in line at starbucks, sitting at a little two-top by the door. she was sipping a grande something delicious and quickly glancing up to her perfectly chic white iBook and down to a pad of paper. she was frantically scribbling notes as she read the screen. i made my way to a table to join my mother (after she so thoughtfully but sooooooo regretably took the unclaimed vanilla bean frappuccino LIGHT and thought maybe i'd like that instead of my usual iced soy latte with one splenda - ha ha ha i don't think so). so i stole a glance at the mac lover's screen on my way. she was reading a website entitled "how to calm a cough." why would some woman, any person, go to starbucks, by a four dollar coffee beverage, pay a ridiculous fee to get online, and read about coughing? in the 15-20 seconds it takes to rejoin my mom and baby girl in the back corner, my mind, has already come up with a terrifying and heart wrenching story of how her youngest child is dying of some incureable coughing disease and that website was her last hope to calm...his...cough...melodramic is my middle name. i have spent the better part of an hour trying to find this website with the large header "HOW TO CALM A COUGH." so far i have only found a bunch of perscription medicine sites and the definition of the word cough:

cough (kôf, kŏf)
v. coughed, cough·ing, coughs
To expel air from the lungs suddenly and noisily, often to keep the respiratory passages
free of irritating material.

hmmm seems to me coughing is a good thing from that definition. why try and calm it...

book smell

i admit i am one to judge books by their covers...unless on a strict recommendation from a friend. i like to feel the cover, feel the the texture of the pages, i even smell the book (if no one is around - i love "book smell"). i run my fingers across the cover and down the spine and let the pages spill open and take a deep breath and wait to see if it's a welcome invitation to lose myself within. there's something about a story or written word that captures you. you can't help but be enthralled by a good story. your mind works its magic and in no time at all, you have the imagination of a child again. you can see the expression of the characters and envision the look and feel of their surroundings. you soon become part of the story yourself. it's both liberating and enslaving. you're freed from the physics of this world with your imagination, but you are trapped not wanting to stop reading till the end, or very sadly, wanting more of a story that's ended. i used to stay up for hours reading (one of those kids under the covers with a flashlight) and i still stay up late reading something. there are days when all i want to do is read. curl up on the couch with a good book and spend all day in that world. there are books that i read in grade school that i still have and read regularly (they're at a 5th or 6th grade reading level and sometimes, i want that). there are books that i make it a point to read at least once a year, no matter what, (pride and prejudice and the year of impossible goodbyes) there are books that bring up emotions and memories of good times and bad. there are books that explain things that you would have never understood any other way. books are in some sense alive.
i am not proud of the fact that one book that has literally stood the test of ALL time, has not captured my fancy like it should have - i have not let it. i read it when i feel far from god, when times are low and i know it's the "right thing to do." i don't read it when i should most - when i feel like i've got it all figured out, when life is great and the sun is shining. it's not a good place to be in when you think you've got it all figured out...god cannot be "all figured out", so i must be off somewhere! just like a good mystery that you rip through the pages trying to uncover the truth, so we should rip through the bible and search for god's truths. lord may i have more enthusiasm for you and your life giving word!

quotes of the month

i love getting real simple magazine. i love their helpful hints and yummy recipes - which i always clip and hope i'll use them but haven't yet. but mostly i love the cute little quotes that accompany each change of topic or article. where do they find all these quotes? wouldn't that be a strange job - Appropriate Quote Finder - sounds like a super hero - AQF to the rescue - oh man i just stated humming a theme song.

anyways... here are the quotes from this month that i liked, enjoy:

1. "oh, marilyn! oh my! those circles under your eyes! how lovely you look today." ~yvonne de carlos as lily munster on the munsters


2. "three things in human life are important. the first is to be kind. the second is to be kind. and teh third is to be kind." ~ henry james


3. "there are three ingredients to the good life; learning, earning, and yearning." ~christopher morley. pamussus on wheels


4. "knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers." ~ alfred, lord tennyson. "locksley hall"


5. "i love the word warm. it is almost unbearable - so moist and breathlike." ~ anne sexton


6. "there is consolation in being sick...the possibilty that you may recover to a better state your were ever before." ~henry david thoreau. letter to harrison blake (1855)


7. "generosity lies less in giving much than in giving at the right moment." ~jean de la bruyere. "characters"


8. "house keeping ain't no joke." ~louisa may alcott. little women

idk my bff leona

my good friend jenna has moved to atlanta - the ATL - the dirty south. she is gone and most sadly admitted, is the better for it. it was her time to move on and up in life and this was the most logical and promising step. but why, you ask, entitle this entry “Leona” and not jenna? well, to give you a quick and dirty break down, take out your cell phone. start a new text message and turn on the predictive text. now type in jenna or 53662. if your phone is like mine, it will instead produce the name leona. which in turn tells you that your phone believes it is much more probable that you know and correspond with a girl named leona and not a girl with the antiquated and almost unheard of name in this day and age jenna!
if you know jenna, and many of you do, leona just fits and it was a serendipitous day when we discovered this faux pas of predictive text. it takes time (that you somehow appear to not have when using T9) to save into the phone’s memory that in fact you, unbelievably enough, DO know a girl named jenna and actually talk about/to her more than that other girl leona. now up until now, if you are not intimately acquainted with jenna’s alter-ego leona, you have been saying it all wrong! the correct pronunciation is said in a east coast, sickly, old aristocratic woman’s voice…leeeoooooona – add in a daaaahhhhrling if you’re not already too embarrassed. now jenna is not limited to leona as her only amusing moniker. her other designations include, but by all means are not limited to: big red (i have never ever called her this), jennie joe, it’s evil twin yenna yoe, and my other favorite, mary.
big red speaks for itself when you look at the picture attached to this blog – she has very red hair. end of story. jennie joe, on the other hand, has a much more involved story. jenna is one of the many children of “the joes.” you must be inducted into this very elite family. my name being rather hard to come up with a good joe name, is still not officially associated with it’s own unique joe. my daughter, eisley, has been inducted and was christened joe-e or joey however you want to look at it. you know you’re “in” when you get your “joe” name. whoooooooaaa – if only i knew how to attach a sound byte and you could hear a joe’s “whoa.”
now we come to the story of jennie joe’s long lost evil twin yenna yoe. when jenna was applying for scholarships for college like most high school seniors, she decided to use every resource available to her. she even applied for an hispanic scholarship and won it – she is somehow within the qualifications of the scholarship just hispanic enough and she will prove it to you if asked to. this fact is pretty laughable in that jenna is the most “white” person i have ever met. we’re talking stereotypically vanilla. j.crew wearing, starbucks drinking, mayo on her wonderbread girl. but when you get her going, and yenna comes out, all of a sudden we’ve got jennie from the block on our hands! she turns her j’s into y’s and says “chure” instead of “sure” and “ju know” for “you know.” yenna yoe isn’t completely evil, just a little and unfortunately gets blamed for all the times jenna is just being plain ornery!
now for the final and most endearing, mary. this time, for reasons i can still not figure out, the correct pronunciation is maaaaaaahry…same as leona, but with a british flair. jenna has an obsession with the little house on the prairie tv show. jenna would even go so far as to auto-tune my tv to watch little house on the prairie when she comes over and looks at me with a look that pleads “pretty please with sugar on top” whenever it is listed on the upcoming shows. i inevitably allow her a (in my opinion a generous) minute or two before i can’t handle anymore and we simply must switch it back to something really good like, america’s next top model re-run marathons, or even the real world (actually anything on mtv is better). i’m sure you have all seen the show: laura ingalls with her orthodontia needing teeth, pa with his his goofy grin, big floopy hat and sound god-fearing advice on every subject from being honest to when to plant your wheat every year, nelly the town’s pretty, rich and stuck up girl who turns out to actually be ok in the end, and of course, mary, laura’s older sister and the only other way to remember her…the blind one. jenna has perfected and spread what is called the “mary stare” and we have many a picture to prove that it is a phenomenon sweeping the nation. i’ll tell you how to do it in pictures and you can start it in your own circle of friends too. first really try to embody the spirit of living in the old west – this is key. then look about a foot to the right and up from the camera. smile blankly making sure to let your eyes glaze over and not focus on anything. there you go, it is as simple as that. you can even carry on conversations with your friends in this manner…i’m sure jenna would love you to.





so that’s jenna explained in terms of her nicknames. she is my good friend…no scratch that…great friend… no, still not right…she is closer than most of my blood relatives…she is my sister. and i miss her…

buzzing florescent lights

three days a week i drag myself and my sleepy baby to a windowless office in a sadly outdated office building. i hate it. i get that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach every time i walk through the doors. my feet feel like they weigh 80lbs each as i walk up the 25 stairs to the second floor and down the dark and narrow hallway to my office.
…though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death…
i feel like it’s the first day back to school at the end of an endless summer...my freedom is crushed and with it my creativity. i long for something to catch those precious drops of imagination as they drip out of me unused and wasted. the buzzing florescent lights start to sap the energy to find a basin to collect those bits of squandered me. but then i get online and start to type. while it may not be good and by no means great, i find a small thimble sized vessel to house those dewy little globules of peculiar thought. and at least i have a door on my closet sized office and can get online and do this thing called blogging while getting paid a trifling amount to basically do not much of anything.

yummy

there's just something so yummy about how a blog looks...the color scheme, the font choice, the deliciously witty titles...so TASTY! i am drawn in with by the artsy photo next to the whimsical title and i cannot stop till i am stuffed full of someone else's words. i read and re-read my friends blogs...but i rarely admit that i do so (so now you all know :) ) i am fascinated by the creativity that pours out of the people around me, especially those who i thought i had a grasp on how they express themselves. i am contiunally surprised by the depth at which they write and tell us all a piece of their soul. the vulnerablilty and susceptibility of exposing your hopes, dreams, flaws, and most intimate details is inspiring. so now i openly join the ranks and invite critisim and laughter to my totally uninteresting life...but with a little splash of funky font color and a dash of some clever wording i might create a tasty dish for you to too to enjoy.