Please Don't Pick Your Nose

...that's just a good rule in general, I think. At least in public. But also in private if you haven't washed your hands. My number one fear of all time is throwing up, and I'm HYPER aware of how stomach bug germs spread. During the late fall through early spring, I just assume stomach flu germs are on everything. So, if I touch anything without washing my hands, I assume that the stomach flu germs are on my hands. And if they're on my hands, I know that if I rub my eyes, pick my nose, or put my fingers in my mouth without washing them... I just put all the stomach flu germs in my body. So, I don't do that, and I wash my hands about 3x more than people should. I'm really walking the line between cautious and crazy. In conclusion, don't pick your nose. And, like, keep a hand santizer around.

Christmas Cards

Let me show you what our Christmas cards looked like this year:

They said Merry Christmas on them too with some fancy font. You didn't get one though. No one did. 

I decided this year to be so smart with our money and get the best deal. I found a groupon for holiday cards- $25 for 100 cards. That's really the cheapest I've seen, plus I had some promo code I could use- so I got a voucher for 100 cards and spent maybe $16? I was so excited. I told a lot of people about my sweet deal.

Then I went to buy our cards. I logged in to printerpix. 

Yes.

Printerpix.

That was the red flag.

It took me several tries and one online chat with a support person, but eventually I could place the order, and so I clicked on 2 sets of 50 cards.

Two weeks later, on Christmas eve, our package of cards arrived. It was really light. Too light. Maybe a proof? I opened it. There were two cards and two envelopes. Just the two.

Shipping was $10 I think. 

It's hard to know if they switched the quantities from 50 to 1 or if it was user error, but I'm pretty sure I did it right. I emailed the company asking for them to print new cards for me and they said they could help if I paid them another $7 for shipping. I didn't trust them and it's like March now, so I just swallowed the $25 I spent on 2 cards (that I also kept, so I wouldn't have to pick who got them, and mostly because I lost them).

Merry Christmas! (if you've been waiting to hear it from me) 

 

I Might Have Told You This Story Before

My family and I have a real gift for telling the same stories over and over again. If it's a good one, tell it again. Oh the person you're telling it to says they've heard it before? Go ahead and pretend you didn't hear them say that and tell it louder. It's the way we like to do it. Jesse and I have been together over ten years now, so he's on his 4th, 5th, 10th telling of some of my stories. My dad has 10 go-to stories that I can recite by heart and sometimes I do while he's telling them. My mom and I talk on the phone all the time and will regularly have several of the same conversations. But they're good ones, and I like them, so why not go through it again?

I do a sort of lie regularly. I say things like, "I might have told you this story before" which means I've DEFINITELY told you this story before, but for some reason it seems like I should tell it again, and you'll be more receptive to it if I acknowledge that you might have heard it before I tell it.

Aaron's learning the family skill. His first story he pieced together was this fall when he was just starting to talk. He figured out how to say "bird, Autumn, eat... no no no!" Can you guess what happened? Our dog, Autumn, tried to eat a bird that was stuck in my in-law's indoor porch and we yelled, "no no no" and got the bird out before she could get it. He covered all the highlights, really. He told that story over and over and over and over again.

Here's another example: on Saturday we went to Chipotle and he fell off his chair and bonked his head. After he calmed down, he walked up to everyone at our table and told them individually, "Fell off chair. Bonked head. Cry." and to several other patrons that he didn't know. And later to me again, and Jesse when he got home.

I don't really know how to conclude this one, I thought it might be funny if I just copy and pasted everything up until this point, but I guess I think it's funnier to tell you that than actually doing it. 

Low Carb for a Better Carb

I don’t really like juice. It’s really sugary. And has a bunch of calories. And it’s not even cake. I figure, if I’m going to have a bunch of calories and sugar, I’m going to at least be able to chew it and it should have chocolate frosting. 

Sometimes I eat less carbs, so I can have better carbs later. Like today: I had a protein shake for breakfast, a chicken wrap on a low carb tortilla and vegetables for lunch... and then had 1000 sushi rolls, wine and some chocolate truffles for dinner. I don’t think I did this wrong. I just redistributed all of the carbs... to the time of day when they’re likely not to be burned off... but  still. Low carb, for a better carb. 

One more time, or two or three.

Hello! I'm going to do this blog again for Lent. It turns out that I really like writing about random stuff for six weeks out of the year. I made a list of topics the other day, but I can't really figure out what I meant by 1/3 of them, so that adds an extra layer of creativity.

I started this blog 3 or 4 years ago because I wanted to do something creative and I thought it would be a good practice in being brave/vulnerable/etc. It was. I keep thinking that I won't do this blog again the next year, but then I think of a bunch of topics I could write about. I figure I'll stop when I stop thinking of things I could say.

Here's what I've got so far for possible posts:

1. Christmas Cards
2. Manna
3. Book Titles
4. Endurance
5. Please Don't Pick Your Nose
6. Last Meal
7. Low Carb for Better Carb
8. Did You Drink Water?
9. 3 Worst Pics
10. Questions I Have Right Now
11. Questions I'm Going to Ask
12. Funny Things Aaron Says
13. Delivery/ Say It Right
14. Fav Outfit
15. Things My Parents Taught Me
16. The Jesus Year
17. What Harry Potter Character Are You and Why?
18. Good Looks Throughout the Years
19. How Do You Learn to Be Afraid of Something?
20. Momma's Fancy Shoes + Tool Set
21. Spring Hope
22. Skinny Mirror
23. Outloud Thinker
24. The Gym
25. Things that Always Make Me Cry
26. Fragments
27. A List of Things that Made Aaron Cry
28. YOLO. Exactly.
29. Repeats 
30. Holy Moment
31. Arm?
32. ABCs
33. Home & Garden Show + The Art of Saying No
34. Good Lines in Hymns
35. Predictive Text
36. Socks on Hands
37. Inside Joke Book
38. I Might Have Told You This Story

If you have some other good ideas, tell me!

Coffee Tables

I ran out of ideas of things to write about so I said to Jesse, "pick something for me to write about." He started being thoughtful and thinking of clever things, and I said, "just pick whatever comes to your mind, ready go." He picked coffee tables. Well, ok then. Here goes.

We have a coffee table. We have two actually, one for the upstairs and one for the downstairs.

When Aaron's awake, it serves as a buffer between him and our fireplace. He learned how to pull part of the cover off the fireplace, and he likes to try to do that because he knows I don't want him to. Sometimes I also like to turn the fireplace on in the early morning, and I don't want him touching it. When I turn it on, I'll pull the ottoman next to the coffee table, and then I can sit in front of the fireplace and also have a complete barrier. The problem is, is that Autumn thinks that once the fireplace is on, this is the only spot she can sit in our entire house. She will be sound asleep, and once I move that ottoman, she stands in front of me and just stares me down until I get up. I don't, and then I point to all 600 other places she could sit, but she can be pretty relentless. Usually she gets her way when I have to go chase Aaron around the house- I'll come back and she's sitting there, basking in the heat from the fireplace.

Our coffee table has some slots where you can put some things, like newspapers. We keep the Shopper there. And the Sunday paper that I signed up for so I could get a $10 Piggly Wiggly gift card and also to appease the nice and persistent man signing people up for the newspaper at the store. Aaron likes to take all of those papers out and then step on them and slide them around the floor. Sometimes he'll pick one up and shake it and squeal like he just discovered magic.

At night, we move the coffee table back to where it belongs, and we set our evening snacks on it. The usual snacks are black pepper Triscuts and hummus, chips and guacamole, some gouda for Jesse, one of those nature valley almond cracker/cookie things, or possibly a bag of chocolate chips.

Without our coffee table, there's a good chance I will set my class of water on the floor and Jesse will knock it over and exasperatedly say, "can you not put cups of water on the floor?"

This post proves that I can find things to say about most things. Try me.

Church Newsletters

I work a little bit at camp helping with the capital campaign. I do a lot of random research, like one project I had was researching what congregations had WELCA groups (women of the ELCA). So, I looked at a million websites trying to find information. Some congregations had loads of information on their site, and the most current info I could find came from their newsletters.

I've looked at hundreds of church newsletters. And here's the number one takeaway: Lutheran churches come up with some really interesting, as well as Minnesota interesting, newsletter names. Some are funny, some are ridiculous, some super date them, some are great at alliteration, some are coooorrnnnnyy, some aren't fancy and just call it "newsletter" or "news," some are connected somehow to a biblical image, and some are the same as all the other congregations.  Here's a list of Lutheran church newsletters that I found online:

Shepherd's Staff
The Good Word
Celebration
Echo
The Spirit
The Galilean
The Column
News & Views
The Messenger (I'd say about 1/8 of all the church newletters are named "Messenger")
The Advocate
Connect
News in the Pews (this one gets rhyming and being clever at the same time points)
The Light
Parish Visitor
St. Peter's Press
St. John's Journal
News & Notes
Parish News
The Voice
The Good News
The Parables
Monthly News
Spirit of Saint Andrew
New Vision News
Lifeline

Also, some of these are even more fun and/or more ridiculous and/or more clever and/or funny, because they're puns on their church name. Lifeline is one of those, it's from New Life Lutheran. That's thought out.

Alright, churchy/pastory/ministry leadery people, anyone think they have the best or most ridiculous or funniest or coolest newsletter name?


 

Today we went to the zoo.

We got a zoo pass for Christmas from my in-laws (BEST GIFT). It was pretty nice out this morning, and me and Aaron were free, so we went to the zoo.

Half way through the drive (it's like 45 mins away), I realized that I left the stroller at home. I wasn't about to turn around, and I wasn't about to rent one, so I can't really use my arms right now. Last time we went, Aaron wanted to walk a lot, so I hoped he'd want to walk a lot today too. He did, but he didn't want to walk the same direction as me. There was a lot to look at.

So, let me tell you about Aaron's favorite things at the zoo:

1. The recycling container that's shaped like a coke bottle. He said, "woooww" and "a-dis?" whenever he saw one (a-dis means, "what's this?"/can I see that thing?).

2. Very small rocks mixed in with dirt on the grassy part next to the sidewalk, that you aren't really supposed to walk on.

3. All of the grassy part next to the sidewalk, that you aren't really supposed to walk on.

4. The peacocks. He tried to pet one of them.

5. Some of the fish, others he stayed verrryyy close to me when he saw them.

6. Every now and then we'd see the metal lid to that leads to the sewer or a drain in the sidewalk, and we had to stop and see all of those.

7. A heater in one of the buildings.

8. The fake trees and the real trees.

9. The picture of the animal next to the actual animal we were supposed to be seeing.

10. Elk.

11. The booth that sold snacks like popcorn and cotton candy, but it's wasn't open.

12. Other kids. He also didn't like other kids. When they were loud and crowdy, he didn't like that so much. Other times he stared at them and tried to hang out with them. At one point, he just walked over to a mom and grabbed her leg. He didn't think it was me, I was right next to him.

13. Empty cages where the bears were supposed to be.

14. He also liked the camels.

It's Holy Week

It's Holy Week. And that means the following things:

1. My brain is out of creativity. I'm using 70% to think of something meaningful on Sunday, and Thursday, and Friday. And 20% on playing games with Aaron. And 5% on this blog. And I'm keeping 5% in case I need it for something else.

2. I'm pretty tired thinking about how tired I'm going to be.

3. But also I'm happy because it's one of my favorite weeks of the year and it's lovely and holy and one of the best parts of my job.

4. I'm running out of things to write about. The last three years that I've done this, I've made up a random list of post titles and then picked one each day. The only ones that are left are left for a reason. They aren't as funny as I thought they were or they will require a lot of time, creativity and thoughtfulness... and I'm just looking to not do that much today.

5. I'm kind of distracted because there are like 5 different sermons in my head. These aren't 5 sermons that I'm actually going to give, they are just 5 very different options for things I could talk about this weekend, and they are getting all kinds of confused in my head and also I'm not sure which one to pick.

6. This blog is coming to an end for the year and now I'm going to have to find some new things to do with my life.

If you have random topics you would like to see in the next 3 days, send them my way. :-)

Thank you cards

Our internet is tired and doesn’t want to work tonight, so I have to type this on my phone and use some data. And that means this will be pretty short.

Here are a few thoughts about thank you cards:

• I’m terrible at sending them. I still have some thank yous to send for our wedding. I found a stack of cards like two years later that I never sent because they were missing addresses and I couldn’t quite find the motivation to find them.
• I’m terrible at remembering to send them. I only ever think about it when I’m driving or at 3 am and neither are ideal card signing and mailing times.
• If I’ve already thanked you for something, I don’t think I need to send you a card with the same words in it. Likewise, if you thanked me for something, you really don’t need to send me a card.
• I’m sorry to everyone who likes thank you cards and is still waiting for one from me. I promise I’m thankful. If it makes you feel better, there’s a good chance your card is in a stack in the closet and I just haven’t sent it yet. (I’m probably not going to send it if I find it though).

THANK YOU!!