A Low Bar

 I have some hopes and wishes and the bar is really pretty low. Here they are:

1. That me and these sweet little people in my house would sleep a whole night, more than one night in a row. Like a whole week (or a month even- could you imagine?!) of sleeping every night? 
2. I'd like our house to stop trying to break some kind of perpetual illness record. We've had 0 whole weeks off since July 2023. That's 8 months now. There might have actually been ONE week, but I got sick on day 8 or 9, so I'm still counting this... for pride's sake. 
3. Related, I'd like no one near me to say (or give any visible signs of): "my tummy hurts," "I'm queasy," "I feel like I'm going to throw up," or "tummy yucky" (that one was Clara) for like 3 months straight. I'd also like to not have to or want to say those things.
4. I'd like to hang out with my husband one day, without our kids. I've tried, but then we get sick.  

That's it. That's the vacation I want to have. I'm not dreaming tropical resort-y vacation, just regular life with sleep and without barf.

(Can you tell I'm home today with a barfy toddler?)

*Unlike the blog title, I'm 100% serious about all these things... but also like, I definitely know we are super lucky and don't have chronic illness and life could always be 10,000 times harder. So, whining with perspective and stuff.

Quotes for Friendship

There are lots of ways we gauge how good of friends we're about to be friends with people: values, political/social leanings, shared sense of humor, general friendliness/kindness, things in common, etc. One of those things for me is if you catch the reference to whatever movie/show I slipped into a regular conversation.

Here are some of the ones I quote fairly regularly and/or did a bunch in HS/college:

• put the baby on a t-shirt. win, win, WIN.
• 10 AM TOMORROW!
• Guess what, I saw a dog today!
• Do you have a best friend? Does he have a big coat too?
• It's INSIDE the computer!
• Can I be wearing anymore clothes? 
• I drive a Tercel, yeah that's a Toyota. 
• I know you can be overwhelmed and you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed? 
• (Cough) I have the black lung.
• I hope next time you'll estimate me.
• See if we can get YouTube out for this.
• bears, beets, battlestar galatica
• So, in your wildest dreams, you're co-owning a bed and breakfast with the devil?
• He wears t-shirts, sometimes.
• A pretty nice little Saturday.
• No milk will ever be our milk.
• Boom, roasted.
• A freak gasoline fight accident

I might have messed some of these up, but they're close. I'm not going to check them. 

About a third of them are from The Office. Others are: Friends, Zoolander, 10 Things I Hate About You, Can't Hardly Wait, Elf, Billy Madison, Old School. I think I only watched Old School once, but I really hung on to that one line (it's the pretty nice little Saturday one). 

Yelling from the Stairs

Clara's been picking up more and more words all the time. For a while though, she didn't say a lot but she also said a looottt with her face. The kid is really funny. I hope she's a storyteller one day. She's got perfect dynamics and facial expressions, and great comedic timing. She got pretty good at copying the cadence of our voices even when she had no idea what she was saying. You can really hear what you sound like (and how often you yell at the dog) when you have a toddler regularly doing impressions of you. 

One of those times is on the stairs. Sometimes I'll stand in the middle of the stairs and yell up to Aaron to come down or yell down to the kids if they're downstairs. Clara decided it's the place you're supposed to yell stuff. She stands in the middle, throws her whole body into it, and then just yells indiscernible "words." She doesn't have a message she needs to share, she just wants to be like the rest of us, yelling. 

Anyway, Clara's funny and if you need to yell, there's a place on the stairs that is meant for that. And maybe I should yell less.   

Handball

 I didn't really play sports growing up. Here's what I did:

• one season of cross country in high school
• tall flags one time in 6th grade and our performance was to "Stand Out" from The Goofy Movie soundtrack.
• double dutch jump rope like every recess in 5th grade
• "20 hits" in the front yard with my dad, which is where we get to hit the wiffle ball 20 times. One time I hit the ball like 3 houses away when he did his curve ball and I think he's never been prouder.
• sometimes at recess we played kickball or tether ball (until that one time the rope wrapped around my fingers)
• dance class in HS, which was for the kids who weren't as good as the ones who made the dance team and/or didn't want to commit to it. I'd like to think I was too busy for dance team...

That's basically it. Except for one more. HANDBALL.

Handball was to 1994 like gaga ball is to 2018. I played handball everyday at recess for years. I think I might have even been good. 

I remember learning about actual handball once, and we didn't play that. We played some other (probably way funner and better) version. I taught Aaron how to play this week and I transformed back into a 4th grader and remembered all of the rules. Here they are:

• you bounce the ball so it hits the wall and take turns with one other person
• the ball is one of those recess bouncy balls
• you cannot hit the ball with your bare hand, it has to be a fist or hands clasped together
• you have to let the ball bounce before it hits the wall and before your turn. 
• if the ball bounces twice, you're out
• all the kids wait until someone gets out so they can play the winner of the last game
• you can't catch the ball

But then we had a whole bunch of names for things that you could do that would get you out. It wasn't until I was telling Aaron all the rules that it was pretty obvious to me that a bunch of elementary school kids made these up. Here they are:

• a "baby"- when you hit the ball under the line (usually like 2-3 feet from the ground)
• a "poppy"- when you hit the ball and it lands in the spot where the wall meets the ground- probably because it pops back at you.
• a "waterfall"- when you hit the ball and it doesn't quite make the wall and rolls down.
• a "superman"- when you hit the ball against the wall without a bounce.

Then there were a couple bonus made up names for things you could do:

• "Doubles"- when you served you could hit the ball twice in a row so you could have a really big hit.
• "rainbow"- this was a thing, but I don't remember what
• "black magic"- sometimes you'd get like 2 of them per game (you had to agree on having black magics be a part of the game first) and you could pretend you were about to hit the ball but at the last second you'd yell, "black magic" and go under the ball making the other person scramble to hit it again.
• "catchy"- you got like 1-2 of them per game and had to yell out "catchy" before you caught the ball.
• "inner!!!"- (short for interference)- you yelled it when someone or something got in your way and then you got another chance. 

I don't know where my brain has been storing all of this information, but it all came back today. And now we've been playing handball on the side of the house every day since. 

Why This Blog is Kinda Vulnerable for Me

I've done this blog now for like 8 years? I mustered up some courage to start it that first year because choosing an appropriate amount of vulnerability as a practice (during a church season where people often take up thoughtful practices) seemed like a good idea. And also seemed better than giving up chocolate. :-)

It's still kinda vulnerable for me. 

Here's a bullet point list of some of the reasons why:

• Even though this blog is pretty irreverent, I'm still creating something that someone else can judge or make fun of or roll their eyes at.
• I don't have enough time to be perfect about this, so I post things before they're "ready" for the sake of just finishing it. That's also a good practice for me.
• I'm not a great writer. My job is like a lot of talking (heyyy every report card that said I talked too much to my neighbor in class- look at me nowww) and putting words together so that people will want to hear them. I'm way better at that than writing them down. So, I mostly just write like how I talk instead. Also, I'm not winning any grammar awards in this thing (but who would want to win a grammar award really). 
• I do really like being funny and I would very much like you to think that I'm funny.
• The way that I share this so that people can read it is via fb, which feels self-promote-y. I don't want to be self-promote-y, but I did intend for other people to read this, so. Anyway, it's vulnerable to be a little self-promote-y.
• This blog is mostly random thoughts that I have and now you know some of my random thoughts. 

Are you doing your Lent blog?

Today my friend asked me if I was doing my Lent blog, and it turns out that question was enough motivation to start my Lent blog again.  

New friends- I have a Lent blog! It has nothing to do with Lent, or anything really. It's just weird random thoughts I have. I decided that I'd stop doing this blog when I stopped having a bunch of weird, random thoughts, and that hasn't happened yet.

The only thing that makes it a Lent blog is that I only do this during Lent. Taking on some kind of practice is good for me and I like the creativity and practicing a little vulnerability. 

Here are some topics I thought of so far:

1. Why This Blog is Kinda Vulnerable for Me
2. President's Day
3. A Really Tiring Day of Rest
4. Uppy uppy uppy up up uppy
5. Funny Things Clara Says
6. Wash Your Hands: A Story About When Clara Licked a Public Toilet
7. Morning Nap
8. Shaping Up to Be A Nice Little Saturday
9. Not Handing Out Tracks
10. Thinking About Doing Things vs. Doing Things
11. Stuff I Forget 
12. Bluey, Probably Again
13. Snakes
14. A Low Bar
15. Handball
16. Yelling Down the Stairs
17. No Filter- Good Comedy
18. Sabbatical Plans
19. Spotify Wrapped: You Liked One Song Basically
20. Sunshine

Perfect Friday Night in 1994

 As soon as school got out on a Friday afternoon, it was a countdown until fast food and TGIF. Thank God/Goodness it's Friday on ABC. The best TGIF lineup had Full House, Family Matters, Boy Meets World, and Step by Step. They had that creepy dinosaur show for a while too, I skipped that one because it creeped me out. We used to get fast food on Friday nights, get out the red plaid blanket and eat it on the floor while we watched TGIF. I looked forward to it all week basically. 

I wish I could have more living room picnics now, but we have a dog who will eat all of our food and lick our heads. There's also no waiting for your favorite show to start or waiting all week for it on Friday. The kids just turn on their favorite shows whenever they want. It's convenient, but they'll never know that TGIF rush.   

Crowded Table

This is one of my favorite songs: Crowded Table by The Highwomen. Just listen to it and smile a little bit, if you want.

Here's the chorus:

I want a house with a crowded table

And a place by the fire for everyone

Let us take on the world while we're young and able

And bring us back together when the day is done

That IS what I want. I regularly fantasize about ways I can build community and various events I want to host. Today I was fantasizing for like 20 minutes about having some kind of community neighborhood thanksgiving meal. (Actually, I was watching the Thank You Day episode of Daniel Tiger and then wondering how I could have the same event. Daniel Tiger's neighborhood loves being neighborly and being in community.) 

In conclusion:

• Listen the The Highwomen, they're delightful
• It's okay to watch Daniel Tiger with or without children
• I need to build a very large table.
• Here's a motto I try to live by: every person is worth meeting and knowing.  

Let me do this better than you for one minute

Today I was losing patience with my kiddos. Trying to leave the house in any timely fashion with little people is perhaps the worst time of the day. I was trying to get out to the door and on our way to the science museum and someone (my beloved 6 year old child) was spinning and not looking where they were going so I got increasingly louder and grouchier and said, "hey can you just look at where you are, sweet child." There was little sweet about the way I said it. We were getting into the elevator with a big old hard to turn stroller and I was basically sweating just getting the kids from the car, with all their stuff, whilst children are yelling and spinning in a parking lot, etc. etc. when we met this lady. She was a very very nice lady who obviously caught my curt tone and decided to level up her sweetness to my children. I don't know if I can describe this better, but I could tell she was judging ME by being SO SO SO nice to my kids in that moment. My kids deserve every single kindness in the world, they truly do, but I got the sense she thought she was swooping in to save them from my grouchiness with her sweetness. Like I've never met any of you nor spent any length of time with you, but let me be the better parent here. I definitely wasn't less grouchy after that. 

Insomnia Impulse Buy Product Reviews

Sometimes I can't sleep. And when I don't sleep, I'm real vulnerable to buying weird things that the internet suggests I buy. Because I'm scrolling the internet and someone made a compelling video that worked on tired me. Here are some things I've bought and my reviews of those items:

Bleame hair removal thing: 

This just came in the mail. You like rub it on your legs in a circle and then it takes off your hair. It surprisingly works. Non 3 am Kelli opinion: safe to buy, I even recommend it I think. 

Hair on the carpet scraper thing that I can't remember the name of, but maybe you've seen the videos:

You just scape it on your carpet/rug, and it gets all the dog hair off of it. Non 3 am Kelli opinion: also safe to buy, it works!

This hair curler that is supposed to be super easy that I saw like 6 different companies advertising with the same videos:

You just take a little piece of hair and clamp it in the curler and pull, like you would with a hair straightener. Even at 3 am, the 6 different companies advertising the same product with different names should have been a big old red flag. Non 3 am Kelli opinion: do NOT buy this. It does not work at all. It'll sit in your cabinet, in hopes that it will magically work one day, but it will not. 

Yoga pants that are only at this very low price for the next 28 minutes and 59 seconds: 

They'll look good in the pictures, but you won't look like that. The tag will say your size, but you aren't squeezing into those things. Be ready to give them to a small child you know. Non 3 am Kelli opinion: don't get them! Old Navy probably has a similar deal and you'll be able to pull them up past your knees.

Prose:

It's customized shampoo and conditioner and product and some leave in conditioner that you'll never want to dedicate 15 minutes to wearing before you even shower. Non 3 am Kelli opinion: it's nice shampoo and conditioner, it smells good, but your hair will not curl like that one chic in the video, and it's wayyy too expensive for shampoo. Also, it's a subscription and if you forget to cancel your subscription (like people who are vulnerable enough to buy Prose at 3 am might be), you'll get to pay for several months of it.

New Wash:

It's non-shampoo shampoo that is supposed to help you stretch out the days between washing your hair. Non 3 am Kelli opinion: ehh. I actually used this for a couple of years, but it's expensive, it's hard to wash out (and if you don't get it all out, it looks greasier than before you washed it), and it's a subscription. If you do wash it all out right, I could go 2-3 days without washing it and my hair was real real shiny. 4/10?

Mushroom Coffee:

The advertisements I saw were for MUD Coffee or something like that. I searched Amazon for a cheaper version. It's coffee and Lion's Mane mushrooms that is supposed to make you focus. Non 5 am Kelli opinion: It tasted good, but it didn't help me focus, and I can just drink regular coffee for 1/8 of the price.