Cute. Cute. Little Baby.

IT'S A GIRL!

Announcing the arrival of Miss Hollie Margaret "Spooky" Grover, born October 23 at 6:57 p.m., weighing in at 8 lbs 4 oz, measuring 20 inches long. She's got feet the size of a small rabbit's, and her fingernails are already far longer than her nail-biting Mom's and Dad's.

Here's the quick stats:

Duration of labor: 18 hours
Epidural: Yes (did you read the above stat? The nurses told me to brag that I lasted 12 hours without one.)
Number of stitches Mom got after labor: They're afraid to tell me.
Number of nurses who stayed late on their shift in order to see Baby Grover born: 2
Number of nurses who showed up just as things suddenly got exciting: 2
Number of ice cups and popsicles the doula brought me since hospitals are crazy and don't let laboring women eat anything: 4
Number of naps David and I took after the epidural set in: a billion
How much sleep David and I had before going into labor Saturday night: 0 hours
What time David and I had woken up Saturday morning: 6:00 a.m.
How much sleep David and I have had since then: Does sleep even count if it's only for forty-five minutes at a time and you spend your dreams thinking about the baby?
Number of times I've had to call the lactation consultant 24-hour hotline since coming home: Just once. It's a miracle.
Number of bags of groceries Grandma has bought since coming to Texas last night: somewhere between 25 and 30, including several pink things for Baby Hollie and her room
Number of hours of schoolwork I've done since Baby Hollie arrived: 0 hours

Okay, here are more pictures:

Peanut Spooky



Mom and Little Spooky Hollie (It ends up brushing your hair becomes quite the impossible dream when you have a 2-day-old. Ditto for brushing teeth.)


Baby Hollie meets Grandma Hollie

The Final Countdown and, also, Pictures of the Apocalyptic Dust Cloud That We Survived

No but seriously: we have considered putting "The Final Countdown" on our song list that we will play when it comes time for Spooky to come out. Somehow, though, I'm thinking the song will be a little too upbeat for me as I strive to find my "focal point."

[A note on focal points: I want to try to have this baby with all the feelings that come with it, but I also don't want to panic and stiffen up from the pain that is supposed to be greater than anyone can imagine until it's all over everywhere around them. So apparently breathing, relaxing, and having a "focal point" helps. My problem is that I can't ever decide on a focal point, so they get all jumbled. My doctor said her focal point was being on a tractor, riding off into an endless sunset surrounded by the fruit tree groves she grew up on. Ina May Gaskin, a totally hip and scholarly midwife whose book I read, said she just imagined she was a mountain lion. When David and I practice breathing together (so adorable, I know, and pretty necessary for this periodically hyperventilating crazy wife) I imagine he and I are at an Asian bath in a cabin in the woods only it's also a Miyazaki film (because some of our song tracks are "relaxing piano" versions of Miyazaki film theme songs) and also sometimes it's snowing and sometimes there is a campfire and sometimes it is night, sometimes evening, sometimes morning, sometimes we're snuggled up in warm clothes, sometimes we are in swimsuits, and sometimes I'm suddenly in the baths in my ski trip outfit and it's too hot for sweaters anyway and David is tapping me on the shoulder and telling me I need to relax. Maybe I should just go with "I am a mountain lion. I am a mountain lion. I am a mountain lion..."]

Here's a picture of David jumping behind our house. I'd show the front of our house, too, but I'm too lazy right now to photoshop the house number off the picture. And the last thing we need is some weird internet stalker.

But here's Davie on our front porch:


Anyway, I have no time to write this blog post considering that I'm basically a ticking time bomb and could go at any time, but I wanted to tell everyone that this Grover fam is still alive and well, and also, some of you might want to see the apocalyptic pictures of the Lubbock dust storm from yesterday. It was awesome. David and I stayed inside and sang Beatles songs while leaves, garbage, grackles, pumpkins, and small cows slammed against our sliding glass doors.


P.S. These pictures were taken at the same time of day as the other pictures in this post. And, as I have mentioned earlier, I have no time for photoshopping. This was the color of our world. And quit making fun of the duct tape on our car.

The Evolution of Spooky

*Warning: Ultrasound pictures will be used in this post. I swore I would never put pictures of the inside of my uterus on the internet, but I just can't help myself.*

Today, the Grover family had their third ultrasound, because Spooky didn't show enough spine to the camera last month. Unfortunately, the spine was about all that Spooky was willing to show today. Despite the efforts the ultrasound technician made in jiggling and banging on my belly, Spooky refused to drop the boxer's stance, and both fists remained directly over his/her face.

We still got enough of a sneak peek that we were able to see Spooky's mouth make sucking motions, and we were able to watch him/her make some good kicks, despite sitting cross-legged (when you think about it, that's quite an acrobatic skill).

So humor me, or skip this post, by taking a look at just how far Spooky has come in 27 weeks:

April 1 (Week 9): Spooky was little more than a dancing gummy bear, with lots of space for performing incredible water aerobics.


June 7 (Week 20): Spooky weighed 11 ounces, and looked an awful lot like Casper the Friendly Ghost.


July 27 (Week 27): Spooky is looking more and more like a little kid in there, crunched up and sitting Indian-style. S/he now weighs 2 pounds and 4 ounces. I can't believe how much belly I have for so little baby!


The technician wanted to get a 3-D picture of Spooky's face, but all we got was this:


To be honest, I was a little relieved. Those 3-D ultrasounds are creepy, and I don't blame Spooky for wanting to keep his/her face a secret until it gets done developing and shaping! David commented in the elevator that Spooky really only has three more months of real alone time...we should let the little guy/gal have some space.

Although, quid pro quo, Spooky,--get off my bladder! The last two ultrasounds have shown that Spooky is breech, which means that my ribs have never been kicked, but my bladder is always getting stepped on. Lady friends, should I be concerned about this? Are there really tricks for getting babies to flip upside-down during the third trimester? It's adorable that Spooky wants to sit up straight like Mom and Dad, but I'd prefer greeting Spooky head-first rather than feet-first in October. Is it too early to sweat about this?

Country Lovers, I Need Your Help

Today David and I went to the dentist for the first time in a full year. I had a minor traumatic experience when I was trying to explain I didn't want to have any x-rays taken, but they were going to take some anyway (it seems to be a new part of any Grover family medical examination to have the nurse/hygienist/secretary go off and retrieve my husband to help calm me down from something that made me burst into tears--don't ask me about the last time I had to get my blood drawn), but after the dentist came in and told me he wouldn't get x-rays if he were pregnant, either, I felt somewhat validated. But the point is, despite bursting into tears and having to have David come and hold my hand while they took the x-ray vest off of me and assured me I wouldn't have any extra radiation today, the dentist office experience as a whole was very peaceful and relaxing.

I came back this afternoon for a cleaning (the first visit was just a consultation...I know, David and I were sort of confused by that as well), and I decided that part of what made me feel so safe in the hands of a masked woman with several freaky-looking metal instruments bleeding up my gums was because of the soft country music playing in the background, and the way my dental hygienist softly hummed along to the tunes. It also helped that the waiting room had been playing The Food Network's Barefoot Contessa which is basically my grown-up version of watching Mr. Rogers (instead of the Speedy Delivery Guy, the Barefoot Contessa has a man in a pink sweater that comes sometimes to make flower arrangements for her garden parties). The way she cracks eggs and softly whisks them together is as comfortingly fastidious as the way Mr. Rogers replaced his outside shoes for inside ones.

Anyway, I've been thinking a lot today about country music and my own past abhorrence of it. When I was a teenager and somebody asked me what kind of music I listened to, I would reply, "Anything but country!" Which of course wasn't true. I also hate heavy metal and goth rock and whatever else is out there. And most pop songs. Actually, I am quite picky when it comes to music.

But my tastes are changing. Maybe it's the pregnancy, but I think it's happened since I've been married. I don't like watching scary movies anymore (sort of a big deal for me not to like them...a good fourth of my video collection is off-limits to me now), and I find myself really appreciating anything that makes me feel soft, safe, and at home. Maybe I'm nesting? In any case, I liked what I heard in the dentist office today, but I don't know about how to seek out the kind of country music I like, because there is a lot I still really don't have a taste for.

I know that a lot of my friends out there listen to country music, and it is to you that I am coming for help. I need some good country song recommendations. A lot of my old music seems really depressing/selfish/angsty to me now, and what I really want to listen to in my home is stuff that makes me want to water flowers, make peach pies, and walk around in the grass barefoot (of course, David Bowie also makes me want to water flowers, make peach pies, and walk around in the grass barefoot, but that's besides the point). I need more bright music, more music that makes me excited to get up out of bed and dust things. I need more songs like Dolly Parton's "9 to 5" to make me feel like I'm really living. But I don't know who or what to listen to! So give me some song lists, somebody, so I can get my feet wet in the genre of music that I have previously avoided with passion!

To help you narrow down the long lists of country music songs over the ages, here are some nit-picky tips about what I am and am not looking for:

I want country songs that...

...make me feel like I'm in the country. Maybe they mention trees or animals or wooden fences or fly fishing or backwoods cabins or sunsets. I don't like urban country (except maybe Dolly Parton's "9 to 5"). I want country music to make me feel like I'm lying on a blanket wearing a sundress at a picnic by the river, with my hair all wildflowered and my hands/arms/face/toes all dirty from taking care of the horses all day.

...talk about how much husbands love their wives or wives love their husbands or parents love their children or children love their grandparents, etc. I know there are some super heartwarming (bordering on sentimental) songs out there about how grandma and grandpa met and stuff like that, the kind of stuff that I am noticing is in basically zero pop songs or rock songs (Paul McCartney aside). I want to know the best country songs that talk about how awesome families are and home is.

...are bright and wholesome and hopeful about the future. So, nothing that is going to depress me or make me think about how crummy life can be. I want the opposite. I want songs that make me want to get up and dance or get up and clean the house or get up and go swimming. Songs that make me want to get up.

I do NOT want country songs that...

...mention sippy cups. I know that song exists, and I know I don't like it, even if it does talk about how great families are. Sippy cups are never appropriate as song lyrics.

...are sexy songs. If it's one kind of country that I really hate, it is country that defines sexiness, especially in terms of women's boobalicious appearances or how tractor-like the men are. I'm not interested in sexy country songs. Just endearing love songs about husbands being grateful for their wives or wives being grateful for their husbands.

...are about cheating. I don't know of these songs off the top of my head, but I know that country gets a bad rap for being all about cheating boyfriends or cheating girlfriends--that just sounds super lame and boring to me.

...are line-dancing songs. I want songs that make me want to get up and dance, but not songs that make me want to get up and line-dance. I do like slow-dancing country better than slow-dancing pop rock. If that makes sense.

...are sung by Shania Twain. Even if it is awesome and fulfills all my previous requests, I won't like it because I hate Shania Twain.

No offense to any of you that love any of the songs I just described as things I hate. Now give me some recommendations! Thank you in advance for all your help and good taste!

Feeling for Two, Part II

I'm officially into my second trimester now, and while the nausea has somewhat drifted quietly away, my emotions are still at an all-time ripeness.

David and I were having a conversation about old Disney films (I had remembered Big Red as being the sequel to Old Yeller, but it isn't. It is Savage Sam. Now I need to see all three in a row again, to remember the different plot lines. And David needs a new copy of Big Red in paperback, just like when he was a kid). Anyway, one thing led to another and I was tracing the early career of Kevin Corcoran who plays Arliss in Old Yeller and Savage Sam and Francis in Swiss Family Robinson (and who I thought for some weird reason was a child Kurt Russell...), and when I mentioned that he also played cute little Jimmy Bean in Pollyanna, David replied that he had NEVER. SEEN. POLLYANNA.


He didn't even know Pollyanna is played by Hayley Mills! His response to my exclamation of that fact was, "Really? I thought Pollyanna had dark brown hair."

***SHOCK!!***

Well, this would not do. So as we were driving to a friends' house Sunday evening to play games, I proceeded to tell David the synopsis to Pollyanna, to explain to him just how good of a film it is (everywhere in Lubbock is a standard 15 minutes away, which is a pretty good amount of time to summarize books, films, or why a certain Led Zeppelin song is better than all the rest. We take turns tutoring each other on all the important things in life via our drives together).

I told David all about how Pollyanna is basically an L.M. Montgomery character: backwoods orphaned girl goes to live in huge old mansion filled with very traditional old ladies and an aunt dangerously on her way to replace said crotchety old lady; orphan's charming personality and gumption melts everyone's hearts, and everything good that happens happens in nature, surrounded by trees and wildflowers and Sunday picnics. It's basically the kind of story that makes me hope that Spooky is a girl so that I can relive all the magic of Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon with her, when she gets to the age when the moon is magical, and fairies probably do sleep in daffodils.

Anyway, I described all the great characters and Pollyanna's Glad Game, and--oh dear, I'm tearing up again just writing this post out again....David, I hope you are laughing with me wherever you are reading this--when I got to the end of the film, and I tried to explain to David about what happened after Pollyanna snuck out of her top-floor room to go to the charity picnic carnival party, I choked up...I couldn't finish my sentence. My lip was quivering, and I just kept repeating, "When she went to the climb the tree and climb back through her window, she...... she.... she....." and then I full out started to cry.

It was so unexpected and so RIDICULOUS that David and I both started laughing. I laughed and wiped my tears and sighed a bit, but when I went back to tell him about poor Pollyanna, I started to cry AGAIN.

So David started trying to guess:
"she....got caught?"
shaking my head, crying
"she....decided not to climb back up?"
more head-shaking, crying getting louder
"she....fell out of the tree?"
nodding and bawling
"she fell of the tree, and....she broke something. An arm? No? A leg?"
fierce nodding, fierce sniffing

I tried to explain to him that the real tragedy was how it broke Pollyanna's heart, because she was going to be paralyzed, and she couldn't even play the Glad Game, and she didn't even want to leave her room. But then, oh, then everyone showed up, and carried Pollyanna down the stairs.......oh, how can any of you remember this film and not start crying over the beauty of it?

Anyway, this was an all-time emotional breakthrough for me: crying over a 15-minute film summary. I've gotta make David watch this movie with me. I'd suggest we buy a box of Kleenexes, but I think I'll just take a towel out of the closet and use that.

Pregnancy Bird Dreams

Even though David and I had lots of conversations about how we really didn't need to do Easter baskets this year (I mean, we're getting old, and the fake pink grass gets everywhere, and it's always a disappointment to find out once more that chocolate Easter bunnies are hollow and don't even really taste good), but when we woke up Easter morning I realized that Mr. Sneakity-Sneak David-Face had put together an Easter basket behind my back!

It contained:
a new hair-brush (mine is about a decade old and is missing a good portion of its bristles)
new hair bands (I manage to lose all mine, despite the lengths David takes to collect them around the house and place them on my dresser)
Cadbury mini-eggs
a jar of nuts (for David, David said)
AND
a bird feeder!

We live on a busy street, away from any trees, and we're on a second-floor apartment. So basically, not a lot of birds are going to make their way to our little balcony for seeds. But David bought some special birdseed that grackles apparently hate (which is good, because although I have come to love grackles, they are too noisy to have on our balcony), so we set up our bird feeder and sat back to watch.

We got nothing. No birds. We scattered some seed on our balcony for good measure, but Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday passed with no feathered friends.

When I was at school on Wednesday, David sent me an email that said: "There's a bird on the balcony!" The little guy apparently ate some seeds and then chirped really loudly after every bite, sending out the word.

This morning we had a good handful of little sparrows strutting around our balcony, dunking their heads into the feeder, dropping seeds all OVER the place, and then jumping down to peck like chickens at what fell. They fluff out their feathers and cock their heads and hop on both feet--they do everything that is cute. They are just your run-of-the-mill sparrows....they look like this:

and this:

They are little House Sparrows primarily, but as soon as school gets out we're going to pull out our Sibley and see if any other types of sparrows are stopping by.

But what I'm really writing this post for is to talk about the incredibly vivid dreams these birds have been giving me. Birds wake early, and they chirp like wild on our balcony in the morning. I tend to have my craziest dreams in those last couple of hours of sleep in the morning, and the past two days in a row I have dreamed of incredibly beautiful, colorful birds. I see them in detail, and I get to hold a bird in my hands in each dream.

Two mornings ago, I dreamed that our bird feeder was filled with the tiniest white swallows with beaks like avocets. One flew onto my hand through an open window, and stuck it's long, thin beak in between my knuckles. They were beautiful.

My dream bird looked like a white swallow:

With the beak of an avocet (which we see in our backyard sometimes...such funny-looking, beautiful birds...):

And it was the size of a bee hummingbird (so cute!):


This morning, I dreamed of our old Idaho friend, the Western Tanager, only instead of black wings, they were as orange as his head. He could talk, and he could make the sticks get up and move like animals.

He let me hold him, and I could see all of his separate feathers as I ran my thumb down his back.

I love these dreams, and, once again, I think I owe them to Little Spooky. We got to hear his heartbeat today.

I just hope that once I can start feeling Spooky move around inside me at nighttime, he won't make me start to have nightmares about this:

Feeling for Two

My pregnancy books all talk about the "amped-up" PMS-like emotions that accompany pregnancy, but I've decided to think of it more as feeling for two. I've always been the type to tear up at the climaxes of good movies (or out-and-out bawl in select films such as and including Philadelphia, Love Story, Beaches, and Dancer in the Dark), but every since Little Spooky has started hanging around inside of me, things have started to become ridiculous.

The funny thing is, it feels really, really good to be this close to tears all the time. Not even just the tears necessarily, but feeling things more acutely than usual. Science says it's all hormones, but I like to think it's because I have this awesome E.T./Eliot connection with Little Spooky that is letting me feel life the way s/he would first experience it.

For example, the world smells either DELICIOUS or TERRIBLE. The burned floor of our oven: TERRIBLE. I have to sit on the balcony until it goes away. Also, we can't clean the oven because the cleaning fumes are bad for Spooky and David and I are always home at the same time (and also, our apartment is only a little bit larger than a roomy tin can. Ergo, even when I'm not in the kitchen, I'm basically still in the kitchen). However, springtime (even in Lubbock) smells INCREDIBLE. I could sniff the trees all day. They smell like magic.

Also, I can't stop watching birds bathe in puddles because it makes me giggle uncontrollably with glee. And when I say "birds," I mean big, ugly dirty grackles. And when I say "puddles," I mean big nasty pools of water that fill up on the crackly brown lawn of campus where the sprinklers are broken and the ground is uneven. I've never seen such cute sights in my life.

The point of this post, though, is to discuss the ridiculous things that make me cry these days. It's like I've never experienced emotions before until now, and I want to practice them on everything. Here is a random sampling of things that have made me cry in the past three months:

1. The Secret Garden (not just the climax, either. I'm talking the whole way through. Just thinking about Mary Lennox showing Colin that there really isn't a lump on his back is making my lip quiver and my eyes tear up even NOW. This isn't an exaggeration.)
2. The Parent Trap, Hayley Mills vers. (basically as soon as the grandpa steps into ANY scene, I start crying.)
3. random episodes of Bones (David has recently been hooked on old episodes of this show. There was a Christmas episode with Ryan O'Neal in prison. I broke down. Please note that this is a show about gross corpses and flesh stuck to bones. It still managed to break my heart.)
4. The Cosby Show
5. Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken (Way, way, way before she goes blind. I'm talking from the moment she refuses to leave the school building by wrapping her legs around her chair, I'm already crying.)
6. My Neighbor Totoro (when they grow trees by dancing in the middle of the night. Also, the cat bus, because it made me feel so safe and warm, I started to cry.)
7. Howl's Moving Castle
8. Paul McCartney's "Heaven on a Sunday" and "Calico Skies" (David gave me these songs when we were dating......they have ALWAYS made me cry. But being pregnant makes me cry WORSE.)
9. Paul Simon's "Heart and Bones"
10. Elton John's "My Father's Gun"
11. Billy Joel's "C'etait Toi (You Were the One)" (This is on a very endearing episode of Freaks and Geeks, and the episode made me cry when this song came on. Oh, Sam Weir. So adorable, I'm crying.)
12. Tom Petty and the Heartbreaker's "I Won't Back Down" (Can't explain this one. But I listened to it again this morning as a test, to see if it REALLY does make me cry. It REALLY does.)
13. David Bowie's "The Man Who Sold the World"
14. Select tracks from The Lion King soundtrack
15. John Lennon's "Watching the Wheels" (it made me cry when David bought me the record for Valentine's Day, and the music video is even worse. Thus, I have attached it below.)

Little Spooky, thank you for helping me feel so much, so often. *long, lovely, post-cry sigh*

It's a Halloween Baby!

The cat's out of the bag: a third Grover is officially in existence and spends all his/her time doing water aerobics in my belly. Little Spooky's due date is October 27th, and David and I are giddy about it. We've taken to practice-lecturing our future babies in our spare time, trying out different jokes and puns that will be sure to make our kids roll their eyes in disgust. I literally can't wait.

Aside from raised eyebrows from some people at school ("You're having a baby in the middle of your coursework? Really?"), most people, including my professors, have been very encouraging and congratulatory. I do worry that I won't be able to give my scholarship or Little Spooky my 100% all, but I'm sure going to do my darnedest to do my best. People are always going to have excuses about why they can't keep all their bases loaded. The trick is not to quit once you fall behind. I learned that from Aesop's Fables (I think....or maybe it an was old Care-Bears episode).

Anyway, I used my awesome computer/science skills to anticipate what Spooky is going to look like. I took some pictures of what David and I looked like as babies, and used a top-of-the-line program to take our basic bone structures and facial features to create a hypothetical photograph of what our baby will inherit from us. Isn't it great?

So I took this picture of David as a little guy:
And this picture of me as a little girl:

And this what came up:















............*drum roll*..............




















..............wait for it.............

















TA-DA!!!!!!!!


So cute! Obviously, Spooky will inherit all his baby hair from me.

Of course, even if Spooky isn't born with a mane like I was, according to the following exhibit, the crazy baby hair will arrive at least by the time s/he enters high school:

Exhibit A: Emily's Baby Hair

Exhibit B: David's High School Hair

*Scholarly note: Not only has David kept this hair long and strong, but he still sleeps with that blanket (that he made himself) every night. Adorable! I love my little family!

Grover Spice and Another Excellent Link

My fabulous friend Jade found this video. It has been the highlight of my day. I'm so ashamed for accusing Sesame Street of losing its steam by letting Elmo and the new pink muppet take over. This surpasses all my highest expectations. I love you, Grover (and by that, I encompass all Grovers. Like me).

In a related story, David and I couldn't sleep the other night, so we took our laptops to bed with us and took turns looking up old Sesame Street skits to help us feel comfy and fall asleep (yes, we are that innocent and endearing). This clip has continued to work for me. Whenever I don't want to go to bed (which is usual), I just think of that Teeny Little Super Guy. And then I pretend I am a cup with a napkin blanket. So far it has worked every time. I love you, Teeny Little Super Guy.

Home Alone

It is 5:46 a.m. and I am watching Full House on the only channel I can find that isn't an infomercial. A Boy Meets World Marathon is starting in fifteen minutes. I dropped David off at the airport this morning so he could attend a conference. He won't be back until Sunday night--we are going to be apart for five days.

It isn't like he has gone off to war or into a space shuttle headed toward the moon (and thank goodness, because the recent film Moon, the one starring Samuel Rockwell, has frightened me away from space travel for good, holy moly Moses Nancy), but the thing is, David and I have never spent one night away from each other since we were married last August.

I'm surprised that I'm feeling such separation anxiety because I used to love it when all my roommates would go out of town and I'd get the apartment to myself. It isn't that I disliked my roommates being around, but there is just something magical about watching whatever I want on TV whenever I want while eating macaroni and cheese out of the pot with a wooden spoon.

But somehow I have lost my ability to be by myself. There's Blue Bell ice cream in the fridge, homemade pizza leftovers waiting to be picked at, Lonesome Dove just showed up yesterday via Netflix, and I am only about halfway through the Super Nintendo game Secret of Mana. But do I really want to watch Lonesome Dove without Davie? Would beating the Secret of Mana really be the same without David there to watch me cream the final bosses?

I also have an annotated bibliography to finish, three final essays to begin, a presentation to compose, two books to read before next Wednesday (not to mention a thousand other critical essays to read and summarize), and about 12 hours worth of grading to have done before Saturday. But can I really accomplish all that when I'm so distracted by David's absence? Not only have we never spent a night away from each other, but I've only been home by myself for less than a few hours at a time, and only rarely. Since we've always had the same work schedules at the same school, we've always left the house together and come home together. It makes sense that this brief separation should be healthy because I obviously need to cope with time on my own, but five days? With no training wheels first?

In true Kevin-McAllister-style, first I'm going to get freaked out by the heater (this is not a joke), then I'm going to watch this Boy Meets World marathon until I fall back asleep (Mr. Feenie just got stood up on his date, and is feeling lonely, too), then I'll find a renewed sort of independence at which point I will shoplift a toothbrush and booby-trap my house to protect my own turf. After the creepy old man across the street unhooks me from the back of the neighbor's door, I will wake up Sunday morning to a fresh snowfall just as David steps out of John Candy's Polka van.

Maybe I'll even put on some of Dave's aftershave and scream into the camera a few times. (But in an adorable way, not, like, a weird way.)

I am declaring war on cynicism.

Sometimes I complain and grumble about unimportant things. For example, I used to complain that I wasn't in school. Now I complain about difficult homework assignments. Sometimes I complain that my face breaks out and I'm nearly 30. Sometimes I complain that I'm nearly 30, period. Sometimes I whine about having a pudgy tummy and then I whine about exercising. I whine about grocery stores, I whine about running out of Rain Berry Gatorade, and I whine about how the apartment still smells "weird." And then I complain about people who put quotation marks around words for emphasis. I grumble about it being too hot, I grumble when it starts to drizzle-rain. Sometimes I even grumble about hypothetical things that haven't even happened: "What if my teacher hates my assignment?" "What if this book comes a week late?" "What if my hair gets all nappy and my students don't take me seriously?" Boo hoo hoo pooh pooh pooh.

I've been sort of grumbly in the periphery of my Lubbock days. I think it stems from stress and anxiety. But who cares what it stems from--it's turning me into a Cynical Cynthia!

So here is Part I of my top ten list of lovely things I should think about the next time I start to get a little cock-eyed pessimistic:

10. It's October, which has always been my favorite month. It's a month of Harvest Spice candles, homemade decorations, pumpkin bread, thunderstorms, and Ray Bradbury readathons. The air will soon become crisp and the birds will start to fly into Lubbock. According to the Audubon Society, Lubbock is home to thousands of Sandhill Cranes in the winter. I'm hoping some of the Sandhill Cranes David and I met in southeastern Idaho will come bearing good news from the northwest.

9. A new Professor Layton game just came out for the DS. Davie and I love puzzles, and we also love gentlemen in top hats. Trust me: I used to think the DS was incredibly lame until I played this delightful little narrative game. I had given up on video games entirely since these days they are all about sex and cussing, but the DS has given me new hope. The second best DS game out there is the Ace Attorney series, where you play a defense lawyer. Silly, silly games, but also very wise. They're just as good as Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books, and they require about the same amount of reading.

8. This clip of John Ritter playing $25,000 Pyramid. Thanks goes to Dave's friend Dave for forwarding this to us. There's no way he could have known that John Ritter is a longtime crush and idol of mine. This video will convince you why:

7. I'm doing a research project right now on Charles and Mary Lamb. Charles is known for writing essays, creative non-fiction--what my husband writes. Mary is his sister. They lived together their whole lives. Mary had mental health problems and one day, while she was caring for their elderly parents, she had a manic episode and tragically killed her mother. Charles will stick by her forever after that, and there are accounts of the two of them walking together up the road to a mental asylum whenever Mary showed signs of another episode, Charles carrying a straitjacket for just in case. I love the Lambs. I am always touched when I read about the details of their lives. They also wrote literature for children together, and that's what I'm writing about this semester. Charles and Mary Lamb remind me what it means to be the opposite of cynical. They are all hope and endurance to me, even in reading about their struggles.

6. David is probably going to be my number one, too, for whenever I decide to write Part II of my anti-cynicism post, but he's going to make today's list, too. I won't bore anybody with an exhaustive list of everything this man does for me, but I will just mention that whenever I do get grumbly, he never turns on me or tells me to just drop it already. He just listens. And waits. And sometimes he tells me to lie down for a while and he'll cover me with a blanket, bring me a Nalgene full of water, and come back a few minutes later with half a grilled cheese sandwich. Sometimes he'll play soft music on his guitar or turn on Mary Poppins (even though we both agree that Mary Poppins is a twit and pompous jerk. Bert is way too good for her). I'm very grateful for this man, and for how he makes me feel safe. It takes real love to find a way to make your woman laugh even when she is busy being terrified about the very eternities of the universe. The least I could do in return is to stop whining about the details. Life is too short to make any of those complaints worth it.

So! I raise my cup to CHEERINESS, GRATITUDE, and HEARTY HANDSHAKES with LIFE: HUZZAH! HUZZAH! *the crowd goes WILD*

I am declaring war on Jon McNaughton.

Forgive me for this untypically opinionated and finger-wagging post. Some of my readers might happen to like McNaughton. We are still friends. Just know that I will never compliment you for hanging him on your wall.

The man's propaganda is, if I may borrow Huxley's term, "herd-poisoning" the people with the artistic aesthetic of a Thomas Kinkade (had Kinkade painted people instead of cozy cottage landscapes).

(At least cozy cottage landscapes aren't offensive, short-sighted, and self-righteous.)

I've also declared war on Glenn Beck, but at least he's mostly a comic strip character. McNaughton is selling his works to be framed over sofas as religious proclamations (which they are most definitely not). Except instead of being inspirational reminders of our own humility and dependence on God, he has created political allegories that blow into flame whatever ignorant opinions are stereotypical of green Jello culture. Doesn't he realize the riskiness of such overt and shameless symbolism? Does he feel no regret at polarizing complex problems, or refusing to suspend his own judgment long enough to consider other viewpoints as valid as his own?

And how are so many good people fine with accepting his interpretations of God, country, and mankind? Have we lost the art of questioning? Do we believe anything we see if it's been painted with soft lighting, contains familiar faces, and sold at a Deseret Book?

Enough! Propaganda is not art! It's delusive and breeds fear and prejudice. It does not inspire community or brotherhood or self-examination, but rather it builds walls between neighbors and promotes self-congratulation.

I declare war on you, Jon McNaughton. I'm disappointed that a man with access to so much light and knowledge still hasn't learned what it means to think before mass-producing disinformation under the guise of religious art. I've seen your latest, and I'm sick from it. I can't sit down about this any longer.

Didn't President Hinckley teach us that, "There is too much intolerance in the world. There is too much of it in our own society"? In his essay to college students, "Out of Your Experience Here," he says, "How enriched is the individual who, as he or she goes out into the world, knows that all men and women are sons and daughters of God, each endowed with a divine birthright. How beneficial to come to the realization that, since we are all children of God, we all are brothers and sisters in a very real sense." So why paint pictures that are going to turn brothers against brothers with stereotyping and the slandering of people from Charles Darwin to President Obama? Your images are nothing but straw men, but the people look to your work as if you've paved them in brick. Have you no conscience?

If you want to draw a political cartoon, draw one. Make a statement. But don't tout your opinions as if they were gospel. Don't sell them into homes on the premise that it will make their dwellings holy.

I declare war on you, Jon McNaughton.

Ch-Ch-Ch----

I wanted the title to be a classy salute to David Bowie without sounding cliché, when I realized: Bowie isn't the only cat to use the Ch-Ch- intro.

Ch-ch-ch-changes is obvious.

Ch-ch-ch-Chia I had forgotten.

Then there's the cha-cha-cha. This one is important to me because it reminds me of that scene in Real Genius where Val Kilmer makes Mitch "take a step forward...now take a step back...okay, take a step forward...take a step back" and then they're "cha-cha-ing." It's important tonight because when David and I were making huge late-night chocolate chip cookies I started re-enacting that scene until David said, "Quit thinking you're Val Kilmer." (More reasons to love this man. Also, he just gets nervous when I remind him of Val Kilmer because of his not-so-secret man crush on VK.)

Ch-ch-ch-choo choo? Is that where it all derives?

If so, is it also the derivative of "traded in his Chevy for a cadilac-ack-ack-ack-ack?" Perhaps I could get Joel to change it for my post to go: "traded in his caddy for a Ch-ch-ch-ch-Chevrolet!"

Anyway, the point of this post is that I made a big-big move, and I always have severe trauma after big-big moves. Mom drove down with us to Lubbock when we moved in. I was shell-shocked for those first few days; it was great having Mom there, and she and David were champs at keeping me from bursting into tears.

Me: "It smells like cigarettes."
David: "Wow! Look how big this place is!"
Me: "There's disgusting things in the sink. This place hasn't even been cleaned!"
Mom: "Oh, let's get one of those Magic Erasers at Target. They are so cool!" [the Magic Eraser DID end up being successful]
Me: "The shower head only comes up to my chest."
David: "Hey! It feels like we live in Asia again!"

Two and a half days after arriving, we dropped Mom off at the airport, tearfully, and hopped on a plane ourselves to England.

England was lovely. Continental lost our luggage, so for the first two days in York, we were luggage-less (jacket-less, toothbrush-less, etc.). Fortunately, it wasn't too cold. Then, we spent a day up at Hadrian's wall, saw some Roman ruins (live archeological digs!), and then spent five days in the Lake District where we also saw two of my favorite museums ever: the place where pencils were invented, where we also watched clips of that movie about the flying boy and the snowman with the tender music? The one we all loved as kids? Well, the whole thing was penciled with Derwentwater pencils, straight from Keswick. The other museum was called Cars of the Stars. I SAW CHITTY CHITTY BANG-BANG! I saw it! They wouldn't let us take pictures, but I was there! It was the real thing! No gimmick! I saw where Dick Van Dyke sat! We also saw two Batmobiles (Adam West's and Michael Keaton's first one), the Munstermobile, NightRider (the one with Mr. Feeney's voice), the A-Team van, and Mel Gibson's Mad Max vehicle. We wrote down the rest somewhere. Anyway. they were the real deals. From Keswick we went to Stratford-upon-Avon, then down to London for a couple of days, up to Bath (where we took a special tour to Stonehenge before it was open to the public, so we got to walk IN the rocks!), over to see the Glastonbury Tor, and then back to London.

In London, though, I started to feel anxious. This is where my post really begins (but I promise not to make you read much longer). Since coming back to Lubbock, I've had a real mid-life crisis.

I don't want to buy a Porsche, and I'm still very much super in love with my husband, more and more all the time, but I suddenly was very aware at every moment just how mortal I am. I thought a lot about how old the earth is. How long dinosaurs were on it. How loooooooooooooooooong dinosaurs were on it. And how looooooooooooooooong people have been on the earth. I felt like an ant. Like a blink. Like my life was just going to blink away.

And then I started to think about myself as an immortal soul.

And I gulped. And then I wept. And then I stared out the window at all the people and their lives which are very much as real as mine. I felt like Moses after he saw how all the earth went down and how many people were going to crawl all over it. I felt puny. And I thought about all the people that die every day, and I started thinking why shouldn't I be one of them? What's going to save me and keep me safe?

And then I became agoraphobic.

Since school has started, I've begun to normalize myself again.

But it all makes me come down to this: life is so good. It's so good, I want to keep it forEVER. (And that's big of me to say. Those of you who know me know that eternity scares the living pants off me.)

I'm serious, though. I love David so much, I want to keep him in my pocket where I can make sure nothing ever ever happens to him. I want to live in a glass ball, in a secure bubble, in one of those science fiction dome shields that are sort of see-through.

But life doesn't work like that. I can't save the game and then go back to my old files when something tragic happens (psychologists need to start studying the effects of old Macintosh computer games on kids' brains who grew up in the '80s).

I've realized, though, that I surely will miss out on everything if I spend all my time worrying about what-ifs.

So I'm relearning carpe diem. And I'm only going to do and think and say what makes my heart feel big and warm. I once told some kids on the trail that we're all like seeds that got buried in the dirt and we can't tell which way is up or down or right or left. We don't even know that there is a surface out of the dirt. All we know is darkness and worms and sometimes mud. And heat. There's some kind of heat coming from one of the directions of black, and if we lean ourselves toward that heat, at least we'll feel like we're going somewhere. We all know the rest of the story--the little seedling follows the heat until it breaks the surface and realizes that the world ISN'T all dirt and darkness. It's glorious and colorful and bright. And then we bloom or bring forth fruit or whatever kind of plant we turn out to be, we'll do what that plant does. And it's glorious.

So that's all I know right now. I'm getting over this mid-life crisis and throwing away my what-ifs. I'm going to do what feels good. And I feel good. And I have a sickly great life. And David is my best friend. And he watches Val Kilmer movies with me. And I'm glad he still thinks I'm great even when I'm more than a little crazy. I'm so lucky that I get to share this blink of time with him.

P.S. David made us a joint-blog that we'll be using to give family updates. I might just save this blog here for crazy venting purposes. I need to revamp/update this old webpage anyway. Here's the Near—Far link: http://groooover.com/

Rainbow Cake Lunar New Years Celebration Adventure Extravaganza Sports Candy

This post is dedicated to my old friend Serena, in memory of toothbrush bracelets, junk car photo shoots, and army men cakes.

This cake was Davie's idea, pulled from a website one of his friends had found and recommended. I'll post the link here eventually, so it's not a complete plagiarism of someone else's fabulous idea.

All you need are two white cake mixes and a whole box of food coloring. I really wanted to call this the Punky Brewster cake, but David vetoed it. He said the closest I could get was the Rainbow Unicorn Cake. We're trying to devise ways to invent an edible unicorn horn to stick on the top of the cake——any ideas?

Here is me looking creepier than usual, adding even MORE food coloring to the different bowls of cake mix. You can see the edge of our sticker charts poster off to the left there. I drew that carrot. We put a sticker on it everyday we don't eat meat. (We've done it twice. Which is almost more stickers than our "flossing" chart has. But you should see our book-reading chart!)


Here's David, looking less creepy than me but just as sneaky.

Then we poured the cake batters into the pans (for some reason you need two white cake mixes instead of just one, though we did have a half a bread pan's worth of cake batter leftover).

I had to take a picture of the mess because it looked like we'd been cooking with paint. (As a side note, actually eating the cake makes you feel like you're eating playdoh.)

Here they are, fresh from the oven, in muted '70s retro coloring.

David made homemade cheesecake icing (way more effort than I ever would have put forth on my own).

Our cake looked like a rainbow baby swaddled in cloud candy (complete plagiarism of Tim Curry in the earlier mentioned Psych episode—this is a nod to you, Becca). But it really did look like that. We said so repeatedly. (P.S. I iced the cake. Awesome job, huh?)

Adventure in Driggs

I have about twelve blog posts I've been meaning to write. Today it was between an adventure in Driggs or a blog post on our Rainbow Unicorn Cake Adventure. Driggs wins, but just because it is Presidents' Day related and that topic will grow cold if I wait much longer. So, without further ado, here is our adventuring:










Sorry that last one is a bit low resolution. Can you see the bald eagle? I swear it is there, in the tops of the trees. Open it up big and play Where's Waldo. It's evidence that we saw a bald eagle on Presidents' Day (appropriately enough). Luckily, we had brought binoculars and watched him roost up in the tree tops until he took off for a glorious flight. Anyway, we've decided snow-shoeing is great, but next time we're definitely going to make a try for cross-country skiing.