Thoughts at the End of September

I've tried to update this blog for months now. There's so much to record, I can't fit it all in, nor do I know if this is even the proper venue for recording all that I'd like to keep. It's been a month full of all kinds of thoughts, and they contradict each other constantly, so writing down any one thought feels sort of dishonest since I'll likely be thinking a contrary thought in the next moment.

So let me just get some stuff out there so I can move on in this blog and stop feeling like I have to play catch-up whenever I want to say something.

You can't tell here, but his eyes are steel blue.

#1—I Had a Baby

Our Bonnie Prince Charlie either came late or right on time, depending on which due date you think was accurate. Two days before I went into labor, he made a royal flip (that I felt, in the middle of the night) and decided he'd try to come feet first. The doc gave him 24 hours to change his mind and right himself, but I went into labor before this change and before we could schedule the necessary C-section.

A tender mercy: I went into labor literally one hour after my mom showed up. My sweet mom, whom we all thought bought a plane ticket way too late, that surely the baby would be three weeks old by August 8th, but who came right on time after all. 

Mom played with Hollie for a few glorious days, just the two of them: Grandma Hollie and Little Hollie. It couldn't have been more perfect; they couldn't have more cute together. She was a million times better behaved for Grandma than she ever is for us.

Dave and I went to the hospital at midnight on August 8, and I had a C-section at 3:00 a.m. on August 9. My water broke as they wheeled me into the operating room. It was maybe the most uncomfortable and freaked out I've ever been. The spinal block calmed me down, even though it made my arms spasm uncontrollably (I hear that some women have their arms restrained with belts—I'm glad I didn't, even though it was unnerving to see my hands flopping about like fish out of water).

David loved wearing surgical garb. He looked like Jack Shephard from Lost and kept making Jack faces and saying Jack lines to keep me calm and entertained ("I don't believe in miracles, John!" "I need to bury my dad!" "I'm a surgeon, not an anesthesiologist!").

Dave reading Ryan North's Choose-Your-Own-Adventure version of Shakespeare's Hamlet, To Be or Not To Be. It came in the mail the day I went into labor. It is brilliant and funny and made the sleepless nights more manageable. Note how properly disheveled we look. And note the bright sunflowers my doctor brought for me from her own garden.

Finding out I would need to have a C-Section was hard to swallow. It felt a little bit accusatory, like, "You aren't a real woman with a body who can handle having a baby. We need to help you. Also, if this were the medieval times, you would be a dead woman. Thanks and here's your bill." But fortunately my doctor is lovely and I also had lovely friends and family shower me with support and advice. It was all worth it when they finally pulled Charlie out (feet first, after all, just upside-down) and announced his boy-ness. (Also, David saw my uterus outside of my body. He probably doesn't want me publicly announcing this, but I can't help myself. It's too weird. It deserves utterance. Also, he said he wasn't going to look but then he did anyway.)

#2—I Love Being a Mom

Charles Roscoe has been a pleasure and a joy. The boy sleeps in his cradle at night! He still wakes up for feedings, but it is nothing like the 24-hour trade-off schedule that Hollie had us on. David and I took turns for six months taking turns holding her all day and all night, watching obscene amounts of Netflix (and way too many episodes of How It's Made and My Name is Earl). 

Chaz eats like a speed demon and then falls right back to sleep. I'm less anxious this time around, so I feel like I am enjoying his babyhood more than I did with Hollie. I loved Hollie as a baby, but I was so scared and panicky, especially at nighttime. Now I just feel sleepy-drowsy and hungry at night. I feel a lot more relaxed, and he really is such a good baby. He's easy to pacify, he rarely cries. He smiles at me every morning. It's lovely.

And Hollie is hilarious. I can't believe she's almost two, and I promise to devote a whole post to her on her birthday. Suffice it to say that she keeps us entertained and on our toes. She hasn't tried to kill Charlie yet, either, which is nice. She has such a big personality that I spend the day thinking of her as a fellow adult, a child, and a baby all at once. I love 'em. I love these crazy kids.

#3—I Wish I Were a Better Mom

I found myself wondering these past two days whether I am a stay-at-home mom or not. Our kids don't go to daycare. David and I split the work 50/50 or 50/50ish. We both spend some time on campus and some time at home during the days. So are we both SAHMs? Are neither of us?

Dave's been sick for two days, so I've been the sole baby-wrangler except for when he swooped in this morning to change Hollie's poopy diaper and swooped in again tonight to put her to bed (David doesn't really know how to be sick). It's been hard. I can't believe how often I take for granted putting Charlie in Dave's hands while I go for a run (or even go to the bathroom). I suddenly feel guilty for realizing how hard it is to do a thing that many of my girlfriends do full-time everyday.

So I wonder...am I not so great of a SAHM?

There's more I could say here about a lot of things. I consider myself a feminist, but this has been a pretty loaded word, especially in my church of late. I look at Hollie, who is picking up on the stuff of life like some kind of psychological kleptomaniac, and I wonder how to instill in her both the values of a feminist and the values of a stay-at-home mom (again...am I a SAHM? Isn't there some kind of online quiz or something I can take that will tell me?). Or if not a SAHM, then something close. 

I want Holls to feel both limitless and reasonable. I want her to feel free but to also recognize the ideologies we all subscribe to in order to function in American society. I want her to rebel and concede, to socialize and be independent, to question and to believe. I want her to be faithful and skeptical all at once, even though these traits often bring my own heart and soul into anxious turmoil. 

I don't want her to feel anxious turmoil. I don't want her to worry. 

I want her to be all confidence and all humility. I want her to know herself but to never be so cocky or self-assured to admit it.

I also don't want to hold her to any of these expectations, because I never want her to feel that I'm disappointed in her.

So that's where I'm at. 

I had another baby. I love my babies. I don't know what's best for them or how to be what's best for them.

And those are my thoughts here at the end of September.

All About Holls

Hollie as a flower girl at her Auntie Pan-Pan's wedding.

Mowgli ought to be showing up here any day now, so I wanted to put up a post tonight that is all about Hollie, since she'll be having to share the limelight soon. I've been meaning to post an update about our little sprite for a long time now, so I am somewhat dismayed that it's taken so long to record these details. In any case, we love our little Baboo, and she is growing like a brilliant little weed. She is learning so much everyday, and we are learning so much from her. I know that sounds cliché—maybe it is cliché—but the feeling is very genuine. She's a comedian and a rascal and a sweetheart.

Interesting facts about Hollie (with random pictures interspersed):

• She is nearly 21 months old, and we recently had to prove at every airport that she wasn't two years old yet (our last trip in which we won't have to purchase her own seat).
• Since she was 18 months old she's been able to count to ten (to our immense surprise, considering neither one of us tried to teach her this). However, like the Looney Tunes frog who will only perform when no one is watching, she has refused to count to ten on video (she gets too silly). 
• She knows lots of colors, and her favorite colors seem to be blue (because it's the easiest for her to identify), pink (because she gets really smiley and silly when she says it), and white (because it's still the crayon and sidewalk chalk color she chooses to draw with the most. It makes no sense to me, either). She gets a little confused sometimes between black and brown, purple and pink, and blue and green, but in Japan green is just another shade of blue anyway, so she's probably right after all.

Blowing bubbles on the fourth of July.

• I'm pretty sure Hollie's cousin Miriam could sing the national anthem by herself at this age. Hollie can sing the Yo Gabba Gabba! theme song. You can't win 'em all, folks.

Eating chips and Dave's homemade salsa on her first backyard picnic. She couldn't get enough of that salsa.

• Every time a cardboard box comes to our door (whether it is child-mattress-sized or book-sized), Hollie thinks it's a pizza. Two things we are sort of ashamed of: (1) pizza is definitely Hollie's favorite food, and (2) we have ordered enough pizza in the past few months that Hollie assumes if someone brings a cardboard box to our front door, it must be pizza. On the plus side, she'll eat anything on a pizza, even onions, green peppers, and mushrooms (which is more than I can say for David, the shroom-snubber).

Eating fruit salad with Mom. Yes, I am very pregnant.

Blowing bubbles with Dad. Yes, he is wearing red-white-and-blue pom-poms.

• I've heard that some toddlers start to regress a little bit when a new baby is born. We've been talking to Holls a lot about big sisters and new babies, and we think she is catching on. I don't know if this is related to that or not, but Hollie has started wanting to sleep on us for her naps instead of in her crib—something she did for the first several months of her life. She'll sleep for about 30 minutes in her crib, but then she'll fall back asleep on us and stay that way for another hour, sometimes longer. We can't help but cuddle and sleep with her—it's just too much fun being so close while she's so little.

Napping with Dad.

Putting Dad to sleep just before bedtime.

• Hollie loves to "shing shongs" ["sing songs"], and these are some of her recent favorites: "Popcorn Popping," "The Eensy-Weensy Spider," "The Wheels on the Bus" (she can do the actions to those last three), "My Favorite Things," "Do-re-mi" (from the Sound of Music), "I'm So Glad When Daddy Comes Home," any song about dogs, and this ridiculous song her toy teapot sings to the tune of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." She can sing every third word/letter of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" and the ABCs.

This was after she had dragged a frying pan from the kitchen cupboards into the living room for a chair. I found her deep in thought like this with a baby toy hanging out of her mouth. 

• Hollie is learning to say a lot of things, almost over night. She likes to repeat anything Dave or I say. Some recent Hollie-isms and favorite sayings include:
• "So much!" for "I love you!"
• "Gamma" for "Grandma" and "Gmpa" for "Grandpa"
• "Peep-eye!" for "Peek-a-boo!" (courtesy of her Mississippi Great-Grandma)
• "I need help?"—a sentence she says perfectly and all of the time. Always in the form of a question.
• "Upside-down?"—again, always in the form of a question, and always when she is standing on her head and looking at us from between her legs.
• "run in circle?" when she wants us to sing songs while she, well, runs in circles.
• "Bee-tee" for "Blankie" (which sounds a lot like "E.T." which she says for "E.T.")
• "Ee-Em" for "Amen" after prayers.
• "Tight squeeze!" for when she wants a hug.

Holls has always been very independent, but it's getting worse with age. If she can't eat it by herself, she is likely to shun food. Her first popsicle was lime-flavored, so now she calls all popsicles "sour."

• She still hates swimming pools and getting her feet wet, unless it's bath time.

She has recently mastered the fishy-face.

• She has been known to eat something like thirty grapes in one sitting alone, and she'll eat ketchup with her fingers.

Hollie's Drew-Barrymore-from-E.T. moment. She was really upset when we pulled all of these toys off of her.

• Hollie loves to baby her animals. She likes us to swaddle them so she can hold them and softly sing, "Baby, baby, baby" to them. Then, she sets them on the glider ottoman and tells them "night-night" while she rocks them to sleep by pushing on the ottoman. After that, she usually pushes them off the ottoman and body-slams them. So, you know. 

We put together a big girl bed for Holls today. She is ecstatic about it, but only likes to pretend-sleep in it right now. Mowgli will sleep in our room for the first several weeks anyway, so Holls can take her time. I can't believe how grown she up looks, or how breathtakingly small that little toddler bed looks. So big and so little all at once.

• Hollie loves cuddling lately, and kissing and hugging. When she gets mad, she hits things, but very rarely David or me. Whenever she hits something, she looks at me and says, "Be nice," because she knows that is what I am going to say to her.

And that's our lovely lioness of a pixie daughter! Here's a quick video for the grandmas. Hollie was counting to ten in the bathtub, so I ran for the camera only for her to stop immediately (see the Looney Tune frog comment above). So all I got was "1-2-3-Bounce!" We've been trying to capture her singing songs, but, again, we've been pretty horrible at it. I slaughter some of the lyrics, but keep in mind that I had just woken up from a nap myself. 

31 Awesome Things in 31 Days: Thing #31—The Grand Finale!

No cake this year—just a weird looking S'more on a homemade chocolate chip cookie.

Well, we did it! We really did finish 31 Awesome Things in 31 Days (or thereabouts....in any case, we did it all between my birthday and Dave's, when we were both still 31), but it always takes us longer to blog the last Awesome Thing as it turns out. Dave writes up the big day here.

31 Awesome Things in 31 Days: Thing #30—Celebrate Donut Day (belatedly)

The book David checked out from the library from which we took our donut-making recipe. These two dudes are definitely way skinnier than I would expect them to be after reading their little narrative blurbs about how much they love to eat everything in this book (and for breakfast). Their shirts are untucked, but still. (Furthermore, doesn't the guy on the left look like a poor man's Ben Affleck undercover with a Magnum PI stache?)

We originally planned to make homemade donuts for Donut Day last Friday, but that day suddenly got super booked with other Awesome Things (see Thing #28). Instead, we celebrated the day belatedly on a Sunday late afternoon (and continued celebrating well into today with delicious day-olders).

We were also excited to have an excuse to use the biscuit cutter that Dave's mom sent us home with two Houston trips ago. (The donut holes were made using a sanitized lid from our dry-erase board cleaner.)

Deep fryin' some good ole' Texas donuts. David got me a candy thermometer for the occasion (which is nice, because I'm always having to guess temperatures when I fry tonkatsu, so now I can tackle that Japanese dish with more confidence). 

The three dippin' sauces: vanilla frosting (turned into more of a glaze), chocolate frosting, and sugar-cinnamon mix.

Naked freshly baked donuts.

One chocolate and one vanilla glaze. Yes, ma'am.

Can you taste it, folks? Can you? Because it was DELICIOUS. 

A poorly taken picture of some delightful little donut holes.

Uh...the donuts might have been for dinner, so I tried to balance ourselves out by making Dave and Hollie drink a smoothie composed literally 70% of straight pureed frozen strawberries. I think we drank a whole carton of strawberries. Donut day comes but once a year, doo-dah! Doo-dah!

And that's how we ate way too many donuts in two days and why someone should probably come lecture us about feeding donuts to a 19-month-old for dinner. Next time we'll have to have some jimmies on hand to make our donuts more festive. We decided it might be a fun Grover family tradition to make homemade donuts after the first snow each year, so we can dip them in hot chocolate. Nice, right?

I should also mention that David has been avidly reading Michael Moss's Sugar, Salt, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us, which is a terrifying book about how America has gotten duped into eating sheer garbage cleverly designed to look like foods we should feed ourselves and our children. Every time we go to the supermarket together, I hear Dave muttering under his breath as we walk through the aisles of canned and boxed goods, "Sugar....salt....fat....sugar....salt....fat...bliss point...sugar....salt...." It reminds me of when he read Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'ubervilles when all he would do was walk around house sighing, "Tess......oh, Tess......poor Tess......."

The only plus we have for the above concoctions of sugar and fat is that at least it was all homemade. Still, we're back on our flexitarian diet this week (two vegetarian meals a day and one omnivorous dish if we feel like it). And we've been pretty good with our anti-processed-food diet, save for Hollie's goldfish fixation. Hey, what am I justifying myself to you for? Quit judging me and be jealous of our donuts!

And that's how we did Thing #30: Celebrating a belated donut day with homemade donuts, baby. ACCOMPLISHED.

31 Awesome Things in 31 Days: Thing #29—Getting Back to Our Roots

This is how the Grovers play Pick Up Sticks.

David blogs about our adventures in manual labor and yard work (and manages to include some good pregnancy cankle jokes) here.

31 Awesome Things in 31 Days: Thing #28—Visit Turtles, Eat with Friends, and Survive a Glucose Test

Hollie introducing herself to our friend Liz's turtle, the lovely Brigitte Bardot.

Yesterday was a big day for Awesome Things. We actually originally planned on just making donuts to celebrate National Donut Day, but we never had time to realize that one. Instead, we visited a good friend and her turtles, we had dinner with some other lovely friends who invited us over unexpectedly, and David and I were both asleep by 11:00 p.m. (I was actually asleep before 10:00 p.m. We all woke up this morning feeling incredible).

Note the bandages on both of my arms and the back of my hand, as well as the broken window taped shut with part of a diaper box.

Adventure #1: My Glucose Test

I embarked on this one on my own. Basically, I hate getting my blood drawn, and I definitely don't have the veins for getting blood very efficiently. Pregnant women (at least at my clinic) have to take a glucose test in their third trimester to test for gestational diabetes (I think?). It consists of showing up after fasting for a few hours (in my case, I ate a big breakfast at nine and didn't eat anything until heading to the hospital at 2:00, which is when David got done teaching classes) and then drinking a large styrofoam cup of orange glucose solution (it tastes like melted popsicles that come from a bad popsicle batch). You have five minutes to drink it, and I always try to down mine in six or seven big gulps. It's gross, but I've had grosser.

Then you sit in the waiting room for an hour, after which the phlebotomist takes your blood and you're free to go. The first part was easy. I drank my orange drink, headed to the waiting room, and studied for my qualifying exams (well, what I really did was text my mom for an hour, but I promise I did get some pages read in between texts).

When it came time to take my blood, however, the phlebotomists were perplexed. I have a history of getting poked several times whenever I need a blood sample. When I was diagnosed with mononucleosis as an undergrad, the doctor had to get the sample from the back of my hand because my arms were no good (even the doctor admitted the blood sample was unnecessary—they knew what I had when I fell asleep in the waiting room five minutes after showing up). When I gave birth to Hollie, the nurses had to stick the Hep-Lock IV in the back of my hand, too. That was really the worst. Contractions are bad enough, but having contractions while nurses poke your arms with needles repeatedly to no avail? Ugh. It was the worst.

So I wasn't surprised that the phlebotomists were having trouble. Usually, though, one of my arms ends up working. Not this time. The poor guys were so polite and nice, too. I felt bad. It had to be sort of a blow to the ego that they couldn't get my arms to give up any blood. I laughed at all their jokes about how they would have to resort to cutting off a piece of my arm soon to get what they needed, but I really was sweating it deep down. I hated getting poked so many times, and my arms felt raw. It was time to try the top of my hand.

They made me switch chairs to a comfier spot, and the phlebotomist told me to rest my head and just relax. I looked away until I felt the initial sting and tried to answer all of the questions the two phlebotomists were asking me to keep my mind off of things. I don't know if it was my anxiety or the lack of food all day or just the two vials of blood these two guys had just taken out of me, but I suddenly felt super dizzy and nauseous. It was when I started to see little spots that one of the guys asked, "Hey, are you okay?" and I realized that I was absolutely going to pass out. I somehow got my mouth to say, "Uh....I feel a little sick and dizzy....actually.....uh...." and the guy replied sort of urgently, "We'll stop! We'll stop! Hang on!" and I found myself being wheeled forward by one of them so they could recline the chair and help me put my feet up.

It was embarrassing. They were very nice, though, and I was fortunately the only person in the lab at that moment. They gave me a cold, wet paper towel to put on my neck, and then they made small talk with me to keep me awake, asking questions about everything from my hometown to what brand of shoes I had on (they were Roos). Dave and Hollie showed up at that point, and everyone just chatted until I stopped looking like I was going to fall down if I stood up. I made David go way out of his way home to stop by Taco Bell (our first visit there since I was pregnant with Holls) and I had myself a burrito and a double-decker taco to get my body going again. And that was the first adventure.

Hollie eating at the "little kid table" for the first time ever.

Adventure #2: Dinner with Friends

We were just complaining about not wanting to make dinner when some good friends called and told us to come over. We did! These are some fabulous friends we have from church, and they are famous for their homemade pizzas. I think we ate ten Margherita pizzas while we were there. It was something like that. With basil picked right out of the front yard, literally seconds before we sat down to eat. So delicious!

Their daughter is a year and a half older than Hollie, so watching them play is endearing and tragic. Hollie follows V. throughout the house, but doesn't really understand directions well. The "kids' table" was in the next room over, and I was nervous that Hollie wouldn't eat so far away from Dave and I. I was wrong—she loved it. She ate really well, too. I really think Hollie would be far less fussy and whiny all the time if she had an older sibling to look up to and follow.

 Adventure #3: Visiting the Turtles

My good friend Liz has an incredible garden (which was still looking incredible, even after the hail storm!), and she also happens to be a turtle rescuer. It all started several years ago, I think, when some neighborhood boys saved a turtle from a dog and asked Liz if she could heal it. Then they brought more turtles. The first four were all named after the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but then Liz had to branch out with new names for all the turtles that came next.

People found out she was taking care of turtles, and all sorts of people started dropping them off. The turtles started to mate, so now she gets a new batch of baby turtles every summer (in addition to the rescued turtles she takes in). I have no idea how many turtles she has now. Adventure #2 made us a little late coming over, so we missed the turtles' feeding time and many of them had already slipped into their sleeping quarters under the pavement. There were still three or four lingering when we showed up, though. Hollie loves turtles, so it was fun to introduce her to the real thing.

Spotting the turtles eating their food under the patio furniture.

My lovely friend Liz introducing Hollie to the turtles.

Holls was a little shy at first, as she usually is with close encounters of the live animal kind. Here is her signature point that she pulls out whenever she sees something interesting yet intimidating.

A close-up of Brigitte Bardot, just as glamorous and genteel as her namesake.

Hollie really wanted to "pat" the turtle, but only with Dave's help.

Seriously, am I still in Lubbock? Liz is a master gardener, and I didn't even take any pictures of her secret Asian garden on the other side of her house. I repeat, these pictures were taken after the hail storm that sent everybody else's yards into hopeless ruin. 

The other great thing about Liz's garden are all of her wind chimes and ornaments that add music and art to her plants. Hollie is standing by one of my favorite chimes.

Liz showing David some of her knick-knacks hanging on the fence. I just want to point out again how green and living everything is. Seriously. This is West Texas. The same town I live in. How does she do it?

Hollie standing next to her favorite chime in the garden, a funny little thing that lives in a clay pot. She would run her finger down the chimes and then shake her booty to the lingering jingles.

Anyway, I'm so grateful for Liz that she enjoys having young company and isn't afraid of toddlers smelling her lilies or ringing her chimes. She really is incredible. It was a really nice way to end the day, and I loved being able to show Hollie so many green and living things. And the turtles, of course.

So, Thing #28: Survive a glucose test without passing out, eat an impromptu dinner with friends, and visit our friend Liz and her turtles = ACCOMPLISHED.

Have you noticed that most of our Awesome Things are really just us trying to get some "awesome" to rub off on us from our legitimately awesome friends? Seriously. Homemade pizzas and turtle refuges are what is really awesome. We're just showing up and appreciating them.

Oh yeah, and can I mention again that I was asleep by 10:00 p.m.?

31 Awesome Things in 31 Days: Thing #27—Explore Hail Storm Aftermath and Celebrate Survival with a Game Night

A downed light pole in the nearby park. Fortunately it fell this way rather than toward the houses across the street. 

Yesterday morning was exciting. Hollie and I woke first, and we immediately went to the windows and looked outside. I didn't have my contacts in yet, so all I could see were some large fallen limbs and tons of leaves scattered all over everything. The storm had also successfully mown down and mulched all the dead grass and weeds in our front yard, so our house actually seems a bit improved overall. 

It wasn't until later that David noticed the gaps in our backyard fence and the broken window in our living room (we had the second set of blinds closed all morning, so it wasn't until David realized he was enjoying a "delicious breeze" as he read a book near the window that he saw the glass on the floor and the huge hole and spiderweb cracks in the window).

Preparing for our post-hail-storm exploration expedition. Notice the closed blinds on the left. Yeah, one of those window panes is completely busted out, but we won't know it for another several hours.

This poor guy's house is always in shabby shape, but the window is now almost completely gone. There were three or four holes, and the blinds got pretty blown apart, too. We're actually not sure if someone still lives here, though there was a clearly a car in the driveway on this morning.

Downed tree limbs and debris filled the streets. You can see the city workers cleaning up the fallen limbs and trees from out of the park.

Heavy rain usually turns our local park into a pond, but it is particularly wet right now. I anticipate some visits from some cattle egret and black ibis soon. Maybe we'll even get some night herons! They are so fun to see up close in our park. 

It was hard not to feel like we were in a zombie apocalypse or something. I can't imagine what the aftermath of a real-deal natural disaster would be like. Everything was sort of hushed and grim, in spite of the buzzing mowers and chainsaws down each street. David kept pointing out the houses we would take over if we really were post-apocalyptic survivors. Watch out, neighbors—especially those of you with gorgeous front porches and reading nooks we can spy through your windows!

One of the many tragic tree casualties in our favorite park.

This one made me want to reread Jane Eyre. 

We had to make several detours in our exploring because of flooded walkways or tree limbs blocking the path.

The hollyhocks, however, were still standing. This we are pleased to report, especially since we're always trying to explain to Hollie why these should probably be her favorite flowers.

More limbs blocking the paths.

The city was hard at work since the crack of dawn taking care of large limbs crossing over roadways. Here is a huge limb that has already been chopped up and pulled off the road. 

Hollie was more interested in Bert than in fallen trees, as it turned out.

I don't know if you can see, but a majority of these dorm room windows have been smashed and covered with plastic wrappings.

These dorms were probably the most grim edifice we saw all morning. It made the school seem like a ghost town.

More downed limbs across campus.

Some siding or something that had blown off the Art Building.

Anyway, the rest of the day was spent studying (for me) and taking care of the house (for Davey). We were exhausted by the end of the day, but our good friend Jo still came over to play a quiet game of Scrabble. We were all weary from a week of summer school and a severe thunderstorm night of little sleep (poor Jo had to survive it on her own, which is really quite terrifying considering how loud the hail was and how sharp and fast the wind was against our homes—70 mph winds!). Still it was nice to socialize a bit, albeit quietly.

Documentation of life after the hail storm.

Thing #27—Go on a post-hail-storm exploration expedition and celebrate the after-storm calm with Scrabble = ACCOMPLISHED.

P.S. I realize that in light of recent real natural disasters this post is a bit ridiculous and irreverent, but it really was a big deal for us West Texans. Some people had it far worse than our neighborhood, too. Some people lost parts of their roofs, one friend had three windows of her SUV knocked out, another friend had their glass patio table shatter, and someone said their neighbor's trampoline just blew away. I also didn't mention the number of squirrel and dove bodies we had to walk around on our expedition. I'm glad it wasn't a tornado, and I'm grateful for the local weather service's periodic Twitter updates that kept us informed.