A whole lot of nothing

I was really hoping Kaelyn would sleep in this morning (no such luck).  I have been so tired this week!  Of course, I can't complain too much.  I have a good job, a nice house, a family.  So much more than other people have...especially in this economy.

I have a friend who is going through somewhat of a tough time right now.  Her attitude is great, but there's a lot of change on the horizon and it makes her sad.  There's the uncertainty of the future.  I know what that feels like and when I hear her talk about it, my heart aches for her...yet, at the same time, I'm so grateful that Roger and I have the security we need.  I don't think a lot of people realize how nice security is...at least not until it's gone.

Our friend, Lance, gave us a beautiful children's table and chair set.  It belonged to his mother and I'm honored that he's passing it down to us.  Kaelyn isn't really old enough to use it yet, but I like it so much, I want to put in her room now.  Unfortunately, her room is not huge and it's already full.  This means that I have to clean out her closet, so that I can move her toy shelves in there and make room for the table.  I've wanted to store most of her toys in the closet for months now anyway.  I'll probably work on this sometime this weekend.

We are going to the West Point party thing today.  I'm still not really looking forward to it, but Roger is.  He says it sounds like fun.  I don't know why he thinks hanging out with a bunch of old West Pointers that we don't know sounds like fun, but I'm giving it a go.  Steve will be there and he's a great guy.  I think that Roger just wants to hang out with Steve...but if that's the case, I would tell him to just invite him over for dinner one night and they can hang out in the back yard and smoke cigars.

After the party, our plan is to meet friends at the State Fair.  I'm really looking forward to this.  I love the State Fair!  I don't know why, but I do.  I especially like seeing the farm animals.  Every year, I can either witness a birth (I can't always stomach this), or at least marvel at the first few moments of a newborn's life...which is awesome.  Especially the calves who try to stand for the first time.  It's exhilerating when they finally make it!

I've noticed a pattern with me and Roger.  We go for a two to three weeks where we cram as much as we possibly can into a weekend...or in some cases, into a Saturday.  Exhaust ourselves and then spend one weekend where we don't even have the energy to get dressed.  This is the second weekend in a row where we are planning to do two events in one day and also want to spend a day cooking healthy meals for the week.  It will be very very tiring.

I have a hard week coming up at work.  I'm more looking forward to it only for the fact that I'll get through it.  The hard week has nothing to do with hard work...or where I work.  Just something difficult (on my patience) that I have to deal with in regards to my project.  I have a feeling that next Friday night will include a lot of wine!

I've also decided to join Weight Watchers at work.  It's a good deal and the time commitment for meetings is minimal.  Half an hour once a week.  My first meeting is during lunch on Tuesday.  I'm looking forward to this because I know it works.  The baby weight had been coming off, but it's stalled.  It's because I'm not really trying to hard.  I have a week or two of doing well, then stop.  Weight Watchers will give me the motivation tools I need every week...so it will be difficult to slack off without being thoroughly embarrassed.  This is what I need.

Roger is awake now.   I think I'll make him breakfast!

Between La La and Ya Ya

I am somewhere between La La and Ya Ya…..




Today I went to a change of command ceremony at work. It was held in the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium, which I have to say is a gorgeous building (built in 1927)! It’s the first one I’ve been to out of uniform. I found myself trying to remember the last one I attended. It had to have been in Japan and it was either my squadron commander’s or the wing commander’s ceremony. Thinking about it, I’m pretty sure it was the Wing Command. But, I can’t remember it. At all. This is probably because I was on my way out and didn’t care that much.

The whole thing was kind of surreal for me. It’s hard to describe exactly how or why. I did feel like I was balancing between two worlds. No, actually it was more like three. All my experiences with COC ceremonies are as a uniformed Air Force Officer. Going to one as a civilian, felt more like I was an intruder in a world I am no longer a part of. It’s a military ceremony and it seemed odd that I was one of a thousand civilian onlookers, instead of up front in uniform, standing at attention. The other odd feeling was that there was a lot of talk about West Point in the speeches…both outgoing and incoming. I went to West Point…I even lived in Bradley Barracks, which is the castle that is the symbol of the Corps of Engineers. But, I never served in the uniformed Army. Instead, I was commissioned in the Air Force. And even though I’m not the only former cadet that served in another branch of the military, and I’m currently employed by the Army, I still feel like an imposter. Like I don’t belong. I don’t feel like a true civilian, because too much of my soul is still in the military, yet I’m no longer serving my country as an active duty officer. I don’t feel like a West Point alum…because, well, I’m not really. I know the words to the Army song, know the history of West Point, and understand the traditions of this branch of the military, but I don’t belong…yet, I don’t not belong. I’m included as a veteran of the armed services. I’m given credit for getting into and attending one of the toughest schools (if not the toughest) in the world, yet I don’t feel like I should get credit for it.

I guess I’m split between military and civilian. Army and Air Force. West Point and Purdue. Completion of my duty and guilt for not continuing anyway. A part of all of them, yet not fully belonging to any one.

Roger has a friend, Steve, who is also a graduate of West Point…though he went well before I did. He is a member of the local West Point alumni club here in Sacramento. He has mentioned it to me several times and invited me to different events they have (about two a year). I’ve shied away from all of it, mostly for the reasons I’ve described above. This weekend, they are having a pool/house party and Roger wants to go. Steve emailed me the information. He told me I should sign up for their newsletter. I don’t want to go. But Roger does. This is my struggle. Do I explain my feelings to him and risk him telling me it doesn’t matter, or do I just be quiet and go because my husband wants to and I love him? I’ll probably just go. But I’m not that happy about it.

In other news, for the last two days Kaelyn has been saying something that sounds like a combination of “la la la” and “ya ya ya”. I always thought that “L” sounds were hard for babies and toddlers, which is why it surprises me that this sounds so much like an “L”. I’ve been trying to teach her how to say “Yia Yia”, which is the Greek word for Grandma…and this might just be her finally repeating what I’ve been chanting to her. Yet it’s definitely got an “L” quality to it. Anyway, these sounds are a lot like how I feel. Somewhere between “la la” and “ya ya”. A little bit of both, not entirely one.

The Story of Us

I don’t remember how I met Roger exactly. I don’t even really remember the exact date (in July) that he proposed to me out at Loon Lake (I have to look at date stamps on the pictures). I do remember, though, very clearly, the first time I ever heard his name.


I had only been living in Sacramento for maybe 9 months. A few months earlier, I ended a long term relationship. Even though I knew deep in my heart it was the right thing to do, I was still confused and broken hearted. At the time, I was looking for a healthy way to re-group. Actually, to be totally honest, I had just ended the rebound relationship, but I wasn’t the least bit upset about that and really just looked at it as a minor delay in my quest to get on with my new life.

I didn’t know anyone here, but I was lucky to meet a great group of people where I easily fit in and found friends. The same people, today, more than five years later, are still my best friends. I had been invited to have a sushi dinner with a group of three women. I never turn down sushi! I only knew two of them and the third, J, was meeting for the first time that night. I remember that it was July and it was a Friday night. I remember the sushi restaurant and everything we ordered. I even remember the black tank top I wore and that just a few minutes before I canceled my date with the rebound guy so I could go to this dinner. (I broke up with him permanently the next day).

We were talking about men. J once dated Roger. Actually “dated” is a loose term, considering that after an hour of listening to her talk/complain about him, I found out that they had only gone out on a few dates spanning 6 weeks and been “broken up” for just over three months. But J still had it in for him. Bad. She was saying how she couldn’t be in the same physical location as him and for that reason was not going to this Luau pool party that was the following weekend. I told her that was pretty dumb as she wasn’t hurting him, just herself, by avoiding him. He gets to have all the fun and she isolates herself from her friends….for what? I don’t think she expected someone she just met to say that to her, and she told me that I didn’t understand. Well, she was definitely right about that.

At one point, I clearly remember J saying the following to me: “You’ll meet him at the Luau. You’ll like him. Everyone likes Roger.”

I have to assume that I did meet him at the Luau…although Roger says we met at a bbq at our friend Lance’s house. I’m having a hard time with that, because I don’t think I ever went to Lance’s house until years later, I’m sure we met before then and this Luau seems to be the logical place. I sort of remember seeing him for the first time and thinking that while I understood why people liked being around him, I just didn’t get J’s obsession. But if that thought was at a Luau or a bbq or somewhere else, I just don’t know.

I have little snippets of memories of Roger in the first couple of years that I knew him. I remember that I wanted to buy a poker set and table top for my friend, Debbie’s, 30th birthday. I was looking for people that wanted to chip in to get it for her. Roger emailed me and we met up a few days later for him to give me some money to buy it.

Another time, he had organized a jazz/pool party, but by the time I decided to go, it was only an hour before the event started and it was too late to pay. I sent him an email asking if I could come anyway. It was a shot in the dark, but he called me a few minutes later and told me he had me on the list as his personal guest. I went, but don’t remember if I talked to him too much there.

There’s another time that I had met a group of people in a pub downtown. I was getting my Master’s Degree and had a paper to write, so I couldn’t stay long. I had just decided to get up and leave when Roger showed up. He had ridden his motorcycle and waltzed in with his leather jacket and helmet. I thought it was funny for some reason. As I was leaving, he asked me to stay a while. But I couldn’t. It never occurred to me that he might have liked me then.

A few weeks later, Vickie and I met different friends at a different pub downtown. It was crazy boring, but neither of us wanted to give up a night out at a bar, so we called Roger. It took him forever to actually show up. So long, we decided not to wait for him and left. He called me and begged me to come back, but I didn’t.

I already wrote the story about us white water rafting, where Roger had to save me and Vickie from the river. I never saw him the same after that weekend. I don’t know what it was exactly. Probably the idea of a man climbing a (sort of) mountain and crossing a raging river for me. And Vickie. I have to be fair.

Things changed after that. I had already been helping him decorate his new house, so we had been spending more time together, but that rafting trip changed our friendship forever. Things got weird for us. He’d call me when he was passing by my house and take me to breakfast or dinner. He would invite me just about everywhere. There came to be a point in time where I tried to avoid him a little. By then, I knew he liked me, but I was afraid to like him back. So, I stayed away.

That didn’t last long. I had to work one night, demolishing a bridge, and I was working all day too. Roger’s house was near my office and he was supposed to be out of town on a business trip. I asked him if I could go there after work and take a nap before I started the night shift. He said I could. It turned out that he wasn’t leaving until that night and when I showed up, he was still there. We had dinner and talked for a couple of hours and then I drove him to the airport. When we got there, he kissed me. Then left. Just like that. I didn’t get a nap, had to work all night and then had to wait an entire week to find out what the heck that kiss was about.

I picked him up again the following Friday and it was awkward to say the least. Eventually, the tension broke and he kissed me again. Then he asked me out and I agreed. It’s like we broke past a wall or broke whatever leash had been holding us back. The rest is history.

We had a whirlwind romance. He took me to Vegas (twice), Temecula, and skydiving. We went to Napa, Bodega Bay, and countless other places. He showered me with attention and love. He left for a two week trip to Yellowstone and Jackson Hole with his friend, Darryl. I missed him like crazy. The day he got back he told me he wanted to get married. Two weeks later, he proposed at Loon Lake, on that fuzzy day in July. We didn’t have a long engagement. Just four months. We went to Whistler, Canada on our honeymoon, and two months after that, I was pregnant with Kaelyn.

I think we surprised a lot of people with our union. Even ourselves. We are polar opposites in almost every way imaginable. But, we balance each other out. He brings out the best in me and I hope that I bring out the best in him. I have so much respect, faith and love for him, I often feel like I’ll explode with the intensity of my feelings. We have created a harmonious home, a happy baby, and united family. We’ve found things that we enjoy doing together and created little idiosyncrasies that only we understand. Sometimes, Roger says that we wasted a lot of time in the beginning. We could have started this two or three years before we did…but, timing is everything and I don’t think the timing was right back then. Sometimes, I play the “what if” game. What if I never moved here? What if I didn’t have to demolish that bridge? What if Vickie and I never sunk our boat at that rapid? Roger says it doesn’t matter, because somehow it would have turned out anyway. We’d be together. Kaelyn would be born. We’d be us.

I like that. I like our story. I love us.

Railroad Museum and Ice Cream Safari

Yesterday was pretty jam-packed.  After breakfast, we met Vickie at the Railroad Museum in Old Sac.  I had never been there before and I have to say I'm very impressed.  I had no idea the history and the attention to detail in that place.  I think I'll take my Dad there the next time he comes to visit. 

We got an awesome tour by George, who coincidentally is a carbon copy of my high school homeroom teacher Sgt. George S.  I seriously contemplated asking if it was him...except I know it's not because Sgt. S is happily in Florida right now...thanks to Facebook, I know that for a fact.  I do wonder, though, if they are twins separated at birth and ironically (no coincidentally is a better word) both named George.

 After the tour, we took our time going into the different train cars...refrigeration, dining, steam engine, etc.  They had everything.  My favorite was the sleeping car that moved, had sounds, and lights in the windows to make it feel and sound like we were actually riding in the train.  The second floor was dedicated to train sets and toys.  There was an awesome train village set up that we looked at for hours.  The detail was amazing.  This museum inspired us to get a train set to run around our Christmas tree.

After the museum, we grabbed some lunch at a nearby cafe and sat outside watching people and kids walk by.  We saw a tour for underground Sacramento pass by us and decided that has to be next on our list of things to do in town.

We headed out to the ice cream safari at 3:30.  The zoo opened up at 4, but the lines were already a mile long to get inside.  Luckily it moved fast and we were inside, eating popsicles in a matter of minutes.  The zoo teamed up with Baskin Robbins and they had different booths around the zoo where we could get as much ice cream as we could eat, for free.  It was 100 degrees yesterday, so the cool ice cream, and coke products were a welcome treat.  Another fun discovery is that Kaelyn now waves.  She spent two hours at the zoo doing nothing but waving to the other patrons.  It made her happier than the animals ever could.

We got home around 8pm, and put Kaelyn straight to bed.  She didn't have her normal naps yesterday and she was exhausted.  Our neighbors were having a party, which is unusual.  I don't think, in the five years I've been in this house, I've ever seen them with visitors....but, I admit I don't pay a lot of attention, so they probably do have a normal amount of visitors.  It sounded like they were having a pretty good time and I did wonder if the noise would keep us up (it didn't).  I made some sandwiches for me and Roger, so we wouldn't go to bed with just sugar running through our system.  We tried to watch some tv and relax.  We relaxed so much that the next thing I remember is Kaelyn waking me up at 5:30 this morning.

Today I have about 100 loads of laundry to do and need to get started, so I'm not still washing clothes late tonight.  We are going to Lowe's later to look at outdoor ceiling fans and I need a new book to read since I finished the Harry Potter series that Roger bought me for our anniversary (Yes, I am that much of a nerd).  I think I'll clean the kitchen floors again today, too. 

People

I noticed something yesterday as I was walking back to my car after work.  You can basically categorize people by the way they cross the street.

 I never really wait for the little white walking guy or the chirping bird to tell me it's safe to cross a street.  I learned how to watch for cars when I was a child, so I'm pretty confident in my ability to see that if nothing is going to maim or kill me when I cross, then that orange hand shouldn't be a deterrent.  I'm not the only person like this.  There's a lot of us that cross when we feel safe enough and don't idly wait for a sign to tell us it's ok.  Maybe it's because we're the ones that always feel like we're rushing.  Not enough hours in the day, so why wait for the orange hand to change to the walking guy when we can better use that minute doing something productive.  But, I like to think that we're the first category of people.  The ones that rely on our own judgement and not someone or something else to make our decisions.  We take responsibility for our lives and our actions.

The second type of person is the one, that no matter what, will not set foot on the street until the bird is chirping and the walking man is lit up.  It doesn't matter if it's 4am and the streets are deserted, they won't cross.  These are the people that are so entwined in the rules that they just can't bring themselves to step outside the box (or the crosswalk) regardless of what the circumstances are.  They are the ones that will stand at that corner, even when everyone else is crossing the street.  The "rules" say wait for the bird to chirp, then you can go...so that's what they do.

Which leads me to the third type of person.  I was pretty anxious to get the weekend started, so I was in a hurry to get to my car.  As I approached the first intersection, I noticed a woman standing waiting for the light.  There was a red light two blocks down, which pretty much meant that there were no cars crossing the intersection at that moment, even though the light was green.  She was just standing there (the orange hand was lit), so I looked both ways, then stepped around her and crossed.  She followed me.  She is the person that won't make the decision that goes against the grain, but if someone else does it, she'll follow.  A lot of people do this.  Cross only when someone else does.  Personally, I think it's dumb to be like this.  I wouldn't trust someone else to make safety judgements for me.  But, it was pretty obvious we weren't going to get run down.  That makes it even funnier.  She was afraid to cross, but if I showed her it was ok first, then she was willing to go.

Moving on.  As I was leaving the parking garage, I pulled in behind another woman.  She was having trouble with the ticket eater thing.  She was pushing the button for the attendant to come help.  I don't know where she was, because I've found her to be very helpful in the past, but for whatever reason (maybe she was in the bathroom), she wasn't coming.  Luckily I could get around her and get out.  Well, every Friday there's some sort of JW conference at the Convention Center (across the street from the building I work in).  I'm pretty sure I know what JW stands for, but don't want to get into it here.  Anyway, they post these guys around downtown on Fridays.  They wear their JW badges and hold signs up at every parking garage and lot around town.  I don't know why they do this, because the parking in the city is pretty obvious, but maybe they give people directions to the convention center.  Anyway, these guys are at their post in the morning and are still there (or there again) in the afternoon.  One of these guys was at the garage, standing pretty close to the woman who was having trouble with her ticket.  He was on his phone and watching her, but he wasn't helping her.  Now, I know he doesn't actually work there, but what is his purpose of standing there?  I've had one of them hand me a ticket in the morning, so I know they aren't against helping people with their tickets.  But he didn't walk up to her and see if he could get the machine to eat her ticket and the attendant was nowhere to be found.  I felt sorry for her.  Not sorry enough to help though, so I'm no better than the JW guy I guess.

I went to Vickie's mom's house after work. Roger is still renovating the kitchen and was texturizing (is that a word?) the ceiling yesterday.  That took a long time, so I decided to go and pick up Kaelyn, who hangs out there while he works.  I was happy to see that Vickie was there too.  I don't get to see her as much as I used to now that Kaelyn is here.  She pointed out how less than a year ago, she was just something that we were anticipating, she didn't even exist a few months before that, and now, my life totally revolves around her.  So true.  She's ten months old...I can't believe my baby is almost one!

We hung out there for a while, waiting for Roger to finish his work, then left for home for our normal Friday night.  Pizza and TV.  After Kaelyn went to bed (around 9), Roger and I sat outside by the fireplace and just hung out.  It was nice.  Our attention was focused totally on each other.  We don't get that very often as there's normally some distraction...either Kaelyn, a movie, or a friend, that prevents that kind of focus.  I think I'm going to tell him that we need to dedicate more time to just being together. 

He's making me breakfast right now.  We'll eat outside.  Kaelyn is napping and when she wakes up we're going to the Railroad Museum then to the Ice Cream Safari at the zoo.  Vickie is coming too, which is awesome!  Fun day...

Inside and Out

Roger was pretty excited when I woke up Saturday morning and told him I wanted to  make Seafood Paella for dinner.  I could also sense his disappointment when he got out of bed and saw me scrubbing down the kitchen instead.  I just can't cook in a dirty kitchen...actually, I can't cook in a kitchen that isn't spotless.  It's not just the countertop and the stove and floors and obvious things.  I scrubbed out the refrigerator, cleaned the vents above the microwave, the tile grout on the floor, pulled out the stove, etc.

I could hear Roger getting out of bed and knew that he would come in and tell me the kitchen was already clean.  This is one of my neuroses that he just doesn't understand.  He deals with it because he loves me, but his logic is, if it already looks clean and I'm going to dirty it up again, why not wait to until I'm finished cooking.  The opperative word, though, is "looks".  Looking clean and being clean are not the same.  Things might look perfect on the surface, but take off that top layer and there's dirt, grime, germs.

I've been thinking a lot about that lately.  Taking care of the inside and not just the outside.  It's easy to focus on our outer selves.  Shower, fix my hair, put on makeup...making myself look good on the outside, doesn't guarantee that I'm beautiful on the inside too.   I can focus on these things, because they are simple.  It takes no effort, no willpower, no real work.

I know someone who's struggling with addiction.  He spent the better part of the year focusing on the wrong thing.  The outside, the surface.  He is frustrated because he doesn't understand why he can't get anywhere, why he fails.  It's because he's focusing on the wrong thing.  Why does he have the addiction?  What is he making up for?  What is he not addressing that will make him stop?  Those are hard question.  And the process of dealing with those emotions is tough.  It's easier to ignore them, but leave them untouched and they will contaminate your soul like a dirty kitchen will contaminate your food.

Since Kaelyn's birth, I've been struggling with accepting my new body.  I don't want to.  I want it to go back to before I got pregnant.  It won't.  I have to accept that...but, I can still change it.  Make it into something I'm not ashamed of.  For a few months, it was easy for me to rationalize that I just had a baby.  No one will look at me and see the disgusting person that I feel like on the inside.  They will see a new mom and they will understand.  I've been trying to eat well, exercise, but for the most part, I've been unmotivated to really make a change.  I can't go back to my old my diet and think I'm going to look the same.  Things have changed and I need a new plan.

But, as I was scrubbing the kitchen floors, it occured to me that I'm focusing on the wrong thing.  I'm trying to get back my old body without changing my lifestyle too much.  I don't want to give up the cooking...or at least the kind of cooking I've been doing...where I experiment with creating recipes and focus on making them taste as good as I can, without regard for how good the ingredients I put into them are for my body.  Why?  Is food, more specifically, creating good food a substitute for something?  Is there something on the inside that is forcing this need on me?  If I truly want to change my outside body, what should I focus on on the inside to make that happen?  What is in there that is preventing me from getting the motivation I need to really make a change?

I don't know.  But I will think about it and search for it and when I find it, I will address it.  I will scrub it down and purify it like I do my kitchen.

We never got around to the paella.  We ended up spending the day running around town shopping, then came home, tired and not at all hungry.  I will still make the Paella, just later this week.  The kitchen is already clean, so that's one thing down...

Nothing Changes

Last night, Roger, Kaelyn and I met up with a friend of ours for a sushi dinner.  I had been looking forward to this dinner since we had planned it a week earlier.  Not just because I miss seeing Barbara at work everyday, although I do, not because I've always thoroughly enjoyed our conversations, which I do, but because I was getting to see her again for the first time since she almost lost her life.  Coming so close to losing another friend, unexpectedly, touched me as deeply as the ones I've lost forever.  The difference is, this time, I experienced the shock, the thumping of my heart as it fell into the pit of my stomach, the expulsion of all the air from my body, but when I started breathing again, she was actually still there.  It wasn't over and everything was going to be ok.

I really wanted to know how her life has changed these last few months.  Of course, I wanted to hear what happened from her perspective, but not so much for the gory details, as it was for the spiritual experience of it.  What is it like, to think, for a moment, that life was over?  What does it feel like?  Did she know?  And when she realized how close she came, did it change her view of life?  We really didn't get that deep into the conversation.  Instead, our conversations revolved around work-the company I used to work for, how things have changed (or not), how she's adjusting to being back after months of recovering from her injuries.

When I walked away from the meeting, I thought about how great it was to see her, talk to her, how after months of not being in contact, we were still the same friends, with the same conversations, as we always were.  In other words, nothing changed.  And it wasn't until I was on the way home that I truly thought about that.  It's not really what I was expecting.  I just can't pinpoint what it is I did expect.

I've never really had to deal with my own mortality.  I've unfortunately, experienced the death of too many friends and family members.  I've experienced the shock of how everything can be perfectly ok one minute, and completely not the next.  Yet, I never really had a moment where I had to deal with the fragility of my own life.  Even deployments to war zones didn't bring that kind of danger to me.  My brain tumor was benign and more of an annoyance than anything else.  I was hit by car as a child, yet never was I in danger of having any serious, much less life-threatening side effects of that accident.  I've never had a near-death experience and the closest I've ever come to contemplating the ending my life, is when I lose someone else.

It occurs to me that Barbara is able to slip back into her "normal" existence seamlessly, because she was already living her life to the fullest.  She already loves wholeheartedly, shows her appreciation of others, surrounds people with her intoxicating and magnetic personality.  She doesn't need to contemplate the meaning of her life, because she's already the perfect version of herself.  It's pretty amazing to think, actually.

And so I think about my life...and Roger's...and Kaelyn's.  Am I living to my fullest potential?  I hope so.  I work hard, I love harder, I have fun in the meantime.  I've traveled the world, served in the armed forces, gotten a few degrees.  I've seen and done so many things in my young life, that I'm perfectly content spending the rest of my thirties focusing on raising a child.  I don't need to travel, run any more marathons, or achieve anymore goals for me alone.  My focus can be my marriage to Roger and how we raise our daughter. 

If tomorrow, it would all be over, I'm sure I'd be OK with it on some level.  On another not so much.  Because I'm living a great life right now.  I don't want to miss seeing Kaelyn grow up.  I want to grow old with Roger, have us become grandparents together, and retire as cranky old people that drive everyone around us crazy.  My life is not complete, because I havent' completed it yet.  Yet, I also don't have much to change.  I'm doing what I need to be doing. 

And so is Barbara.  I'm happy she's here...because I love her, too.

Quiet Weekend and Loads of Zucchini

Even though it was a short work week, it felt like it took years to get through. I don’t think I ever fully recovered from our long weekend and I think that must have been the case with everyone else last week. It seemed that we were all lethargic and pretty cranky. Needless to say, I was really looking forward to this weekend and doing pretty much nothing. As a matter of fact, one of my major goals was to see if I could make it through Saturday without actually getting dressed.


Roger has been renovating the kitchen of our good friend’s parents. One of the perks of this particular job is we get fresh vegetables from her garden. Last week, Roger brought home two huge (I mean huge!) zucchinis and some tomatoes. I decided to make a spaghetti sauce with the tomatoes as well as some other fresh vegetables and herbs we had on hand. Once I had the sauce simmering, I turned my attention to making the spaghetti only to find out that we didn’t have enough all-purpose flour. So, in keeping with my daily goal of not getting dressed, I decided to try my hand at whole-wheat pasta. It came out and it tasted pretty good, but I have to say that from now on, if I’m going to go through the trouble of making pasta from scratch, it’s not going to be whole wheat. If I wanted the healthier, less refined pasta, I’d rather just buy it and skip the work of actually making it. We also had some ripe bananas that needed to be used (I hate wasting food) and since I had no flour to make banana bread, Roger got a banana cream pie for dessert instead (much to his delight).

I also used Saturday to cook some dishes to use up the zucchini. We had a stir fry, grilled zucchini, zucchini in our pasta sauce, and Moussaka (made with zucchini instead of eggplant). This got me through most of one (yes, it’s huge)zucchini. I plan on making some zucchini bread tonight, but I still have a lot of zucchini to get through and am running out of ideas…not to mention that we already have meals to last us for the next week, if not longer.

It was really hot this weekend, above 100 degrees on Sunday and neither Roger nor I felt motivated to spend any part of our days outside. Luckily, we get really good shade in the early evening when the sun starts to go down and our backyard becomes bearable about an hour earlier than our neighbors’. This allows us to still cook and eat dinner outside. And with Kaelyn being so messy, it’s nice to not have to worry about her getting food bits all over the kitchen. So, the only time we ventured out of the house was to eat and play with Kaelyn outside in the evening and on to night (our fireplace helps keep us warm if it gets too chilly). Other than that, we were content to lounge around all weekend doing a whole lot of nothing.

The week ahead looks a lot like last week, except that it seems that everyone is in a better mood. Hopefully, this means that Roger and I will have enough energy to go back to our regular weekends of doing something fun with friends.

Mirror Image

When I was pregnant with Kaelyn, I used to imagine what she might look like. I imagined a baby and a toddler, with my dark brown, curly hair, greenish eyes, and pale olive skin tone. Looking back, I never really envisioned many of Roger’s features when thinking about her. I always thought that my features were the dominant DNA. Of course, I hoped that she would have the easy time tanning that he does and be as adventurous as him. I wanted her to have his generally friendly and outgoing personality. His musical and athletic ability. But, the general looks, I admit, I thought would be mine.


But, there’s a funny thing about DNA….

Kaelyn looks nothing like me. Try as I might, I can’t find one single trait that she shares with me. Obvious things, like her red hair, big bright blue eyes, crazy long eyelashes, and cute dimple on her left cheek, don’t look like they come from either Roger or me. But everything else she gets from him. The pink undertone to her skin, her bubbly personality, the shape of her head, her nose…all the way down to her blood type. All him.

I find myself clinging to any reference someone might make that associates her features with mine. Someone once told me that she had my mouth and I was elated! My mouth!! I’ll take it. But, looking at my baby pictures, no, she doesn’t have my mouth at all. And when she smiles, it’s obvious. She has the exact same crooked smile as Roger. It even skews to the same side as his.

Right now, I’m desperate to find something about her that is like me. I’m watching her pick things up and how she manipulates them, hoping that maybe she inherited my left-handedness. (There’s no evidence either way). So far, the only things I’ve come up with: Her hair is starting to curl (Roger has straight hair) and her ears don’t stick out like Roger’s did when he was a baby. Yep, I’m down to this: her ears may look mostly like Roger’s, but they don’t stick out and neither do mine!

Kaelyn is beautiful. And I’m not just saying that because she’s my baby. She is truly stunning. I’ve never seen eyes as blue and piercing as hers. I’m assuming the same grandmothers that passed on her red hair are also responsible for her eyes and I’m so grateful that Roger and I had those grandmothers and those genes somewhere inside of us! I find it funny, then, that I sometimes wish she had features closer to mine. I’m nowhere near the beauty she is destined to become. I guess that there is some selfish part of me that wants a visual of my DNA. Kaelyn is the perfect combination of what Roger and I put together can be…and I’m impressed! I guess there’s that animalistic instinct that I needed to reproduce to ensure the survival of my DNA and I suppose that I just wants to be able to see it.

All that being said, I wouldn’t change her looks for anything. A friend once told me that as she ages, she may start to look more like me and my first thought was, “Oh I hope not! She’s so beautiful, turning into me would be a major downgrade for her.” I might not look in the mirror and see my daughter staring back at me, but her features did come from me somewhere. That hair and those eyes are DNA that both Roger and I passed on to her. How unlucky for us that our looks don’t reflect those good genes, but how lucky is Kaelyn that hers does!



There’s no real purpose to this post. Just some thoughts I have every time I look at Kae or explain where her red hair and blue eyes came from.

We got the results of her head ultrasound Monday night. She’s perfectly fine!

4th of July Weekend

I can't believe how fast this year is going.  It's already July and we already had our annual 4th of July party.  It's crazy.  I got to start the weekend a little early on Friday due to the long weekend.  I met up with Roger and Kaelyn at our friend's house, where Roger is renovating the kitchen and Kaelyn got to go for her first swim.  I wasn't sure how she'd handle it because, truthfully, she's not that into her baths.  She doesn't seem scared of the water, but no matter how many toys I give her or how fun I try to make it, she's always just OK with bathtime.  Friday was different.  I don't know if it was the actual swimming or the attention she got from all the kids, but she had a blast.  Laughing and splashing, she looked right at home in her little floatie.  We'll definitely have to do that again.

We didn't do that much on Saturday.  I cleaned the house and Roger worked outside.  I'm glad for the day of quiet, because the rest of the weekend was anything but.  Our 4th of July party is one of my favorites that we do, but it is also exhausting.  Roger loves fireworks and we go all out with getting as much as we can.  The show he puts on in our neighborhood rivals what the City does in the local parks and normally, our neighbors all just end up coming to our yard to watch him go (or just look from their windows).  Before all that though, is the BBQ, where once again, Roger goes all out.  Tri-tip and brisket, corn on the cob so sweet, no butter or salt is needed, potato salad (my creation) and so many delicious desserts brought over by our friends. 

This year, we also had friends visit with an 11 month old girl, Katie.  Katie and Kaelyn really had fun together.  I was apprehensive about how they would handle the fireworks and as much as I'd love to say that they were thrilled with the show, I can't.  Neither one of them made it.  Playing together and getting all the attention from their adoring fans just wore them out completely.  Katie went home before the show and Kaelyn went to bed.  She was so sound asleep that the noise didn't even stir her.

After the fireworks, we had a jam session with Roger and our friend Mark.  They sounded really good together and we made the decision that we'll actually hold these regularly.  By the time everyone left and we cleaned up, it was close to 2am.  Roger and I went to bed exhausted.

Monday was even more tiring for us.  We got up early and met with friends to go to Great Adventure.  Kaelyn was happy to be there with all the bright colors and music.  Since we had plenty of people with us, we were all able to take turns staying with Kaelyn while we rode the roller coasters.  We saw the whale show, visited sharks (Kaelyn's favorite) and toured the butterfly house (her second favorite).  We didn't leave until 8pm, and by the time we stopped for dinner, dropped everyone off at home and got home ourselves, it was after midnight.  Kaelyn had already been out for hours and I'm surprised I even made it to bed before I passed out.

This morning, I'm feeling the after effects of a jam packed weekend.  Kaelyn's ultrasound is this morning.  I hope that they can see everything they need with the ultrasound alone and I really hope it shows nothing.  I'm pretty sure that she is OK after speaking with several people and doing my own research, but I won't feel completely better until we have the results.