Sundays with Stretchy Pants

April is just a month full of celebrating around here. Well, celebrating and saying things like, “Really? Is this how old we are? Do we have kids who are going to be 10 years old on Friday? And did we just celebrate our 13th anniversary on Monday? There must be something wrong with the maths.”

The maths are wrong, baby, cuz your hotness is rockin’!

Easter was lovely, except it needs to last much longer so my family can stay much longer and we can have, like, an 8-day feast instead of a weekend binge where we drink and eat too much and hurt ourselves. If we knew it would last longer, we could pace ourselves. I promise we would pace ourselves. My sister and I discovered that it doesn’t really matter what kind of wine a person drinks. If that person drinks too much of it, that person’s belly gets mad at them and punishes them. In other words, it’s not the quality, it’s the quantity. My sister-in-law is wise and she knew that already. She and my brother and brother-in-law, along with Bryan, were able to go to the Ohio Deli (as seen on Man vs Food!) and eat and eat on Saturday, while my sister and my mom and I stayed with the kids. Well, my mom stayed with the kids. Tracey and I just laid around and said, “Shhhh!” But now we know. Damn.

My Columbus friends were able to meet my family and that was lovely. I felt like I should be more nervous about it for some reason, but I wasn’t because Kristen, Dawn and Lynne are just Ohio versions of me, my sister and my sister-in-law. I don’t branch out much in my friendships. And the husbands? All of the husbands are beaten down by perfect matches for their loud and lovely wives, so we love all of them, too. Even my brother. I never found the bellybutton lint he hid here, but I have a feeling he hid it on my pillow. Just thinking about it gives me chills. Or, maybe he unscrewed the screen on the showerhead and put it in there so I shower in lint leavings every morning. Ew!

With that, I’ll leave you with another disturbing image. Everybody knows that My L1ttle Ponies love Easter. I just didn’t know how much they love it until I walked in the bathroom and found this little filly enjoying Maya’s Easter basket. In front of the mirror. Seriously, H@sbro, who designs your baskets*?

*I didn’t buy this basket. My mother-in-law bought it for Maya 2 or 3 years ago. I didn’t even notice what the little pony was doing until I saw her watching herself in the mirror with that look in her eye.

P.S. Don’t ask me what Maya’s basket was doing in the bathroom. Nobody wants to know.

Yes, the baby is fat, but look at that bathroom! Isn’t it gross? But still, I turned out ok. Sort of.  I say this because we’re buying a house with awesomely dated bathrooms. Maybe. You never know until you actually close. We have a closing date (March 19th), time, and location, so we’ll probably close. But still. It’s a great house, great location, just a little dated. The bathrooms are especially dated, with seashell-shaped sinks in one of them. The other one has a dark brown toilet. And those bathrooms always make me think of that old bathroom in that picture up there.

Oh, and! There’s a Florida room. My friends and I get to play Golden Girls in it. I get to be Betty White because she always had a story about back in St. Olaf and I always have a story about back in Chesaning. I’ll let those of you who know Lynne, Kristen, and Dawn guess who gets to be lusty Blanche, straight-talking, offensive Sophia, and steady-eddie Dorothy. It’s hard to pick because they’re all so slutty and offensive!

Anyway, I’m packing. All the time packing.

I get all of my awesome things from the internet. Here are some of this week’s most awesome:

Dawn is famous today. Her super essay about her open adoption is in a brand-new book called One Big Happy Family:18 Writers Talk About Polyamory, Open Adoption, Mixed Marriage, Househusbandry, Single Motherhood, and Other Realities of Truly Modern Love by Rebecca Walker.

Also Dawn-related, this post over at her blog: The Night My World Caved in Read it and cry.
And also this post over at Mama(e) in Translation: Skinny is NOT Beautiful Ditto.

I have a love-hate relationship when it comes to talking about body image with children. I can talk to adults about the fact that even skinny kids are harmed by adults calling attention to their body type, and I have called people out on their skinny nickname for their daughter before, but if one of my daughters comes to me expressing woe about her body, I will stutter and stammer and fall all over myself to try to undo what was said, ultimately feeling lost and powerless because I know that this body image stuff is not easily undone. I just shared with you two blog posts from two different grown-ass women to prove it. (That’s proof right? I mean, they’re blog posts! Two of them!) It is so hard to undo the things that are said to a person because of something as fundamental as their body. I mean, we can’t get away from our bodies. Ever.

Anyway, go read those two posts and then learn how to be white and privileged and anti-racist all at once at Thoughts from a Foster Family: Can We Talk?

I always cringe when I hear people say, “I’m not racist!” because we’re all racist a little bit. We are. We try not to be and we learn and then we do better. It’s ok. It’s better to admit it and try to move on and then keep learning to do even better.

Um, yeah, I just realized that I found all of those great posts on Dawn’s google share thingy or her Facebook links. This post is all about Dawn and her amazing ability to both write and read awesome things. Thanks Dawn!

It’s Thursday, you can’t expect coherence on Thursday. It’s pretty much the weekend. Goodbye.

I’m trying to blog but I keep getting distracted by Mario Kart. And I’ve been doing laundry, making food, and packing for the unschoolers conference thingy at Kalahari. And Maya puked a couple of days ago so I had to snuggle on the couch.  And Kristen‘s son broke his arm yesterday so I had to fret over that. And I have nothing to say, but I usually don’t let that stop me. I looked for a funny video for you, but I couldn’t find one. Why isn’t anybody making funny videos anymore?

We’re going to the Unschooler’s Winter Water Gathering at Kalahari Resort  tomorrow morning with some of the weekly potluckers and other locals, so that’s fun.  Dawn has to work, but we’re making her son come with us because our children cannot bear the void caused by Noah’s absence.

Oh, I know! I read this book called I See the Moon by C. B. Christiansen and I got choked up on every single page and then I cried through the last 3 chapters. It’s about a 12-year-old girl whose 15-year-old sister is pregnant and placing the baby for adoption. The little sister dreams of being an aunt and she’s so excited and she wants to be just like her favorite aunt who now has dementia and it’s just so sad. Every page. Read it and tell me what you think. But lower your expectations because when I finally got around to seeing the movie Titanic, I did not shed a tear. For weeks everybody kept saying, “It’s sooooo sad! Bring a whole box of tissues!” And then it was soooo lame except for the musicians’ continued playing and the images of the old people and parents and children holding each other on the bed and waiting to drown. That part was sad. Oh, and the part where Rose didn’t die. That was sad, too. Don’t judge me.

Anyway, that book was sad, but maybe you won’t cry. It doesn’t mean you’re cold and dead inside. Probably.

I wanted to play drums in middle school band class, but they wouldn’t let me because they had a rule that we had to know how to play the piano first. Dumb rule because, isn’t that what middle school band class is for? Learning? And Dabbling? How could I learn the stuff before band class? Assholes. I didn’t want to learn piano because, my god, the piano is so fine-motor skillish and I’m more of a gross-motor type. So I didn’t take band class, I took choir instead where I lip-synced and messed around and did drugs. Ok, I didn’t do drugs, but I could have and I would have been justified.

*sigh* We watched Girls Rock last night at the Wexner Center and I cried all through it because it was awesome. And then I yelled at Bryan because, well, he’s a boy and he didn’t even have to learn that he rocks. And it’s not fair! But then, Dawn’s Girls Rock post makes a good point about boys and their struggles and whatnot, so I guess I won’t yell at him today. For being a boy.

The movie inspired my girls to play the drums (Liberty), play guitar and drums (Lena), and play guitar and drums and sing (Maya). And Bryan and I were inspired to pay for stuff that would enable those endeavors. Finally, the girls are doing what they’re supposed to by living out my dreams so that I can live through them. Er, maybe it’s not supposed to be about me and my dreams? I can’t remember. The world is so confusing after seeing Girls Rock.

Anyway, Kids Know Stuff is giving away a Washburn guitar soon and now I wish we could win it. Except it’s kind of ruined because it has either Hannah Montana or Camp Rock paint splashed all over it. I’m sure a kid would like it, but whatever.

We’re going to the Wexner Center to watch two more movies today: Jump and Children of Heaven. I’m sure Jump will inspire a jump rope purchase. I just hope Children of Heaven doesn’t inspire me to make the children share one pair of shoes. I’m easily swayed by visual media.