We've all been here in the house like everyone else has been in their houses. Mostly, I feel we're doing okay except for the crushing collective grief.

I mean, right?

Last night, over our delicious dinner of mushroom, sausage, and spinach fricassee, Dan randomly started calling me Momar. He says it sounds similar to Mama. He says he thinks it's a nice name for me. The children, especially Shef, have adopted it immediately.

Look: I hate being called Momar. Who would want to be called that?

To me, it sounds quite similar to Muammar, as in Muammar Gaddafi, the dead dictator of Libya. I'm sorry, but who would like their at-home term of endearment to signal an authoritarian regime?

Not me. But, in this case, it doesn't seem to matter what I think.

Summer-End Panic
It's nearing the end of July, and I have to say I'm feeling much different than I normally do at this point in the summer. Most significantly, I'm void of panic, and I haven't been crying. To be fair, most summers I don't cry that much. But last summer, I had to get my rewritten book to my agent by August 7th, or I'd never, ever get it to her. The crush of the school year would descend, and I wouldn't have the long hours I needed to complete my revision. Tears leaked out, and I wondered whether I could make the book as good as she wanted me to. Now, that book has sold and is almost totally edited. Instead of weeping about my next project, I can simply extend my arbitrary writing deadline to September 1st and carry on. I'll be crushed by just one job, not two.

Dan's Retina
On Monday, his doctor lowered the boom: he needed an extra week of on-his-right-side bedrest to cement that detached retina back into place. No one has been happy about this, but we've been stalwart in our adherence to the guidelines. We all prefer that Dan not be blind. Of course, if Dan were writing this paragraph, he might include an expletive or two to illustrate what it's been like to stay in bed with his right cheek on a very thin pillow for 12 days straight. He might include the descriptors, "crazy-making" or "awful" or "utterly depressing." We can all imagine it. It's not the best.

The Teen Driver
Shef has been diligently practicing his driving, and in my estimation, he's quite good. Sure enough, yesterday his behind the wheel instructor confirmed that he's doing well and that he's extremely amenable to coaching. I agree, and so far we haven't crashed even a little bit. When I told my friend Jordan that I've been the primary driving instructor in our household, she laughed. "You shouldn't be teaching anyone to park," she said. That's obvious. I'm a terrible parker. I'm not even that good of a driver. But, I'm a good teacher, and that's been carrying me along.

• We put up the tree and all of the ornaments. All of them. Even though every year I remind the family that we don't need every single one. "We do," they say, even though there aren't enough spaces and not all of them are very attractive.
• We planned a holiday outing. However talented the dancers in The Nutcracker undoubtedly were, it was not particularly enjoyable, as you can see above. All tippy-toes; no talking. Lots of leaps; loose storyline. I don't know. It just wasn't for us. Dan liked it okay.
• I finished my shopping at the last minute, visiting the Mall of America, Target, and Dick's Sporting Goods on Christmas Eve Eve. I didn't even hyperventilate at any of these locations.
• We baked cookies and decorated them. They taste good, and I ate lots of dough and broken pieces.
• Teddy, for his part, ate 8 oz of dark chocolate and cheerfully vomited in the back room of the emergency vet's office to the tune of 227 dollars. He's so dumb, but it looks like he'll live for another Nativity.

Here's an unfortunate fact about me: I'm not a very good gift-giver. Every once in a while, I'll straight-up steal a half-decent idea from someone else about what to buy for someone I dearly love. Most of the time, though, I walk into one of the same half-dozen stores I always go to and pick something that the recipient might think is just fine. Just fine, but not usually delightful.

I wish I were better at this, but I'm just not.

This year, Dan has some specific requests for Christmas gifts. One of them is a quarter-zip pull-over. Before I go any further, I want you to know that Dan has about fourteen quarter-zip pullovers already in his closet. I pointed this out.

"I'd like one that isn't blue," he said. It's true that at least six of the pull-overs--the only ones he actually wears--are blue.

"But I've purchased you purple and green ones, and you never wear them," I argued.

"On the green one, the sleeves are too short."

"What about the purple one?"

Dan went to his closet and pulled out the purple. "Well, the collar is just outrageous. It's too tall! And, plus, it's boxy." I asked for proof of these assertions, so he modeled the sweater for me. To be honest, I could see what he was saying, but I disagreed that those two points made the sweater unwearable.

"It's okay if you can't find the perfect quarter-zip," Dan said. I think he began to realize that he was sounding a little Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally. "I could also use some, like, regular sweaters. Maybe a cable knit."

First of all, I don't think he has any idea what cable-knit is. He definitely doesn't like it. He only likes tight stitches.

"I liked those v-necks you got me that one year," he went on, "but, I didn't like how deep the Vs were. Like, I don't like it when any part of the second button of my shirt shows in the V."

I raised my eyebrow here, I'm pretty sure, and Dan started to look sheepish. He might have giggled. "And also," he added, "those were a little too short." There's another black quarter-zip that he has, incidentally, that's a little too long.

 I think all readers can see my predicament.

"Just get me a sweater," Dan said, finally.

I wrote this directive down in my bullet journal. "I'll do my best to get you a sweater. But not a crew neck, not a deep V, and if it's a quarter-zip, I'll be sure it's neither too short, too long, and also doesn't have a tall collar or a boxy fit."

Should be easy. Luckily I'm such a good gift-giver.

I'll admit that sometimes during family movie night, I'll stay busy on my computer while the rest of them watch a movie. In my defense, I do generally stay in the same room with the family. Also, they generally choose some superhero film I have no interest in watching for the sixth or seventh time.

But tonight, because I'm so flipping open-hearted per my Sankalpa, I stayed right there in the fray for Pete's Dragon, the 2016 version starring Bryce Dallas Howard and Robert Redford.  As a bonus, this was our first time watching this fine film - Mac got it for Christmas from Uncle Kevin. This Pete turned out to be pretty much what I thought it would be: a predictable, heartwarming Disney story of motherless children, their heartbreak, and the families that heal their wounds.

And it was so sad and wonderful - and Robert Redford looked so scraggly, old-guy handsome - that I bawled my freaking eyes out.

The kids have been teasing Dan for months about his infamous tendency to cry during movies and television shows, and also to cry during some especially touching advertisements for laundry detergent and/or auto insurance. When anything remotely moving happens on screen, the kids are immediately studying their dad. "Are you crying?" they demand.  And then they laugh at him and sometimes hug him, too.

So, obviously, Dan was crying at the end of Pete's Dragon when Pete (Spoiler Alert for the most predictable movie ever!) lets his dragon go and decides to live with Bryce Dallas Howard's human family that can meet his basic needs, like for clothing. The kids were lasered on Dan's welling emotion, until Mac realized that I was also overcome.

"Dad!" Mac. "She's got DRIP TEARS!"

"It's sad," I blubbered.

And it was. See how open-hearted I am? I'm moved by fuzzy green CGI dragons. If Sankalpa were something to win, I'd be doing it.

A 9:30 bedtime keeps me from watching most TV.

When the brothers aren't making each other cry, they're conspirators.

We're in Vail, Colorado. This is Dan's dream, as we've been here many times in the winter, but never in the summer, and he's indeed dreamt of seeing it  in the summer.  I'm out-of-this-world happy because I was raised on out-west mountain vacations.  Of course, in my time, we got in the Dodge Ram Conversion and drove 12 hours at a time, my brother Kevin and I sprawling on the floor without seatbelts.

That's not the way Dan rolls.  We flew into Denver yesterday and rented a Ford Expedition, which is huge and requires safety.

We're in a fab VRBO with our bosom pals, Adam and Tracy and their three kids. Today we spent the whole day at a mountain-top adventure park with zip lines, ropes courses, and alpine slides. We're all tired and tan and ready for a chill evening of Netflix and hot-tubbing and of course, the card game that Adam and I generally lose but pretend to win.  Things could be so, so much worse.

Penguins of Madagascar Movie Review

The Benefits of Knowing the World's Best Librarian, JW

• I can't make even the simplest of decisions sometimes.  "Do you want Mexican or Japanese?" Dan might ask. "I don't know, you decide," I'll say.  "Just tell me what you want," he says. "But I don't KNOW what I want," I insist.  "What do you feel like?" he asks kindly.  "I don't know!  SHUT UP! SHUT UP! I need to THINK!  Just leave me alone!" And then the crying.
• I eat random stuff.  I wish I were kidding.  Sometimes, I'll take something off the ground and think, I wonder what this would taste like. Once on an early date, Dan watched me notice a piece of scotch tape on my sock, peel it off, and bring it to my lips.  "No, no!" he said.  "We do not eat the tape from our feet."  I wish I were making this up.
• I have mild OCD. I'm not being insensitive to those with this condition.  It's actually true.  I am one of you! I just discussed it yesterday regarding the cyst. This has its benefits - I learn all kinds of things all the time.  When I say I will do something, I most often do it. I will find us the most energy efficient washer and dryer after days of frenzied research.  Sadly, I will also try to sneak a look in your ear canal to check out your wax situation.  I will try to do it surreptitiously, but you might notice.  I'm sorry, but I've been obsessed with ear wax for a couple of years now.

This is the second quarterly review of 2016.   The first quarterly review is HERE.  It still holds up, in my professional opinion.

The Three Best Books I Read in the Second Quarter:
This is a toughie because I read two books by my fave, Liane Moriarty this quarter.  By this time, it's safe to say I'm a fangirl, and I've loved every book of hers I've read.  I had The Husband's Secret and Big Little Lies in the top five on the Best Audiobooks I Listened to in 2015. I've now added The Hypnotist's Love Story and What Alice Forgot, read on paper and/or Kindle. They're all good.  Here are three others I liked a whole lot:

• The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly.  I did a full review for Literary Quicksand. The short version is it's got good writing, good plotting, and fun characters.  I haven't yet seen the movie with Matthew McConaughey, but I do find him to be quite handsome.
• The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate.  I don't know why I waited so long to read this lovely and heartfelt story about true friendship and loyalty.  The 2013 Newbery winner is wonderfully, hopefully sad.
• Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld. Obviously, I was utterly charmed by this adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. I resented putting it down, even for scintillating conversation and important family events. If you're at all inclined toward Austen, you'll probably want to read this.  It's better than Bridget Jones and 100% habit forming. 

Tonight, I went to an event where author Eula Biss read from her book Notes from No Man's Land and answered questions about it.

Usually, I borrow from Lee and say that "if you want to read it, you should." I'm going a little bit further with this one and say that even if you have the slightest inkling to read about whiteness in a book by a white author, this is a book you should probably pick up. Our school had it as our One Book, so there were quite a few awesome colleagues at the event also listening to Ms. Biss.

There were also some people I didn't know, including Katie.

Guess what?!? And this is probably the best thing that's happened to me in a long time: Katie recognized me and told me SHE READS THE BLOG! That means I was recognized in public as a blogger by a person who reads my blog.

Omigod! I am over the moon! I thought about taking a picture of Katie and posting it right here as a public tribute to my reader. But, I resisted that temptation. I did not resist telling Katie that I HAD the temptation, however.

I told her all of that (and probably some other stuff) because I'm prone to babble on and on and share personal information when I get nervous. In fact, Dan and Erin teamed up to mock this trait of mine just last night.

Luckily, I didn't say, "I have hemorrhoids on my butt," which is what Dan suggested is the type of thing I generally say to strangers when I'm nervous. And I didn't even say anything about my psoriasis. So THERE, Dan. I have total self control.

So, took the kids to the neighborhood park today.  I was just hanging with Mac at the zip line and the jungle gym.  Exchanging a few parenting-type comments with the guy next to me, when I realized the guy next to me was totally DONOVAN McNABB.

Back when I used to play fantasy football, I had that guy on my team. And you may not know this, but Donovan is a quarterback with the (sucky sucky) Vikings this year. 

I tried to act reasonably normal.  In retrospect, I might have recognized him sooner since he was really much larger than the average dad at the park.  Eventually, Dan came over from throwing the football with Shef and confirmed that I had indeed been speaking to a famous NFL player.  He acted like it was totally normal and did not at all respond to my excited whispers.

Dan spent the next ten minutes just hanging out with the kids, thirty feet away from McNabb.  No biggie.

Then, when the QB his fam piled into their black SUVs and drove away, Dan started furiously typing on his iPhone.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"I'm emailing all my friends about the sighting!!" he said.

So, then I knew this was big news after all.

Awhile ago when the last blogging challenge ended at the end of June, Dan spent some time lamenting the lack of challenge.

"It's your turn to pose a challenge!" I told him.

Despite this advice, he chose not to pose a challenge. I think what he said was, "Hmmmm."

So then after a month of slow blogging on this site, I decided to pose my own challenge to myself on July 27th. My challenge was to blog every day until August 18th. I publicly declared this resolution so that I'd hold myself accountable.

But now, a month after my initial suggestion that Dan pose a challenge and AFTER I've already challenged myself, Dan has finally posed a challenge. I'm supposed to post something for every letter (a remix of the AKR challenge from July 2010 posed by Lee) and post an image (a nod to the April 2011 image challenge also posed by Lee).

So, fine. I'm in the challenge. I'm going to do it. And while I'm at it, why not also revisit the December 2009 and December 2010 challenges that both had new/multimedia aspects?

Actually, I already wanted to ask about this thing I've read about a few times online lately called Pinterest. Have you heard of it? It's like a social-bookmarking, collage-making, inspiration-boarding thing. Should we get some Pinterests? I'll admit, I requested an invite. Here's a screenshot (aka IMAGE):

Last night, Dan and I were watching The Bachelorette as usual. As I might have mentioned before, he's completely addicted to it. He even reads Bachelorette Ashley's blog on People.com the morning after each show. What I mean to say is: he's invested.

So, last night during the home visits when Constantine's dad asked him if he thought he'd be ready to propose, Dan was super confused.

"What?" he asked. "HE proposes? Doesn't SHE get to pick?"

"Yes," I explained, "she chooses the person whom she'd like to propose to her."

Dan was flabbergasted. "But that's sexist!" he exclaimed.

I laughed for about five minutes about his indignation. It's like he thought he was watching Masterpiece Theater or something, instead of THE BACHELORETTE.

"I'm beginning to think this show is totally scripted," he said, shaking his head. "Scripted AND sexist."

I have sustained a potentially serious hand injury. The photo isn't doing it justice. What happened was I was trying to enhance my mood by doing a little sashay down the hallway and then I accidentally bashed my hand into a doorframe during an arm flourish.

Dan accused me of not taking the icing seriously enough and also seemed to think dancing in the hallway was dumb.

I went through a lot of ideas for today's F post.

One idea I had was FUNNY, DAN IS SO.

I've mentioned before on this blog that lots of people tell me this all the time.

"Hey," someone will say randomly at lunch or wherever, "your husband Dan is so funny."

"Yeah," I'll say.

"I mean REALLY," the person will say, after hanging out with him once or reading a single blog post or something, "he is SO funny."

"Mm hmm," I say, smiling and nodding. "He's really funny."

My problem with this is not that Dan is funny. It's that I KNOW Dan is funny. Also that HE KNOWS, too.

You can read how funny over at Pronto Pup. Every entry is witty as hell.

TokBox - Free video chat and video messaging

You can still see the remainder of my monster zit in this video. Don't pretend you didn't notice.

Ten years, two kids, two graduate degrees, two houses, and two cup sizes (I'm sorry to say that's a minus two), and we're still Valentines!



This is the most recent photo I can find of Dan and me. It's five years-old and blurry. What does this mean?

Here's a video from Dan explaining why my previous video messages have sucked.


TokBox - Free Video Chat and Video Messaging

Thanks, Dan. That was so instructive.

It was a weird day at school because it's the end of "Mix it Up" week, which concludes with the Sadie's Dance (and thank you God, I'm not on the list to chaperone that one).

It was a great night at home, though, because Dan surprised me with a dinner out to commemorate the tenth anniversary of our first date. We stopped celebrating this particular anniversary a long time ago, but... why NOT have a dinner out to celebrate the tenth anniversary of our first date?!

He'd planned for us to go to the Science Museum after dinner to re-create the actual date, but after lingering for two hours over some delicious Italian dishes, we decided to hit the liquor store and come home to watch this week's Glee instead.

Today I went to Target, where I tried on some clothes. One item I tried on was a dress that looked cute on the hanger, but sort of flight-attendantish once I had it on.

So, reject!

But when I tried to take the dress off, I realized the whole zipper, which ran up the left side of the dress, was pretty much broken. The seam separated, and the handle part was stuck at the top, just beneath my armpit. Can you picture it? My whole side, including part of my bra and the waistband of my underwear, were exposed. And the zipper would not budge.

I tried for several minutes in the dressing room to remedy this situation, but without success. I finally accepted that I would have to exit my stall and explain the situation to the worker at the desk.

"Hmm," she said, reluctantly leaving her seat. Then she stood for several minutes at my armpit, tugging on the zipper, while I tried to hold the gaping dress together with one hand.

I hoped I had remembered to put on deodorant.

Thinking about it made me sweat.

"Um," said the worker, "would you like to stand farther back in the hallway?"

"Sure," I said, grateful. And then, after another minute or two of sweating and worrying about it, I said, "I just don't think it's going to come off."

She mumbled something and tugged on it a little more and took a break to answer the phone -- "Operator! How can I direct your call!" -- and finally called the manager on the walkie talkie.

When the manager came, she examined the zipper for about thirty seconds, and then took her scissors and cut me out of the dress.

Phew.

The humiliation continues, though, because later in the evening, we went to an orientation at Mac's new school, and I accidentally walked in on one of his teachers in the bathroom. THANK THE LORD she was already washing her hands.

When that happened, Dan just made a beeline for another room because standing in my vicinity was JUST TOO EMBARRASSING for him. Such is my lot in life.

Oh, just kidding. We totally don't have one.

What we do have is seven years under our belts.

And while not every moment has been as idyllic or exciting as this one:



Overall, it's still been really, really good.

Happy anniversary, Dan. You're the best.