Round 2

This is a story of a stupid thing I did.

You will recall that a few months ago I decided to give up soda cold turkey. I was focused on the yummy, brown, caffeinated sodas, the Diet Cokes and Diet Dr Peppers of the world. The month it took to feel free of headaches and cravings (yes, a whole MONTH), was one of the hardest self-inflected suckfests in recent memory. The first week was hellish. I had dreams of Diet Coke--seriously. I woke up immediately wanting a giant soda. I even cried a couple of times. Honestly, it was pretty embarassing how addicted I had become.

The days and weeks following that month, after I had kicked the sauce and didn't "need" it anymore, were AWESOME. I had done it! I conqured the beast! Slayed the dragon! Maybe just one Diet Coke with lunch wouldn't be so bad, since I was clearly so awesome at not being addicted anymore, right?

I think you know where this is going. I had one soda with lunch a few times. I ordered a medium, not a large, and patted myself on the back for such self-control. Then it was a large soda once a day. Then maybe a soda any time I ate out. I still didn't have soda in the house so I figured I was doing just fine. But then I brought some into the house for a party. And pretty soon I was driving through McDonalds in the morning to get a big soda for work, oh and why don't we make it two large sodas because I know I'll want one later. And maybe a large soda at lunch, and ....

I am right back where I started. One month to kick it, only a few weeks to slide right back.

Dammit! I don't think the craving or addiction is as bad as it was when I went cold turkey the first time, but it won't be long before it is. I want to be able to have it just a little, but maybe I can't. Like a freakin' alcoholic! Only this stuff won't kill me (quickly) or cause me to endanger people on the road. It will, however, cost me a lot of money and do damage to my body over time.

So tomorrow begins Soda Withdrawls Part Deux.

Lame.

Holiday cheer

This is not a post about holiday cheer. Because I do not feel cheerful. I feel burdened by the holidays this year, moreso than I can remember in recent years. It has nothing to do with the many family members I am so excited to see and spend time with this season, but with the material things.


My bah humbug mood is more because this holiday season is just a stopping point in an already hectic time in life. I don't want to unpack the Christmas decorations because we'll just have to pack them back up, and by that time we'll be packing up the whole house. We have so much change coming, but it is two months away (so close!), and I'm ready already.

But also, cuz we are broke.

Not in the real sense. We have an enormous amount of money (for me) sitting in our savings account right now, just waiting for the closing date on our house. We recently bought a refrigerator, washer and dryer, and new TV for the house. But these are all things we HAVE to do (OK, not the TV), and we are saving a little over 1/3 of our income every month to prepare for the new house. We are so close, but still so far. With the down payment, closing costs, insurance, property taxes, etc., we still need to save another few thousand before February. It will be close, but we can do it.

Given that we are in austerity mode (which we totally suck at), and yet it is the season for consuming and buying and giving, I have been feeling a little left out. We decided no gifts for adults family members this year, and very limited gifts for each other. I'm sure the adults in our lives will understand as they've nearly all had the first house brokeness themselves. (It's funny that once we move in, we will actually have a lot more wiggle room in our budget than we do now!) But it doesn't feel good.

Yeah, I know the real meaning of Christmas isn't in the gifts, but in the love we share. But buying gifts is fun! And so I feel an annoying malaise come over me as we roll into December.

There is another side to this, though.

Interestingly, along with this malaise comes a feeling of overwhelming luckiness and gratitude. I've felt much more drawn to donate gifts or money to people in need than I have previously. I know my whining about not being able to buy gifts for my mom for one year because I am BUYING A HOUSE is a first world problem to the 100th degree. I am blessed beyond measure. My cup runneth over. My heart grew two sizes that day. I want everyone to be as lucky and as joyful as I am. The world is callous in its unfairness towards good people who need a break. I'm unendingly thankful for the blessings of my life.

And so there you have it. Schizophrenic holiday cheer/bah humbug. Enjoy.

Chores and the preschooler

I'm thinking it is time to implement a more specific chore schedule for Evelyn. She is three now, able to follow direction and understand why we ask her to do things. She can't vacuum the couch or pick up dog doo, but she can feed the dogs, help hold the dust pan, dust shelves within her reach, pick up her toys, etc. Right now she does none of this. She loves to "help" cook food by stirring or adding ingredients, and she likes to "help" sweep by doing it entirely herself (i.e., not at all). I encourage this helping, but we need more.

The big question is: To Allowance or Not To Allowance.

On one hand, teaching a child the value and use of money, and that money is given when it is earned, is an important lesson. Do your chores, get your allowance. Three may be a little young, but starting early seems like a good idea. However, I don't want Evelyn to associate money as the MOST IMPORTANT thing in the WORLD! Or that she gets money for every little thing she does.

On the other hand, chores are part of being in the family. I don't get money for making dinner and Jon doesn't get paid for doing the laundry, so why should Evelyn? However, a kid has got to have some sort of incentive for doing chores, or a good consequence for not doing them, to generate interest. I'm just sayin', my kid won't be putting away the silverware out of the goodness of her ornery heart.

I'm interested in chores now because I believe I've created an elitest monster. OK, OK, not really. But since we have house cleaners that come twice a month, recently Evelyn has started to say, "The cleaners will get that," when she drops food or toys. This clearly is not the way to go. And we likely won't have cleaners when we move to the new house (read: when we have a huge mortgage), so this free-ride she is imagining is coming to a quick end.

I'm trying to remember what my mom did. I know we had chores that we were expected to do every day with bigger ones on the weekend, and I know I got an allowance, but I don't know if the two were tied together. I think my mom's system for the big Saturday chores was if you don't clean your room and do one other thing (clean the bathroom, vacuum the house, etc.), you don't get to go out and have fun and be with your friends. I think. But that was well into adolescence and I don't remember a thing before it. I really have a terrible, terrible memory.

So what do you do? Do you pay your kids for doing their chores? Do they get an allowance completely unrelated to their household duties? Do you do a hybrid of both?

My crazy downstairs

This is what the downstairs is shaping up to look like in the new house. We currently have some of those items: the chinese armoire, the tibetan hutch, the green-ish sofa, the yellow subway tile backsplash, the grey-brown floor tiles, the dark brown kitchen cabinets and the white kitchen island countertop. We are contemplating a light gray or yellow wall (maybe with a chair-rail in there for good measure), and a dark grey wall behind the chinese armoire. I am absolutely IN LOVE with the very expensive zebra wallpaper, but we'll see about that. It looks like grey and yellow with red accents seems to be our first floor. Crazy?

Perhaps.

Roof!

Our house has a roof! It got a roof last week, but I didn't get around to posting any pictures. Here are said pictures:

Nice roof, eh? And look at that fabulous front patio. Small, but sturdy.

Wow, what a fabulous kitchen you have. Thank you.

Evelyn still is digging this whole "my room" thing.


We went to the house yesterday and it looks pretty much the same, picture-wise. The duct work is in, the furnace is in, the plumbing is starting to go in, and we have a front door. Not bad for Thanksgiving week!

I know house updates are pretty monotonous, but I can not describe the excitement I feel every Sunday when we head to the house site. I love it times a million. Every time I see a new plumbing line or a new wire heading somewhere important I am overcome by the excitement of building a house. MY HOUSE. OUR HOUSE. We picked all the finishes and the floorplan and the location. Everything about it will scream "Lew." The terror of carrying a mortgage for the next 30 years dissipates with every exciting discovery.

Planning our decor is almost as fun as seeing the progress in construction. We decided to let Evelyn pick out a paint color for her new room and--surprise, surprise--she picked "Batman!" We'll see if that desire holds true in a couple months when we move in, but we want her to be excited and happy with her new room, so if Batman is the man to do it, so be it.

We are planning my long-desired ecclectic-family-photos-up-the-staircase project. Something about an array of funny and meaningful family photos heading up a staircase says "family" and "home" to me. Maybe because we moved so much and didn't put a lot of stuff on the walls as a kid. Or maybe I just want to live in one of the homes from The Royal Tennenbaums. In fact, right now my design asthetic is a cross between a Wes Anderson movie and Anthropologie.

     

   

I can totally make that work without looking weird, right?

Thankful

This year when we go arond the Thanksgiving table to say what we are thankful for, I know the usual suspects will come out: family, health, jobs, a roof over our heads, the financial blessing to buy our first house, my daughter. I am truly thankful for these things. But what about the less obvious things we are thankful for? Things like:

1. SodaStream. This little contramption sits on my counter and provides endless seltzer water at the touch of a button. Add a little syrup, and it makes Sprite or Diet Coke. It is a dream.

2. Costume Jewelry. Not the fancy stuff, but the fun, inexpensive stuff that you buy because it is cute and trendy and $15. I love it.

3. Batman. Evelyn is in a mega Batman phase, and it is SO MUCH BETTER than a princess phase. I'd rather her idolize a butt-kicking dark anti-hero over a cutesy helpless special-because-her-dad-is-king character any day. Plus, capes are more fun than woodland creature friends.

4. Yarn. I don't get to knit as often as I'd like, but I still love yarn. I love the smell, the feel, the colors. I love the sheep it comes from and the awesome things you can do with it.

5. Sleep. Again, I don't get to sleep as often as I like, but I love every moment spent in my bed, head nestled upon my pillow. The greatest gift I've ever given myself was to marry a man who loves to sleep as much as I do, and doesn't think it is character flaw that I prefer bed to pretty much anything else.

6. iPad. I love it. The iPad is the greatest invention ever. Babysitter, library, jukebox, video camera, organizer, calendar, inbox, TV, movie theater, game center. It is magic.

7. Meg and Melissa. I made two new friends this year. That's probably the most friends I have made since meeting Jon. I may even have made a THIRD friend, Claudia, but that is yet to be seen. New friends feel awesome.

8. Queen. Evelyn really likes Queen songs, and singing along to "Somebody to Love" is the best ever. I'm glad I can enjoy some of the same music as my three-year-old instead of listening to Barney and Friends or A Very Chipmunk Christmas over and over and over...

9. Tim Tebow. Aha hahaha! Psych! No. I hate Tim Tebow.


So what are you thankful for outside the realm of family, friends, jobs, homes, money, health, smiles, children, parents, pets, etc?

Rapping knuckles

Today I signed Evelyn up for preschool. She'll start in January, about a month before we close on the house. It will be a long month of driving her all the way up to our new neighborhood, but we felt it was better than making all the bazillion changes she'll experience with this move in one day. So one month of seriously annoying driving is nothing compared to a happy child.

We enrolled her in a Catholic school. Yep, Catholic. Like nuns-in-habits-rapping-her-knuckles-with-a-ruler Catholic. Except her preschool teachers look to be about 15 years old, so I'm pretty sure they aren't nuns. But they also have giant smiles, warm handshakes and nice things to say, so maybe they are. What do I know? Their participation in the community of women religious is really not my concern.

In fact, I have no concerns with sending her to a religious-based preschool. We might have to start telling her about church and God and Jesus and mass and religion, but only in the three-year-old context, which I'm pretty sure is low-level stuff. She will go to mass once a month with her class, and her school is full of crucifixes and pictures of the Pope and paintings of saints, but I don't think Evelyn will ask a lot of questions about those. If we really love this school and she ends up going there for a few years, we'll probably have to dive into more serious religious topics, which means I'll have to spend a little more time sorting out my own religions questions. However, good schools come in all sizes, and I think this will be one of them.

With the new school comes a lot of changes, including packing a lunch. I am (re)newly obsessed with adorable bento boxes and fun bento accessories. I'm hoping that if I make her food look a little fun she might actually eat something more than Pirate Booty and corn dogs.

Look at this. So cute, right?

I am so ecstatically excited about Evelyn going to a real bonafide preschool. She has been languishing in her daycare for the past 6-8 months, but we didn't want to move her before we relocate. Maybe languishing isn't the right word. She has outgrown the daycare. She knows all her colors and shapes, she knows a lot of her letters, she knows all the animals and how to play with all the toys. She is the oldest kid there and way too smart to be spending most of her time with 18-month-olds. I have a feeling her mind will blossom in a new age-appropriate environment. I think her spirit will expand when she gets to play with a whole room of children her age. I think it will be amazing.

 So bring it on, preschool. We are totally ready.

(Now ask me about it in three months and I'm like to tell you a different story. Let's just pretend I will be spry as new glass...)

My house is a very very very fine house

One week ago...

 Three weeks ago...

House Hole

My house hole, last Sunday. I'm standing in the kitchen, roughly.

My house hole, now with foundational walls! This Sunday. We did not stand in the kitchen because it was quite muddy and difficult to traverse. Note how in one week the house to the left got siding, the house in the back left corner got a second story, and the house behind ours got a roof?  It is all so very cool.

More updates to come.

Love

I've been reading Kahlil Gibrand's "The Prophet" over the past few days. One sentence has really struck me, and put into perspective the direction I want my life to go.

Work is love made visible.

Five words that encapuslate, in my view, a perfect philosophy. It is so easily applied to everyday activities in life. Why do I go to my job every day? To provide for my family. Do I enjoy every second of my work or find ultimate existential meaning from it? No, but I love my family, and I want to give them all I have, and so I work at my job to make their lives better.

Why do I make myself crazy for Evelyn's birthday parties or Halloween costumes? Because time is my limited resources, and by putting it into something just for her, I show my love. Work is love made visible.

It is obvious how this philosphy applies to family and friends, but I've been contemplating how I apply it to myself. Jon and I joke that we are really lazy, and that everything we do revolves around that laziness. We are only half joking, though. We are not lazy at our jobs or in our relationships with our families. We are lazy, I think, in taking care of ourselves.

But do we not love ourselves? Shouldn't we WORK to show love to ourselves? Of course we should.

I love myself. I am the only self I get. It has to last me until I am very old, and it has to get me there in one piece. I need my self to provide a roof over my daughter's head and comfort to my husband's soul. I need my self to tend to the ills of the world and improve the lot of others. I need my self. Period. I do not exist without it, and the people in my life would be worse off without it.

This may sound all very la-dee-da philosophizing navel-gazing, but I have a point. If I work hard and work often to show my love to the people in my life that I cherish most, why am I not on that list? Why do I think doing something to preserve my body or my mind is "selfish" or "worthless" or "too hard?" I get up and go to work every morning, whether I'm in the mood or not, so why not get up every morning and cook myself a healthy breakfast, whether I'm in the mood or not? Taking the time to care for myself, making the effort, WORKING, is a way to make the love for my self visible.

Work is love made visible.

Five words that may change my life.

Just a typical Friday morning

This is how Evelyn went to daycare this morning.

'Nuf said.



A day on the farm

Evelyn and her Grandma Lew spent the day at a farm in Ft. Collins.

Riding Brownie. Evelyn was SO excited to ride the pony.

Driving the tractor.

Looking like my sister Emma.

Note the Yellow dress-like thing hanging out of her sweatshirt? That is the Wow Wow Wubbzy costume I made for her on Friday night. She didn't take it off for two days, and wore it to bed. I might have to make another before Halloween gets here!

Pumping water.

Pre-Halloween Fun

Some October fun, Halloween preparation.

The picture below is of Evelyn walking down the street with a bloody machete. Yes, a bloody machete. Why? Because when we went to the grocery store and I told her she could pick out one thing from the Halloween aisle, she passed up the witch's hat and the princess wand and the spooky owl and instead choose a bloody machete. Two, in fact, so we can "fight." But don't worry, she'll be quick to tell you not to be scared because they are just pretend. (Kids...)

The following pictures are from the Fourth Annual Pilgrimage to Rock Creek Pumpkin Farm. Fun for the whole family.

And for some context, this is the first time we visited the farm...

This is our new guinea pig habitat. Note the hugeness? Yes. Note also the Hello Kitty duct tape used to waterproof the corners and edges? Double yes. That's how we roll in Casa de Lew.



Both piggies are hiding under their little hay shelf. They are still pretty shy.

Habitat made out of coroplast (corrogated plastic sign material) and modular shelving. Hooray!

Poor, long-suffering man

Let's talk about my husband. My poor, long-suffering husband. He has to deal with me on a daily basis. He has a really rambunctious three-year-old. He runs his own business. He is the primary caretaker of our two "let's get up in the middle of the night, every night!" dogs. And now, he is the co-owner of two baby guinea pigs.

I could back up and tell you the whole long story of how we came to adopt two baby guinea pigs, but it boils down to this: Evelyn was driving me up a wall for the umpteeth day in a row, my crazy-brain meds were a little off the mark, I QUIT DIET COKE, and basically everything seemed really difficult...until I saw two baby guinea pigs for adoption at PetCo and decided it would be a really good idea to bring them home. And no, I didn't run this by Jon first. And yes, I am responsible for the little guys. The thing is, they are babies, and brothers, and I felt ineffably drawn to them. So...I adopted them. And bought their food. And brought them home. And we love them.

But they are guinea pigs--rodents, in fact--and it really is something you should run by your partner in crime marriage first. I apologized. Then I apologized again. Then he held the little buggars and announced that he did not hate them, but I had to be in charge because it is only fair. And he is right.

I think we've adopted two black abyssinian satin guinea pigs. Abyssinian piggies have weird rosettes (aka cowlicks) all over their body. They are soft and sweet and small (for now).

Now Blackie and Midnight (guess what color they are?)(and guess who named them?) are comfortably housed in Evelyn's room. They eat hay and pellets and leafty greens. They make squeaky noises that make Evelyn giggle every time. Once we move into our new house, we'll get them a bigger enclosure in a more public part of the house. They are very social, after all.

These aren't pictures of Blackie and Midnight, but you get the idea.

My version of, "Why?"

Evelyn doesn't ask, "why?," over and over again. Not yet, at least. What she does ask is, "what's a ...?" Choose your word.

What's a question?
What's a beast?
What's a husband?
What's science?
What's the internet?
What's a part?
What's 'taking care of'?
What's 'a little later'?

It is enough to drive a person crazy. Watching Beauty and the Beast yesterday, nearly every sentence of the movie elicited a "what's a ...?" question. I answer as many as I can, as clearly as I can, until I reach that breaking point. I know she is just learning words and context and innuendo and meaning. She has an amazing vocabulary for her age, and an amazing understanding of how words go together, and this is part of that learning process.

But after 45 minutes of questions, a mother grows weary! 

Smartypants Lew. That is Evelyn's new name.

The pediatrician said she is speaking more like a four-year-old than a three-year-old, and that is evident in the interactions she has with other kids. I think she gets a little frustrated sometimes because they can't communicate with her like she does with them. She spends most of her time with adults, who talk to her like adults, and when she is with kids she gets curt. Smarmy. Sassy. Don't get me wrong, she looooooves kids. Loves playing with them. Loves making new friends. But I do notice a gap between her and the other kids.

When we move to our new house we'll have to find new daycare, and I'm thinking we will go for the traditional preschool route. Evelyn needs more mental stimulation than she is getting at her current daycare (where she is now the oldest kid), and I think she will gobble up new information like a chocolate chip cookie. I'm almost afraid to put her in a most structured learning environment becuase--honestly--she's wearing me out already! I think she is regular smart, not gifted-and-talented smart, but it is difficult to navigate sometimes.

Parenting is such a learning process. What is best for my child? How can I help her become the best Evelyn she can be? How can I minimize pain in her life? What makes her happy? The answers aren't always evident.

How time flies

Did you know that my little girl is 38.5 inches tall? No? It's true. Also 36 pounds heavy. She seems so enormous to me lately. Like her little legs are getting long and thin and ready for running. Her little toddler belly is getting smaller and her face is less round. She is growing up so fast, so unbelievably fast, that I can hardly believe THIS was only three years ago.

I wonder if this is how my mother feels. If the past 30-odd years have been a blur and she can hardly believe I'm a grown woman with a child of my own. That it all feels like just yesterday I was learning to ride a bike or trying to convince her I spoke Spanish.

I'm almost sure it will be just a blink of an eye before Evelyn is racing off to high school, dating, breaking curfew, causing me headaches, growing up. Another blink and she'll have a child of her own, and I'll be a grandmother, and I'll wonder again where all the time has gone.

It is almost 2012. I've almost known Jon seven years. I'm almost 32. Evelyn is almost in preschool. Pretty soon these "almosts" will turn into "once was" and time will have slipped yet again. Every day is a gift, every moment a poem. I hope I can take advantage of the time I have, because it seems to be going so very quickly.

Diet Coke free, and (not really) loving life

I quit soda the day I wrote my last post. Not a sip of brown, caffeinated, carbonated beverage has passed these lips since. I've had some 7-Up here and there, lots of seltzer water, and a little iced tea (gross), but no Diet Coke or Diet Dr Pepper or Diet Pepsi or Diet Root Beer or anything else delicious and wonderful. I do not like life without my beloved soda, but I'll get used to it. I'm pretty sure I'm still going through the phases of grief.

• Denial: Pretty sure I was there for about a decade. I knew soda (and particularly diet soda) was bad for me, but I didn't care. Or rationalized that it wasn't SO bad. Even after I gave it up spontaneously while I was newly pregnant, I went right back to the sauce as soon as I could. Yep, denial.
• Anger: This peaked on the first day soda free. I was not a pleasant individual. I was mad at my decision to give up the sauce, and mad that something that tasted so good had to be so bad, and mad that I was so addicted. Mad, mad, mad. The anger lasted a couple days.
• Bargaining: I think I skipped bargaining. Well, not really. I decided if I wasn't going to get to drink a Diet Coke I might as well get to eat an entire coffee cake. Yeah. Good decision making. Thankfully, it didn't last long.
• Depression: I might be here now. I miss Diet Coke. It misses me. Eating food isn't the same. Nothing tastes the same. Going out to eat is a total bummer because I see the beautiful fountain drinks of diners all around me, and there I sit with my water, or worse (Arnold Palmer). Sometimes I order milk to drink and I feel like a three-year-old. I haven't yet gotten to the point where I feel better without the caffeine (headaches have mostly subsided, but I am still wicked lethargic) so I just miss it. I PINE FOR IT. Golly, I was so addicted.
• Acceptance: Someday.

I'm trying to remember my reasons for giving it up (the aspartame causes cancer and horribleness in tested animals, the phosophoric acid was leeching my body of calcium and hurting my digestive system, the caramel color has been shown to boost appetite and cause sugar craving, and the whole thing is just a giant glass of chemicals). I'm trying to remember that going cold turkey is better than weaning myself because the latter options simply wasn't going to work. I'm trying to remember that this is all for the better.

But now I miss it.

Oh, Diet Coke. You were my constant companion. I'm sorry to have abandoned you, but you were no good for me. We can't still be friends. Good bye.

First Day Of the Rest of My Life

Today is the first day of the rest of my life soda free.

Yes, you read that correctly: Diet Coke's number one customer, a woman who would rather drink a soda than eat a meal sometimes, has given up the hooch.

I'm in hour two of day one. No headache yet (thank you, Excedrin!), but I'm starting to feel a little restless and sleepy at the same time. This is no regular love of soda we are squelching, here. No, this is a full-blown addiction. One I've never actually tried to stop before. I gave up soda for a few months while I was pregnant because it made me sick (along with everything else), but that wasn't "quitting" so much.

So I'm trying really hard to remember my reasons for quitting. Knowing that today will probably be the worst day, that tomorrow will suck also, and maybe the next day, but then it will get better. Knowing that diet soda isn't something to keeps my body running and I can do perfectly well without it. Knowing that this is a change for the better, and if I can keep it up, I will be a healthier person for it.

So send me your good thoughts and self-control. I'm going to need it!

My house (sort of)

The model home pictures of my house! Imagine me living here, with less nice upgrades and less nice furniture. Awesome!



Evelyn wanted to dress like her daddy

Exhausted

I have been exhausted and irritable for two weeks now. Part of it has to do with the mysterious moon cycles and womanhood, part of it has to do with poor diet, and a lot of it has to do with stress.

BECAUSE I BOUGHT A HOUSE, PEOPLE. A HOUSE!

Granted, I had been thinking about the idea of buying a house for the past two-and-a-half years, and seriously researching location and timing and the realities of homeownership for the past six months, but the time from "hey, maybe this is a good time to buy a house" to "sign here on the dotted line and hand over that earnest money" happened really quickly. Two weeks max.

Considering that, adding in a dose of "I'm turning three and I am the boss of everything" attitude coming from my child, plus a dash of general sleeplessness, and I am frakkin exhausted. Every day. All day. Super duper tired. OH, and did I mention it has been hot as Hades around here? Well it has, and I have no a/c, no swamp cooler, no attic fan, which means I am sweaty and ill-temepered and disagreeable most evenings. And tired. Which really just snowballs into a big ol' pile of piss-poor attitude.

("Have an ATTITUDE of GRATITUDE!"  keeps running through my mind. I want to punch my mind in the face.)

Jon has been very helpful trying to help me keep things in perspective. Yes, it is hot, but it won't be in a month. Yes, buying a house is scary, but it is awesome, too. Yes, Evelyn is really difficult right now, but she won't be in 20 years. I want to punch him in the face, too. But that is the exhaustion and stress talking. I don't really want to punch my husband in the face. (More like the gut.)

I used to think I handled stress well. Turns out I don't. Thankfully, though, I have a pretty low-stress life. I just need to get through the next six months without devolving into a pile of hysterical sleep-deprived laughter, taking baby steps along the way, and then I'll be in my new awesome house, with new awesome air conditioning, my super awesome family, and my rotten dogs.