Welcome to the world, Archie Harrison

Happy first birthday! Here’s the letter I wrote to you last year.

Welcome to the world, little Archie Harrison. I have no idea why I keep up with your family the way I do, but anyway, there’s the embarrassing truth.

I appreciate the sweet, sincere way your father announced your arrival into the world, especially since it reinforced that as a kid when every other girl I knew was crushing on Wills, I was making the right choice by harboring a crush on his spunky redheaded younger brother. (Y’all, Harry knows what’s UP.)

Follow your mom and dad, kid, and keep that stodgy extended family of yours on its toes. Also, might I advise you not get in close with your maternal relatives overseas? They seem like a bunch of attention-seeking trouble-makers, and I just don’t want you to have to deal with that.

Come visit me anytime; you’re always welcome.

Love,

Auntie C

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Since a few of y’all are here for my TED Talk and this is now apparently what I do when I’ve been cooped up for too long, let’s discuss how I selected the man I’d marry. You may think this is a joke but it’s not, and bless him for putting up with me and, in general, loving weirdos. (hint: If he loves you you’re also a weirdo. Embrace it. You’re delightful.)

In high school I dated a guy for a while, as in, *maybe a couple years, off and on. My senior year I had a foot operation and had to hobble around in a cast for a while, so he sweetly came over to the house to hang out with me during the day and carry my ass back and forth to the bathroom and watch TV with me. True love, right? Read on.

At around this same time I became OBSESSED with Band of Brothers, so he indulged me and watched it with me. True love, right? Read on.

I think he hated it. He complained and talked through it the entire time. I shushed him through most of it, because BAND OF BROTHERS and Damian Lewis as Dick Winters ♥♥♥. I was captivated.

Maybe we didn’t break up right after he talked through my favorite thing on television ever, but we might as well have. And I vowed that if I ever did marry someone he’d be able to sit through a Band of Brothers marathon with me and actually enjoy it. For real. I think I wrote it down somewhere.

Fast forward a while, and I met a guy through my then-anonymous-I-talk-about-politics-and-write-goofy-stories blog. (Yeahhhh.) I liked him, but I was still convinced that people you met online–this was the early 2000s–were murderers, so we talked on the phone for a while and I ran him through some tests to figure out why he was so persistently interested in meeting me and to make sure it wasn’t because he wanted a Candace Skin Suit. Then we went on our first date and when he came back to my dorm I ran him through another test. Guess what. We watched an episode of Band of Brothers. I’m terrible at first dates, but I guess I’m hella good at thoroughly screening potential life partners to make sure they’re ready for a lifetime of the annoying shit I’ll inevitably subject them to.

HE QUOTED IT AS WE WERE WATCHING IT. “Got a penny?” And that, my friends, is how I fell for this man *fifteen-ish years ago. Never mind his great sense of humor, spot-on impersonations, huge heart, or hot bod; the guy could sit through Band of Brothers with me, and that sealed the deal.

I chose to forgive him, but only narrowly, when he later talked over a Harry Potter movie as we were watching it in the theater. (Don’t you make fun of my boy Severus; he’s da real MVP.)

*Don’t make me do math because quarantineritatequila.

 

 

Poo Eye

COVID-19 and the world is shut down, but when I signed in to Facebook and saw that my boy Rudy Reyes was wearing an eye patch I FREAKED OUT like “y’all who poked Fruity Rudy in the eye, y’all better stop this!”

It’s all good, you guys. He just got dirt or poo or something in his eye.

I’m not tagging him here because he’d probably be like “What who’s this rando in my FB friend list?” and I’d have to explain that I once stood behind him in line at a movie theater, not realizing who I was making fun of for wearing his combat boots with skinny jeans tucked into them. Then I watched Generation Kill and was like, “Holy moly, I take it all back. I’m so sorry. Wear whatever the hell you want, you delightfully different human.”

Then I realized that I probably made this quarantin-arita a little bit too strong while I was feeling sorry for myself for the fact that I think my favorite toddler likely gave me a double case of pink eye, and oh crap now I have to explain that too. He’s two point five years old, so he’s at an age where he’s testing me and making me say “get your hands out of your butt” more often than I thought I’d ever say to any human. Then when it’s time to drag his exhausted mama out of bed in the early morning hours, he thinks the best way to do so is to stick his fingers in my eyes and pry them open. So, yeah, I’ve basically had poo in my eyes at some point recently, and now they’re rebelling.

And THEN I realize I’m JUST like my boy Rudy over there, each of us battling our respective cases of poo-eye, and I think, maybe I should tag him and let him know we’re friends and that I wear skinny jeans tucked into boots, too.  you, Rudyyyyyyyy, my bestieeeeeeee.

Rent The Runway! Attract Daniel Craig!

I wrote a Rent The Runway review of the dress I rented for a holiday party last year, and they accepted my review but they failed to include the photo I submitted with it (presumably since they prefer full-length showcasing shots). Great; now a bunch of ladies are going to rent this dress thinking that it actually DOES bring Daniel Craig running, and I’ll get blamed for false advertising.

“I couldn’t stop Daniel Craig from creeping on me; that’s how great this dress is!”

By the way, if you’re looking to attract Daniel Craig at your next holiday function, here’s a code you can use to rent a dress. I read a great review on the RTR website saying that it works! https://rtr.app.link/e/qvbJZgRpLS

Synonyms

This morning, after an extended session of whining and general stir-craziness we directed the kid to go play on the back porch for a little while. A few moments later this happened, with the kid on the back porch yelling at us through the open back door:

Kid: Daddy poopoo!

Dad: Do you need to poopoo? (clarifying because we’ve had some false alarms)

Kid: DADDY POOPOO!

Dad: Well, shit. (muttered under his breath)

Kid: Shit!

On the bright side, the kid is learning synonyms.

BASIC AF

Mom of the year right here. We finished our morning bike ride, pulled to a stop, then I proceeded to dump myself, the bicycle, and my child onto the pavement. I got banged up in the process of trying to slow our descent, but fortunately because we always make him wear a tight-fitting helmet, our kid is okay. (His head hit. It makes me feel nauseated just typing the words, but his head definitely hit. PSA: Please put helmets on your children, and also please don’t dump them on the pavement the way I did.)

I was pretty shaken by it, so when I took him with me to run errands we took some extra time and I snuggled him while we slowly grabbed the things we needed from Whole Foods and CVS–including a finger splint because somehow I managed to mess up a finger while I fell–then we sat down at the kids’ table at Whole Foods to eat our lunch and people watch (our faaavorite).

Along came a mama who had no idea that I’m “mom of the year” because she didn’t introduce herself or check my credentials before she decided to entrust me with her children. (And she must not have registered my frazzled expression, likely still tear-stained face, scraped up leg, or splinted finger…or perhaps she noticed them and didn’t care?) She sat down with her two littles, scrolled through her phone, then told them to stay put with their full grocery cart while she went back to get something. Right on her heels, the younger of the two took off into the store then promptly got lost and couldn’t determine which way her mother had gone. I could see her from where I sat, running toward the aisles then looking lost all of a sudden.

Ode To The Producer

Righty, you are the most mighty.

 

While lefty sat on her ass,

you showed up with sass

and you refused to take your job lightly.

Pumpkin spice errything

Alla y’all are like “Pumpkin spice errything and Christmas music squeeee!” and I’m over here like, “Gross it’s getting cold so I have to try on all my pants and figure out if any of them still fit me since giving birth or else I’mma have to wear leggings all winter long and oh wait a minute leggings squeeee!”

Seriously though, simmer down with that Christmas music nonsense.

Parenthood = Panic

New parenthood = a lot panicking, in my view.

Exhibit A:
I sleep lightly, randomly waking up long enough to panic that one of us has forgotten to put the baby down before dozing off. In my half-awake state, I begin furiously pawing at any lumps in the blankets of our bed, at any forgotten burp cloths or swaddle blankets, etc., thinking each one is the baby. This continues until B snaps me out of it by reminding me that the baby is sleeping soundly in his bed next to ours. B and I also trade off so that on nights when I’m not the one doing this, he’s the one having night terrors about dozing off with the child in our bed.

Exhibit B:
Last night the kid gave us five solid, uninterrupted hours of sleep. Did I wake up feeling rested, refreshed, and happy? Not before taking a detour to Panicville first, since something *must* have been wrong in order for him to not have woken us up at his usual 2-3 hour intervals. As it turns out, perhaps he was just being nice to his mother after the events of the night prior. (see Exhibit C)

Schnoz, Part Two

Five years post-op, I finally took time off to visit my ENT doctor today to discuss a couple things that have been bugging me. He’s highly intelligent, quite literal, and very no-nonsense except when the jokes are his own. If you’ve ever heard me refer to my nose as “decidedly not very Anglo”, you can thank this guy for that expression because he randomly muttered it while examining my nose at my first appointment. Visits to his office are always lively for one reason or another, whether it’s because of the commentary or the post-op splint removal. (Want to watch a horror story? Google “septoplasty splint removal” and feel badly for me for having had to go through that BS.)

Anyway, about today.