This guy grilled steaks for us tonight while I hung out on the couch drinking red wine and watching DVR’ed episodes of Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice. Then we went to watch Gabby sing at a Coffee House, and chased that with a little more red wine and some good conversation.

I love how often I get to categorize my posts as “daily, happy, zack.” That man makes me happy.

Today I had at least 40% of that rock lifted off of my shoulders. I promise I’ll lift the shroud of secrecy soon. Until then, just know that I appreciated your words of encouragement. Thanks.

During October, the nieces, Abbie and Kate, celebrated their 3rd and 2nd birthdays respectively. Sarah1 and Matt decided to throw them a joint party on Halloween, and invited all the girl’s friends to come over in costume for some cupcake-in-a-cone decorating and a hayride.  It was a total blast, and I took some pictures of the event.

Party favors hanging out with the cupcakes pre-party.

Abbie and her red-headed friend Brookie munch down on some freshly frosted and sprinkled cupcakes.  I especially like that Abbie is tackling the far side of her cone in this picture, and that Brookie is about to curl her fist into a cartoonish “THIS IS THE ULTIMATE POWER” victory pose.  They were very excited about the frosting and the sprinkles and the freedom to devour as much of them as humanly possible.

Showing off their hard work for the camera.

These boys, as you can probably tell, are pirates.  I tried for the first, oh, 3 hours of the party to get them to give me a pirate-y pose.  I couldn’t get them to so much as growl at me, though.  Nary a hook was raised in my general direction despite much begging.  Finally I realized that their costumes were way more sophisticated than I’d originally understood.  They weren’t just any old pirates.  More specifically, they were The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything.  You see? That makes a lot more sense.  Looks like a pirate, smells like a pirate, but doesn’t act like a pirate?  That’s a Pirate Who Doesn’t Do Anything.  Can I get an Amen from the Veggie Tales crowd?

Really, though, the problem was that they had no clue who I was or why I kept asking them to thwack me with a sword or order me to walk the plank.  They just thought I was real weird.  Right at the end of the party, their mom, this lovely lady with the awesome feather-lashes, came’round and asked me to take a picture of them together.  They smiled for her, no problem.

And finally, before I head off to bed for the evening, here’s a picture of Abbie and Brookie’s feet as they stood at the table decorating the cupcakes, and also the floor, with many, many layers of sprinkles.

If you want to see more pictures, there’s some posted on my flickr account, and if you want to see The Most Pictures, I posted all of the shots from the party on my facebook.

My life right now feels like either I’m balancing this rock on my head, or it is CRUSHING ME ALIVE.

One or the other.  I can’t decide which.

Right this very moment? Crushing me alive is a twee bit more accurate.

A Conversation While Unloading the Groceries

Zack: You leave your trash in the weirdest places.
Me: <without even looking> That’s not mine.
Zack: Oh yes it is. <laughing> The sink, on the counter, and now in the fridge.  You are so weird.
Me: <looks up to see that he’s holding a string cheese wrapper in his hand. aware that I am the only person in our marriage who eats string cheese while staring into the fridge.> Seriously, not me at all.
Zack: <laughing some more> Yes it is.
Me: I would never ever eat a string cheese while staring into the fridge looking for something to eat.  That doesn’t sound like me at all.  Must have been someone else.
Zack:  Then I guess this one isn’t yours, either? <holding up a second string cheese wrapper, wearing the grin of a person who knows he’s won.>

My salsa is ones of Zack’s favorite things to eat.  He acts like I’m a genius food magician every time I make it.  When ever I mix up a batch, I always make an entire blender full of salsa.  Because he eats The Whole Blender full.  The WHOLE blender.  (OK, partly because I don’t know how to make a half-a-blender, and partly because of Zack’s outlandish salsa consuming abilities.  But whatever.)

Secretly, I make the salsa because it’s the only way I can get him to willingly eat vegetables.  But that’s not the point.

Today after Zack and I got back from our weekly trip to the grocery store, I pulled out all the ingredients to make the salsa.  I also pulled out all the ingredients for about 3 different meals because I was cooking all the food that was going to go bad soon if I didn’t make it into something in a hurry.  Zack figured out that I was going to be making salsa, so he hung around the kitchen for longer than usual.  When I didn’t start taking immediate strides towards a finished salsa product, Zack started getting anxious.  I encouraged him to just go ahead and start the process by chopping up the jalapenos.  When he finished with that, I had him drop in the onions.  Then the cilantro.  Then before we knew it, Zack had made himself his very own blender full of salsa.

As he finished crunching the last bit of salt into the blender, I said, “That’s it.  All done.”  And he was like, Really?  That’s it? And I said, Yeah! You’ve officially made yourself your very first blender-o-salsa!  He’s been proud as a peacock ever since, strutting around the house with a bowl of it practically glued to his left hand, dipping chips with the right.  He was so happy with his salsaccomplishments that he didn’t even protest when I stole the remote from him and changed the channel from a PBS special on the Hoover Dam to House.

Tonight Zack, my dad and I went to go see Donald Miller speak on his Million Miles book tour.  Gabby and her parents told us that he was coming through town, and I’m so, so glad that they did.  The evening was fantastic and my head is swimming with so much information about writing and God and life that I’m not going to be able to sort it all out this evening.  Click on that link to see if he’s coming to your town.  If he’s coming anywhere close to you, you should go hear him speak.

So, in lieu of philosophical ramblings regarding my interpretations of Donald Miller’s fantastic presentation, I’m giving you a video clip.  Because it’s NaBloPoMo and I have to post every day. And because I have the rest of the month to piece together a wordy post about narrative and conflict.

Community’s been rocking my world this season. In last week’s episode, there was a fantastically clever exchange that I am still laughing about 3 days later. (I can’t find a clip of it anywhere, so you’ll just have to go watch the whole episode to see it.)
Chevy Chase’s character asks his band-mate the question, “Are you trying to Garfunkel me?”
And the doofus of a band-mate replies, “Maybe. Assuming that to ‘Garfunkel’ someone is to put up with them even though they’re a fat lazy cat who hogs the spotlight and eats all the lasagna.”

I love this girl.

A little girl starts her period for the first time.
The part-time nurse asks, “Has your mom talked to you about this at all?”
The girl nods.  Yes.
The part-time nurse says, “Is your stomach hurting?”
The girl nods again. Yes.
The part-time nurse asks, “Is there anyone that can come pick you up?”
A third nod. Yes. “My sister,” she says in her thick Spanish accent.
The phone is dialed; the sister answers.
“What’s wrong?” she wants to know, noting how unusual it is for the little girl to call home sick during the school day.
“Oh,” says the girl, “You know.”
“No,” the sister explains, she doesn’t know.
Then the little girl musters up the courage to say the one sentence that she needs to say.  Hand cupped over the receiver, a nervous glance around the room.  Then she says into the phone, “I got ‘the dot.’”

So I’m 25 years old and before this year, I’d never been Trick-or-Treating.  Matt and Sarah1 were taking The Girls on Halloween, so I grabbed my camera, wedged myself between their car seats, and embarked on my very first True Halloween Experience.

You’d think they’d go easy on a girl who’d never before participated in such a bizarre activity, right?  Wrong.  They took me to this neighborhood:

With this lady:

It just so happens that The Graveyard Fairy that’s in the haunting photo above happens to be a very nice lady whom I love dearly.  But from a distance (in the dark) (on Halloween) (on that crazy street), it was pretty frightening.  To me.  Not so much to Abbie or Kate.  They had goals for the evening and they weren’t going to let any ominous lighting stand in their way.

After wandering around the neighborhood, knocking on stranger’s doors, and telling them to fork over some lollipops OR ELSE, I feel I can officially state my opinion. Trick or Treating is weird.  I didn’t miss much all those years that my parents took us to Fall Festivals instead of going Trick-or-Treating.  Because whether you’re knocking on neighbor’s doors or going from booth to booth inside the church gym, the view in the backseat of the car on the way home is always the same.

*One of my favorite parts of the evening was when several people asked Matt and Sarah1 if they had hired a photographer to document their girls Trick-or-Treat experience.  Why yes.  I’m actually their own personal “Life Photographer.”  It’s like a nanny type job, but all I do is take pictures of every single day of their lives.  Also, Matt and Sarah1 are billionaires.

Sometimes, there are things happening in my life that I’m not allowed to talk about on my blog.  My rules regarding what I do and do not talk about online are self-inflicted.  And I use the word “inflicted” for specific purpose; it really is a painful to me to not talk about my whole life on this blog.  Blogging is my way of venting, my way of processing.  If I’m not blogging about something, you can bet that I’m in the corner somewhere crying about it.

So last night I was online, and my friend Dante caught me for a few minutes of chatting.  He asked what’s going on in my life right now & I told him about some of the hoops that I’m jumping through.  It felt good to type about my problems, even if I wasn’t turning them into blog fodder.  I was whining, surely more than my fair share, about my life when Dante attempted to encourage me:

Dante:  I almost just compared your ability to jump through hoops to Shamu, then realized it wasn’t as much of a compliment as I thought it was.

Nevermind the fact that all good Texans know that Shamu doesn’t actually jump through hoops, Dante almost calling me a whale has been funny enough to keep me laughing all day long.