to be read in case of emergency

This is how you do it: You worry about the small things you can control, the little bits like what color of socks you're going to wear and what you're going to feed your little girl for lunch. You focus on today, and if that's too much you focus on this hour, this minute, this second that matters to you. Because right now, that's all you have. This second to know that you're alive and you're fed and you're surrounded by what you need. Exactly in this second.

Tomorrow is going to come, God willing. And when it does, you are going to face it with grace. And if you don't? Remind yourself that there will (again, God willing) be a lot of future tomorrows to improve your behavior.

If you're lucky (and you are), you will have friends to count on that will keep you grounded. Friends that will love you and laugh with you. Friends that will tell you every once in a while to CHILL OUT, because we all need that.

Worry about what's staring you in the face right this moment. Worry about the things that you need to do and be and see and know right now. One day you're going to look back on this time. You're going to wonder over the small things that you blew up into giants too numerous and ferocious to face. If you're smart (and you are), you will live to be able to say that you enjoyed the moments when they happened. You will live to be able to say that you stopped to breathe in the beauty when it was there knocking at your door, that you didn't let it pass by without notice because you were too focused on the raging storm far off on the distant horizon.

Sunlight. It's there for us to see. If we look for it.

I say this because I need to hear it as much as anyone else. I spend too much time worrying about the what if's and the what might be's.

There was a moment just after Chip's dad died. I was standing in a cramped waiting room, having rushed myself from the hospital room where Chip was still standing. I felt overcome by a kind of hysterical quiet panic that I wouldn't wish on anyone, ever. I paced and worried, my nine-month-pregnant belly brushing the table as I passed, talking to my mom on the phone. My whole body shook as I told her, "Mom, I can't do this. I don't think I can do... this. I just can't. I'm not equipped for it. I'm not grown up enough. I just..."

And she broke in, stopped me flat. This edge of steely reason in her voice as she told me that I could do it. That I had no choice. That this is what we do. We take care of each other. We grow up when we don't think we can. We make the hard choices. We put one foot in front of the other when we don't think we can even crawl. This is what we do.

She was right. We know she was right. I haven't faced nearly as many experiences with the grace and faith that I should have, that I would have liked. But this is what we do: we go on, we make it work, we look forward.

Always.

i'm just really stressed about the bake sale* (now with pictorial evidence)

Oh HAI! We need to talk about poop.

It would seem that I've left you guys hanging on a number of Very Important Items the last couple of weeks. And I'm all about the follow-up, you know.

First: The Doughnuts.

Picture NOW shown above... even though it doesn't do the doughnuts justice and was the reason why I didn't post it with the entry in the first place. There's the purple one in the front of the photo that was the, um, grape flavored one. Which wasn't exactly to my choosing. Though Chip loved it. I loved the chocolate donut with the Cocoa Puffs (so chocolatey). I also loved the raised donut with vanilla icing and the Captain Crunch with Crunch Berries (so very weird, and also so very good). A note about the cereal topping: because it's something that is basically made to absorb moisture (aka milk), the cereal bits tend to get a little... soft... if they aren't consumed immediately. Final verdict for the doughnuts: we ate every single one, even though some were very well past their prime in the few days after purchase date. Winners, all. We will be sampling them again.



Second: The Muffin / Cupcake Debate.

I know, right? I still can't figure it out, and Swistle articulated it perfectly when she said that one is tempted to say that cupcakes have frosting - but then what about the crumble topping, which is basically a DRY form of frosting? A very perplexing thing.



Third: Delurking Day.

I still haven't been able to nail down the date for 2010. It was January 10 in 2008 and January 12 in 2009... so it would follow that the 2010 date would be sometime soon? I have no idea. I'm not sure why I'm so fixated on doing a Delurk Day on the actual Delurking Day. I mean, I can just say TODAY IS DELURK DAY and get the same type of results I'd get if I'm tagging on to some kind of national thing. So, yes. Am strangely irritated that I can't find an answer to this question. Someone needs to start a website and just tell everyone when the day is. Yes, that's it. And now I'm going to stop obsessing about it.




Fourth: Let's Discuss Poop.

I think we've won Chip over and convinced him to go with the old stand-bys: poop and pee, with the fun and playful poops and peeps (thanks Shelly!) thrown in just for kicks. It's too late to introduce another word for it anyway: Bean was standing in the bathroom yesterday afternoon holding her stuffed Elmo when she told me that Elmo needed to poop. So she didn't say that. Exactly. What she said was this: "Elmo? Poop?" When I weirdly nodded and told her, "Uh, no. He's fine", she said (in caps)
"ELMO! POOP!"

So I did what millions of well-intentioned and totally ill-equipped parents have done before me. I awkwardly took Elmo and sort of sat him on top of the toilet seat COVER (NOT SEAT - I AM NOT AN ANIMAL AND I'M MARRIED TO A GUY WITH GERM ISSUES). So I sat Elmo on the seat and then (gulp) made some shhhhh noises as Bean looked on very expectantly. Afterwards, we, um, wiped Elmo and then said ALL DONE.

I was horrified.

And also strangely proud. We're on our way, Internets.




Fifth: Can we talk about Glee and how I love it so?

I didn't do the Sundry quiz this year, but it's the one question I regret not being able to answer so I'm answering it here. Last year I watched Battlestar Gallactica, but with that gone the way of the Cylons--- my 2009 television crush is definitely Glee. And Community, which makes Chip and I laugh until milk and Oreos come out of our noses. Metaphorically speaking, of course (or not).


Whimsy out.

* I blame the 2-hour Glee marathons on Wednesdays for THIS kind of entry greeting you on Thursday morning. You're welcome.

whatchamacallit, part two (or let's say Number Two)

She doesn't know it yet, but Bean has her own New Year's resolution. It involves Ye Olde, as they say... Potty.

I read some stuff about it a few weeks ago and approached Chip with the following.

Whimsy: The book says we should start talking about bathroom-related junk now.

Chip: What?

Whimsy: The book. It says we should start to talk about the fact that everyone poops. Or whatever. And get Bean used to that fact. Oh, and we also need to come up with terms for things. So we use the same words for stuff.

Chip: Like?

Whimsy: The POOP. We need to decide what we're going to call it.

Which is when we got into one of the strangest discussions I've ever had. In my life. EVER. And I'm someone who has had some very strange discussions with people.

My findings from that discussion show that we are so far from being ready to potty train--- not because Bean isn't ready (I think she's getting close), but because WE, the Parents. Are not ready.

We can't agree on names for things.

Chip has a problem with using POO for the term because he likes to use it frequently as his own brand of g-rated swear word (Chip putting together the new office chair: POO!). He also nixed POOP and even my suggestion of POOPS from our options.

Whimsy will not refer to the act as defication (I don't care that it's correct. Or whatever. It just sounds awful. And by the way, under no circumstance do I want my daughter to tell her Sunday School teacher that she has to go DEFICATE.) Whimsy will not use ephamisms like tinkle, make water, or any combination thereof. Whimsy refuses to number any bathroom act with Number One, Number Two, Number Twenty or Number Ninty-Nine. Whimsy has struck CACA, DOODOO, and DO YOUR BUSINESS entirely off the Whimsy Household Vocabulary List. And while we're at it, there is also no option under heaven to have Bean ever use BM as a verb or noun. Ever.

Where does that leave us? With NOTHING. No words for the act, the carnage, or anything bathroom related.

I'm looking to you, Internets, to shed some light on this very murky matter. What do (or did) you call it? Are there any words that you just HATE? Please discuss.

ringing in the new year with the whimsy's

We tagged along with Chip last week on a trip to Portland. While there, Bean picked up a nice virus-y thing. With the extra benefit of MUCOUS. Which is funny because I'd been telling myself that all I wanted for the new year was a bunch of green mucous. Don't let anyone tell you that wishes don't come true.

Also while there, we stopped at the Portland Ikea which had the cutest children's bedding (always thinking of the future, that's me) and a 2-month-old Target. Yes, A BRAND NEW TARGET. Here's me telling Chip that we need to spend more time walking the aisles.
Whimsy: We need to spend more time walking the aisles.

Chip: But we have Targets at home.

Whimsy: But none of them are NEW like this!

Chip: And???

Whimsy: They put BETTER STUFF at a new Target. I PROMISE YOU.

Chip: *sigh*, *pushes cart forward to begin the arduous task of walking the aisles*

Whimsy: I love you.

But my favorite moment of the entire trip, better than staying up until the dreadfully late hour of ELEVEN-THIRTY on New Year's Eve; better than loading up on free Embassey Suite's breakfast; better than watching Chip ask a nine-year-old boy if he was going to be partying it up for New Year's Eve; better than watching the kid's face as he formulated his resounding NO (lips said NO, face said WHO ARE YOU OLD MAN); even better than having Bean say goodbye to every single person we passed as we left Friday morning's breakfast buffet. Even better than all that--- my favorite moment of the week was standing in line in the pouring rain for forty-five minutes at Portland's own Voodoo Doughnut.

They were having a wedding inside at the time, and they only had the little walk-up window open. And everyone in the surrouding area was (apparently) buying Voodoo Doughnuts.

We had borrowed an umbrella from the concierge, so we cowered there against the building, umbrella in hand - trying our best to keep Bean covered in her stroller.

She slept, holding her favorite travelling companion, Tray.

We got really, really, really wet.

And then we got a box of donuts.

Donuts covered in things like Fun Dip (there was a purple one). And Fruit Loops. And Cocoa Puffs. There was also a maple cinnamon sugar donut. Delicious.

And enough sugar to last me well into February.

We heard talk later of a bacon maple bar, but sadly missed out. There will be another trip sometime in our future. I'm thinking February. I've got to let my system rest. For a little while, at least.

But the fun wasn't in the donuts. It was in the experience, the adventure, the cheesey-grinned excitement of doing something weird and goofy, just the three of us.

this is what happens when you eat cake for breakfast

A couple of weeks ago I left Bean sitting in her chair eating breakfast (read: pumpkin CAKE --- I was going to say a pumpkin muffin, but let's be honest, it was clearly CAKE, despite its crumbly topping and muffin-like appearance; which makes me wonder, when does a muffin cross over into cupcake territory and when does a cupcake tumble into muffinland? Where oh where is the line betwixt them?) while I went to clean out the cat box. I was going to say "while I went outside to clean out the cat box" but then I realized that you wouldn't understand that reference, since we have indoor-only cats and why the heck is their box outside? The answer is that the cat box is in our garage because it -the box- is accessed through a little cutaway door in the wall. Cats go through door in wall to reach their bathroom facilities which is kept in its own little wooden box. Basically, the cats can get to the litter box without braving the Wilderland of Garage and we don't have to deal with their box anywhere inside the house. It's actually the feature that sold us the house. And really, I probably didn't need to go into that much detail because I fixed the initial sentence that would have sent me into this aside in the first place. Oh well.

Let's review. Bean: inside house, consuming copious amounts of pumpkin CAKE for breakfast. Whimsy: standing in the 30-degree garage hunched over the terrible remnants of a Litter Box Gone Wrong. Let's join Whimsy as she tries to shovel the first bits of Cat Nasty into a bag.

Whimsy is thinking about poo. Who wouldn't be thinking about poo at a time like this, is what Whimsy's narrator is thinking. Poo, poo, poo. Cat poo is terrible stuff, thinks Whimsy. Bet I couldn't write about that in the blog. (TOO LATE, says Whimsy's narrator.) Looking at this poo, thinks Whimsy, it seems sorta... big for a cat. Like if this were the same width ratio in human poo it would be terribly painful to... Whimsy stops herself, knowing she is going to A VERY BAD PLACE. Now Whimsy is wondering about Possible Blog Topics That Will Result in the Very Worst Google Searches. She thinks that cat poo (and particularly the size of cat poo) is up toward the top of that list. Which makes her then think about the most common Google search that links to The Creamery: Star Wars onesie. Which is closely followed by Padawan onesie. Whimsy's narrator breaks in to voice the reader's question, which is, naturally, WHY THE HECK WOULD THAT LINK TO THE CREAMERY? Whimsy's narrator answers your question with this link to a very old post. Now Whimsy is thinking about all those people who come to The Creamery looking for some serious Star Wars swag and leave horribly disappointed. Which leads Whimsy to think about that fact that she never hears from those folks, and while we're on the subject, she thinks about some of the people who visit The Creamery for other reasons who also never comment. She knows they are out there. Which leads Whimsy to wonder about Delurking Day. Hmmmm, she wonders, when is that coming up? She makes a mental note to ask someone about it. Which is when she hears Bean making a racket, wondering when Whimsy is going to come back inside and give her some more CAKE.

So Whimsy finishes her job and goes back inside to give Bean more cake. She washes her hands first.
As would you, thinks Whimsy's narrator, especially after all that poo.