Tag Archives: Humor

Writing When You’re Tired

Posted on by

4ee977f3e28b80287c983fe7acae6fd5

I keep telling myself I’m going to write more when I’m not so tired. I’ll get back to blogging regularly any day now, like probably tomorrow-ish.

But I just keep waking up tired. I thought you were supposed to wake up rested? Nope–tired. And then I get tired-er and then I get “I’m not doing anything else but watching Netflix and glaring at people” from about 7pm until bed. So that’s fun.

I’ve been waiting for that energy boost I remember getting when I was expecting my son. That glorious part of pregnancy where you stop feeling miserable and hateful all the time and instead want to clean and decorate all the things. Nope. I just want a nap. And coffee. I want coffee while I nap.

I blame by two-year old son. I blame my husband. I blame you. It’s everyone’s fault I’m so tired. You should be nicer. I could write more if you were nicer to me.

You see the quality material I pull out of my mind palace when fatigued? Amazing stuff, I know.

I’m just excited if I remember why I came upstairs or if I get to sleep through the night without my son waking up to tell–no, scream–that he needs more juice or that there’s a microscopic piece of dirt on one of his favorite toys that he somehow noticed in a dark room while sleeping.

But I’ll be fine. I’m sure I’ll be rested tomorrow. I’ll probably write a book or something…tomorrow-ish.

Definitely any day now for sure.

Because Love

Posted on by

I’m sitting at my desk enjoying the sunshine after several days of snow and seemingly endless winter gray. My view out the window–icicles and snow mounded up in heaps on the roof.

img_20170213_122759.jpg

I live here because of Darren–that’s the truth. I love sunshine, and bare feet, and warm weather. I know you’re not supposed to hate stuff but you guys, I hate winter. So why do I live in a place that’s winter for six months out of the year? Because of a boy.

Darren is a New Englander inside and out and I’m pretty sure the one thing I will never persuade him to do is move away from the motherland. He’s fairly certain he’s already living in a foreign country having left the walls of Maine–so you see what I’m working with.

So if Darren’s in New England, I’m in New England. I love him and he’s worth it even for the cold–which is saying something significant and profound, trust me.

So you heard the Pats won the super bowl, right? Right. Darren wanted you to know. So let me you tell you this fine Valentines week just exactly what true love looks like, okay?

img_20170207_112343573.jpgimg_20170207_091752236.jpg

This is at the Pats victory parade in Boston. It was sleeting and snowing AND raining because, hello, New England, remember? That is me with my eye makeup washing off in said weather. And you can see in the background how totally delighted Roman was to be there. Darren is smiling. Of course he’s smiling.

img_20170207_102851554.jpg

When you need an umbrella because it’s raining but you also have to keep shaking the snow off your umbrella so it won’t collapse…just no. Also, I’m pregnant so I have rights, people 😉

After my legs were numb and I had sung my baby asleep under an umbrella in a backpack carrier surrounded by a mob of loud, intoxicated Pats fans–Darren says, “Wow, we were 15 feet from Tom Brady’s face–that was so worth it!” And herein is love–I did not punch him in the face, ya’ll, not even once.

I walked back to the train in the apocalypse of New England weather and rode the train…stop…this is the train —->

img_20170207_095704806.jpg

Sooooo….many….drunk…Pats fans….in one place 8]

And I walked back to my car because the parking lot at the train station was overflowing and I didn’t get a divorce…I didn’t even start the proceedings. Happy Valentines day, you guys, this is what true love looks like in New England ❤ ❤ ❤

Home School Moms: The Original Hipsters

Posted on by

I’ve had a bit of a revelation about my parents, all of our parents actually: Are you ready? They were cool before we even knew what cool was.

Actually, I’m not sure, but I think they might have invented cool.

All you have to do is flip through a few old photographs of your mom and dad when they were young and the truth comes bleeding off the page—they were the original hipsters and we but humble clones.

Scan0002

{My mom being all hip and awesome without even trying}

You know how they say the older you get the smarter your parents get? They aren’t kidding. My parents are practically a couple of geniuses at this point in my life and I’m starting to wish I had occasionally listened to them at some point prior to yesterday.

My mom for instance, was so hip and cool and ahead of her time that my mind is actually blown when I stop and think about it.

She raised us in the country close to nature and let us grow up free-range. She had a garden. And home schooled. And surrounded us with books. And cooked from scratch…all back when people were telling her she was crazy instead of writing blog posts about this being some kind of ideal.

Scan0001{My mom and two oldest brothers}

And my dad totally had a ‘stache from like 1970 to 1997 before moustaches had overrun the whole entire world and were “tastefully” {cough} plastered on everything. He loved photography and had a black room set up in the house to develop his own film. No Instagram filters needed.

He published his own work from home like some kind of indie artist before “indie artist” was even a thing, owned his own bookstore for a while, and sold and collected vintage beer cans for a while too {and is probably not pleased at all right now that I’m putting any of this on the internet because he’s way too cool for that}. Also, he still has way better taste in music than me—which is annoying.

So you know what I was doing while my hip parents were gardening and developing their own photography?

I was rolling my eyes.

Because my parents were just soooooo weird and annoying and I wanted to go to a “real” school and eat Happy Meals and live closer to civilization instead of being tortured by these crazy people who obviously.didn’t.know.anything.

And you know what everyone my age is now doing? Everything my parents did back when they obviously didn’t know anything.

I stand corrected.

My parents are awesome. They know everything.

At least my kids will recognize right away that I am the embodiment of wisdom and awesomeness and won’t roll their eyes for 28 years like I did. What a relief.

Don’t Tell My Mom

Posted on by

Hey guys, this is the baby. Mom is distracted so I decided to sneak a few words in on her blog—nobody tell okay? Okay. So guess what? I’m a boy! Mom thought for sure she would get a girl. She grew up with five brothers so she thought she was done with boys for a while but here I am. It’s okay though; she tells me every day that she loves me…even if I’m another crazy boy :]

I’m getting really big now—I’m 6 months old! And mom can’t hide her baby bump anymore either. The other day she saw some people she hadn’t seen in a while and they were like, “Whoa! What’s that!?” So I must be pretty obvious.

baby

When I’m not practicing my ninja Olympic skills, I spend most of my time trying to grow hair. I don’t want to be born bald because then I guess I would have to wear a hat, you know? Besides, I keep hearing about this cat that lives in my house and he wears a very fancy orange stripe fur suit….and I don’t want to be bald next to him!

Mom has been trying to wean herself off caffeine because she’s worried I’ll be born loving the stuff and she doesn’t want me to start out as some kind of back alley caffeine junkie. Let me tell you, it’s been pretty rough! I like coffee and I don’t like it when mommy says we can’t have it anymore. Mom does let me eat some of my favorite foods though. Right now I mostly love bread covered in peanut butter and Nutella…oh, and lots of fresh fruit too! Yummy.

 

Last week mommy convinced daddy to let her help him with a bondfire at the house they’re building. Daddy didn’t think it was a good idea but mommy is pretty persuasive. Well it was very muddy and icy and rainy and really terrible gross. Mommy had to buy rainboots just to walk in the yard and haul the brush to the fire. She was having a grand time and I was getting bounced around wondering what on earth her problem is with just staying inside. Well anyway, there was this big puddle of water near the bond fire and mommy decided to stand in it for a minute but you won’t believe it—she got stuck! She looked so funny there with her rain boots and her big baby belly just stuck in the mud. She kept calling for daddy but he was on the roof and couldn’t hear her. I love mommy but I laughed because it was her crazy idea to haul me around in the mud so she sort of deserved it :] And she did eventually get out so it’s okay. Also, she promised not to do anything like that again.

Mommy and daddy can’t seem to decide on my name. Which is silly because I already chose my name; they’ll see. Mommy really wanted to name me Henry David after Thoreau but daddy said no. Mommy keeps trying to convince daddy that he’s just like Thoreau so really I would be named after him…in a way…but daddy still said no. They are silly those two. Last night mommy told daddy they absolutely must decide on my name so she got out the big book of baby names and said they would go through it together–and then she fell asleep two seconds later while daddy looked. Mommy hates baby name books; she thinks they’re boring.

At night I kick mom a lot, just because I’m bored and stuff…sometimes mommy wakes up and she’s like, what on earth are you doing in there? But I just get real still and quiet and act like I don’t know what she means that way she thinks she dreamt it up.

ninja

Mommy and daddy have been busy getting everything ready for me and their house is getting really crowded with all kinds of baby stuff. But I don’t care about all that fancy baby stuff. I just want to go outside and roll around town in my stroller and see everything. This summer after I get here, me and mommy are going to go to Walden Pond and the ocean together. Mommy said sometimes we’ll go to the farmer’s market and sometimes we’ll go for a walk in the woods if I’m being good. And sometimes we’ll go see daddy at work and bring him coffee and everybody will be so excited to see me because they’ve been watching me grow all along and can’t wait to meet me–I get stage fright just thinking about it!

Uh oh, I think mommy is on to me…I better get off here before I get caught! I’ll write more soon!

Love, the baby.

P.S. Don’t tell mom. You never saw me. Okay? Okay.

 

Stop the Presses

Posted on by

Big news in the world of fried chicken everybody: Chick-Fil-A has come to town. That’s right, you heard me, Chick-Fil-A and all its glorious golden fried chickeness has landed just minutes from me and my life is finally, officially, complete. There are exactly two Chick-Fil-A’s in the great state of Massachusetts {which is clearly an atrocity} and one of them, as of today, is near me…be still my soul.

IMG_20140201_131621629

Also, there are fries…crisp heavenly little bites of all that is good in the world.

And there is sweet tea. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a proper cup of sweet tea in New England? Hard my friends.

And there are biscuits. Biscuits! Flaky, buttery biscuits drizzled with honey…I can’t even take it…my mind is blown.

photo

The baby is pretty exited too. Actually, he won’t stop talking about this glorious manna with which he is now being fed and has humbly asked that I please feed him fried chicken every day; I wanting to be a good mother see no other way forward. I like Martin Luther must plant my feet and say, “Here I stand; I can do no other.” I’m almost certain Martin Luther liked sweet tea and fried chicken. It just makes sense, you know?

The Baby Wrote a Blog Post

Posted on by

So you know how I’m building a baby, right? Right. So Baby thinks it should be a contributor to my blog and I’m all like,

“I don’t know kid. Can you even talk yet?”

And baby’s like,

“Oh yaaaa I can talk…I’m made from your genes so EVERYBODY knows I can taaalk.”

And I’m like,

“Fine, whatever, I’ll give you a trial run.”

So let me introduce you to The Baby:

  • Baby thinks it’s hilarious that no one knows whether he/she is a boy or girl. I told him/her we’ll know soon so stop laughing but baby thinks he/she will just curl up in a tight little ball and face the wrong way so we can’t find out. We shall see kid, we shall see.
  • Baby loves cheeseburgers and fries. Or at least I want cheeseburgers and fries every day for every meal and I’m blaming the baby for that. Also, I don’t actually eat cheeseburgers and fries every day for every meal…I just want to.
  • Baby absolutely will not let momma sleep through the night unless she walks a couple of miles right before bed. Momma is worried about whether or not this pattern will continue after sassy-pants baby is born? 8[
  • Baby knows all the lyrics to Mumford & Sons because momma plays them all day at work. Start them early; start them right.
  • Baby has daddy’s sense of humor…like we need two of them around her… ;]
  • Baby doesn’t mind coffee; he/she told me so.
  • Baby makes mommy look like a ridicules klutz and laughs about it because everyone thinks it’s her fault not baby’s….Daddy’s sense of humor, remember?
  • Baby does not like it when that sassy orange cat that lives with mommy and daddy decides to walk on mommy’s belly. Baby doesn’t like being poked by cat paws and thinks a lot about pulling the orange cat’s tail but mommy says it’s not allowed.
  • Other than writing, baby likes to eat, sleep, and grow. His/her schedule is quite full right now but he/she is always looking for new projects and adventures.

So there you go, that’s the baby I’m building. Further posts from said baby are pending momma’s review.

Also, here’s what I look like so far with this sassy baby in tow:

PicMonkey Collage all months

Love.

Posted on by

Darren and the cat spent a little time reading the National Geographic together.

DSC_0527

DSC_0526

I just love these two :]

The Bee’s Knees

Posted on by

I, like most people probably, sometimes think I need something new, something different, something more to be happy. I was really quite convinced that I needed a newer, better camera to take any photos worth having. I got that new camera a while ago and I do really like it. But a funny thing happened….

100_2303

I came across a camera we have had for years and started looking through the pictures on it…pictures I forgot all about when I got my newer, fancier, better camera. I found pictures of days at the beach and walks in the woods and I found a whole collection of pictures I took when Darren was helping his dad with the bees.

100_2301

Darren’s dad owns a bee pollination business, so if you ask me, he might as well be a snake charmer…but nobody asked me. I just take the pictures and swat at the angry, furry little bees…that’s all.

100_2312

I’m getting sidetracked though because the point of this post is that I like these pictures. I like the colors and texture. I like the sun flair and the little black blurs flying around everywhere. I like these pictures even though they were taken on an old camera and forgotten about for a couple of years after I moved on to newer, better things.

100_2308

Which just goes to prove that even though there is nothing wrong with new stuff, there is nothing wrong with old stuff either. Actually, in some ways, I think I used to be more creative when I was taking pictures because I was working with cheap point-and-shoot cameras and I had to be clever about getting artistic shots instead of just depending on all the fancy settings on my new camera.

100_2307

So there you go, life lesson #57: New is not always better.

Life lesson #56 was to not swat at the bees.

And life lesson #55 was to never, like ever, fry chicken in flip flops…unrelated, but true.

100_2302{Crates full of jars used to feed the fat cheeky little bees}

100_2310

That Time I Almost Blew It

Posted on by

I tend to take things very literally. Like, way too literally sometimes.

So here’s what happened.

Darren and I had been on one date. That one date was the only time I had ever seen Darren in my life but I liked him. We were in college and one evening after that first date I walked past him in the library. He was standing at a computer and when I walked by I punched him in the back, grinned, and kept on walking. When I walked back through the room Darren was still standing at the computer and I stopped a few computers down to check my email.

DSC_0859

Handsome Mr. Darren walks over and asks me if I want to go get an ice cream. And I was like, “no.”

That’s it. That’s all. No explanation, just no. Because, here’s the thing, I don’t really like ice cream and at that particular moment I literally didn’t want ice cream so the answer to his question was just no.

If he had asked me if I wanted to go out with him again, I would have said yes.

If he had asked me if I wanted to get a coffee and talk, I would have said yes.

If he has asked me if I wanted to go running around the building in the dark, I probably would have said yes.

But ice cream? No.

Poor guy. The time between the first and second date can be quite delicate, you know, when you’re waiting to see if the other person likes you enough to ask you out again or if they just sort of dodge you instead. So being the kind, sensitive person that I am, I flat-out turn Darren down the very next time he tries to talk to me. Ayy, yayy, yayy.

Lucky for me Darren is very persistent and kept asking me out…and he must have asked me the right questions after the ice cream mishap because here we are.

DSC05146

Oddly enough, it was a while later on an ice cream date when I realized that I loved him…but I still don’t like ice cream so the answer to that is still no :]

I Thought You Should Know…

Posted on by

This morning an elderly woman walks into Dunkin’ Donuts and painstakingly selects 12 donuts. The cashier gets all the donuts in the box and seals it up to hand to the woman and she says, “Oh no! That’s not what I meant to do! I came in here for a gift card!” True story :]

That is all.

Love, Kari