Grid

I was so behind on holiday preparations in December that I forgot to ever buy a 2013 calendar. About a week into the year, I finally got one, but for whatever reason, I didn’t look at the back first. When I put the calendar up in the kitchen, I was horrified to see that the calendar grid was tiny! At least a quarter of the page was just a white border around the actual squares, which were way too small to write more than one item a day in.

Last night I had a meeting to go to, and afterwards went to the store to buy more ZzzQuil. (I meant to get it a few days ago – but I missed it on my list, and ended up just grinding some of the Walgreens pills and drinking the powder in apple juice. It was disgusting.) And it occurred to me that there might still be some 2013 calendars hiding in a clearance rack somewhere. I didn’t want to ask for help, because who waits until late January to buy a calendar, and I also was enjoying shopping without kids. So I spent about 40 minutes wandering around before I found the calendars.

Then it was a matter of finding the right combination of tolerable pictures and decent-sized calendar squares. I ignored the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit calendar, the Marilyn Monroe calendar, and the Tim Tebow calendar. I had to consider the various animal themed-calendars and inspirational calendars, though, because there weren’t a lot of choices left. Eventually I settled on a Majestic Mountains one. Interestingly, I hated the “large grid” calendar – it had no pictures, so each month took up 2 pages and the days were very tall rectangles.

One of these days (I mean, years), I’ll look ahead of time for a calendar that I actually like, instead of just grabbing whatever cheap calendar I can tolerate.

By the way, I keep my wall calendars. I have them going back to 2000.

Inquire

I’m going to assume since there are roughly 30 of you who read this blog daily that you find it at least slightly interesting. And, given how rarely Jarom posts, I’m going to further assume that you think I’m at least slightly interesting.

So today, you get to ask me all your burning questions about my life. Or about parenting or blogging or religion or books or . . . anything else you can think of. Long, short, serious, and flippant questions – I’ll answer them all on Monday. Ever wonder how Jarom proposed? When I started keeping track of the books I read? How I potty-trained Evan? How I handle meal-planning? (Spoiler: I don’t anymore.) Ask away!

Praise and compliments are also accepted.

If you don’t want to leave a comment with a question, you can just email it to me.

Home

We’ve been in our house for 5 months now. I still love it! Some days the house is tidier, some days it’s toddler-ier. But it always feels like home.

When I was packing to move, I got rid of TONS of stuff. Given that we have 400+ more square feet here than in our basement, it wasn’t strictly necessary, but less is better. I often think we own too much, even though we’ve gotten rid of more since moving in. (Although we have added more furniture – but donated lots of toys, books, and random clutter.) Whenever it gets messy – rather, when the mess gets to be overwhelming – I consider donating everything we own. Except some clothes. And all of my books. And a few toys.

I’ve been slowly hiding the kids’ toys in my closet over the past month. They notice if I take a big box out of their rooms, but so far there’ve been no complaints about the disappearing toys. Despite having removed almost all of the small- and medium-sized stuff, there is still destruction in our house by noon. Fortunately, it seldom gets so out-of-hand that it takes very long to clean up.

Whenever I sleep at someone else’s house, or in a hotel, it feels distinctly like I’m visiting. But where we live is comfortable, whether it’s in a basement or a charming little house. I’d hoped that the first few days here would be magical in some way – but I think the same old, same old comfort of home is best.