Today, in another state far away, my nephew is celebrating his birthday. He was born on this day eight years ago, in another state far away in the opposite direction. It's a little hard for this old aunt to believe. My cousin was able to visit here briefly before we went on vacation, and from what she said, she'll likely be settling in that far- ( Read more... )

2020 hasn't been a great year for anyone, I guess. It's hard to believe that we still have almost half of this stinking year to get through! But recently, 2020 finally brought us something good. Athena and Josh's baby girl, Abram's little sister, my niece

Lydia Caroline
was born around 8:30am on June 29. We met her over the 4th of July weekend, ( Read more... )

Sara is at the movie theater down the street right now, seeing 1917. She bought some pass that lets her watch all the Best Picture nominees for this year's Oscars (happening next weekend!!). My anxiety is still coming at me hard, and I get nervous being home alone. Maybe that will get easier for me after this evening. Today was very nice, sunny and ( Read more... )

Man, staying with the M’s is as different as can be from staying at my mom’s house. I woke up this morning to find Aunt Connie in the kitchen with no pants on. She said, “This is called menopause!” Later Julie got up wearing my pajama pants, which she apparently mistook for her pajama pants while getting changed in the dark last night. Sara said ( Read more... )

WE ARE HERE! You should’ve seen what a nervous wreck I was when we left L-city this morning. We stopped by McDonald’s for breakfast, and I took a magnesium supplement to help me relax, and my hands were shaking so bad I could barely open the bottle. I had put my magnesium and a few other pills in a melatonin bottle, and when Sara saw it, she tried ( Read more... )

My sister and I left for our hometown around 1 on Wednesday and made good time, although I was pretty stressed by having to drive the last ~1.5 hours in the dark. Our mom called us when we were just outside I-town and sounded stressed; when we got to her house, we discovered that her oven had died! It apparently just stopped working with no warning ( Read more... )

The drive back to our hometown is usually long and tedious. ( Last year, we tried driving back for Thanksgiving, but due to car troubles, we had to turn around and come back. We went for Christmas instead, which we don't usually do.) Sara and I woke up early this morning, reinflated the tires and checked the fluids, packed up the car, and hit the ( Read more... )

On Saturday morning, we woke up early and dragged the cats to the vet for their annual checkup. This year, we had to leave them there and come back and pick them up later, which we'd never had to do before. They were both very angry about going to the vet and made their feelings known, very loudly, the whole car ride there and back. I wasn't crazy ( Read more... )

Today we slept in, which felt really good. Sara slept on the couch because the futon in Mom's living room keeps cracking, and it probably couldn't hold up to another night of two people sleeping on it. I ate two big plates of Christmas dinner leftovers as soon as I woke up, and I wolfed them down so fast that I almost barfed and had to lie down ( Read more... )

What better way to wake up on Christmas morning than your sister telling you that she's found her old collection of Baby-Sitters Club books? She already has a bunch, of course, but she found a bunch more in the closet of our childhood bedroom (aka the Unwelcome Guest Room), as well as her old General Hospital scrapbook and glass paperweight that ( Read more... )