Sunday

Sunday has never been my favorite day of the week. It's always seemed like a fake weekend day, one filled with homework and chores and early bedtime and looming deadlines and the stress of the week ahead. My usual Sunday sentiment is harried and slightly melancholy: Another weekend is coming to a close, and I'm surprised at how quickly it flew by.

While I often spend Sunday mornings at church, I've never followed the biblical practice of treating Sunday as a day of rest. Surely, people in biblical times didn't have to deal with grocery shopping, kids' homework, laundry, cleaning, paying bills, and getting caught up on work email.

Maybe she's born with it, maybe it's stress.

This morning, I attended a seminar at my gym about stress. As the presenter started listing off the health conditions caused or exacerbated by stress, I felt like she was describing my personal list of woes: Weight gain, belly fat, carb cravings, feeling tired, irritability, mood swings.

I haven't felt like myself for the last few months. The best version of me is positive, health-conscious, and happy. I still remember what it's like to feel that way, and I can bring bursts of it, but lately I have felt duller, tired, like a fog is hanging over me. Sometimes, I chalk it up to the cold weather and lack of sunshine. Sometimes, I blame external situations like work and busy schedules. "I'll feel better when ___ is over," I tell myself.

Hoarders, Electronic Edition. Episode 2: Flash Drives

Have you ever been to somebody's house, and they took out a box of random photos and started flipping through them, telling you non-sequiter stories about people you don't know and places you've never been?

Tonight's blog is the digital equivalent of that. Sorry. It's been a long week.

Instead of a box of photos, I present you with random discoveries from old flash drives found around my house.

The 10 most (and least) understandable things about being a kid

Kid things that I can completely relate to

1. Being so tired that everything is hard, nothing can make me happy, I just want to cry, but I absolutely cannot go to bed

2. Having so much fun with my friends that I never want them to go home

3. My Little Pony

4. Why we should always buy the unlimited ride pass and arrive at the amusement park as soon as it opens

Called to Blog?

For the past 5 weeks, I've been attending a seminar entitled "Called to Life." Along with a few women from my church, I've been spending two hours a week exploring the question of what God is calling me to do and be.

I signed up for the class because of a word I saw somewhere in the course description: vocation. I was in the midst of a job change, and I thought "Aha! This may give me clarity on how to manage this."

The first week of class, I learned that vocation is about much more than career. It comes from the Latin vocare, "to call," as in "to hear the voice of God."

My Warm-Weather Bucket List

There's a fresh blanket of snow on the ground. Tonight's forecast is in the single digits. I can't take it anymore, so I've started a list. Here are 20 things I'd like to do while the weather is warm because, eventually, it will be. I promise. 

1. Shoot off some of the fireworks we have left over from last July 4.

2. Run around Christmas Lake. Run a 10k in August. Run, and keep running until I feel as healthy as I was last summer. 

Fever Dreams

I'm almost halfway through my blogging project, and I refuse to let a stomach bug and a fever knock me out now. Perhaps if I power through this, it will be like cresting a hill on a challenging run, and then I will enjoy a quick descent the rest of the way.

When I was a kid, I remember being sick a lot. If somebody had a cold, I would catch it, along with bonus symptoms, like asthma and tonsillitis. I cuddled under my big fluffy Polish down comforter and watched game shows: The Price is Right, Hollywood Squares, Bumper Stumpers, Win Lose or Draw (Why were they in Burt Reynolds' living room?). My mom made me hot, sweet tea, and my friends stopped by with special folders containing the homework I had missed. My dad brought home paper pharmacy bags with cough syrup and Sucrets and the occasional round of antibiotics, giving me bedside lectures on the differences between viruses and bacteria.

Sit with me

"Will you sit with me?"

After baths have been bubbled and stories have been read and snacks have been eaten and teeth have been brushed, the question comes. It's the last important question of the day.

I can't remember when the tradition started, but it began with Evie. She might have been a little bit afraid of the dark, or maybe she just enjoyed our company. She would ask "Will you sit with me for 5 minutes?" and one or both of us would stay in her room until she fell asleep, or until she was ready for us to leave, whichever came first. We cultivated the same practice with Felix, and now Sam and I each sit with one child every night.

Sitting with the kids is a welcome respite, a patch of peace in our loud, busy lives. Sam and I might catch up on our social networks or read a novel, the glow of our tablet screens illuminating the dark room. When there are always dishes to wash and bills to pay and things to do, it's a relief to know that, in this particular moment, the most urgent action needed of me is to be present and be still.

Birthday Party!

I had to put an exclamation point in the title because, when you put this many kids together, things get lively.

This afternoon, we celebrated Evie's birthday with 16 of her friends. After the trampoline place we reserved unexpectedly closed its doors 3 weeks ago, we found a solid Plan B solution at our gym, Life Time Fitness.

There was a bounce house.

A letter to Evie on her 7th birthday

Dear Evie,
We've established some family birthday traditions, and you're now old enough to remember them and hold us accountable. We hang up decorations (strategically, because the cats love to take them down). Daddy makes you a cake. And Mommy writes you a blog.

Six might have been my favorite year yet. You're almost through 1st grade, and school agrees with you. Thanks to another year of Chinese immersion, you can distinguish sounds that I can't hear, say things that I can't understand, and recognize characters on Daddy's bottle of Sriracha sauce. Your teacher, Liu lao shi, loves your enthusiasm for the language and culture, and she said she would love to take you to China or Taiwan with her. It's a long trip, but I have a feeling you'll make it there someday, probably before I'm ready.

Little Brother

Tomorrow is Evie's 7th birthday.

Earlier today, I found myself thinking "This is the last day I'll have a 6-year-old."

That's totally not true.

Threenagers: Story of a tantrum

I woke up knowing it was going to be a long day. Work, my hour-long commute, dinner, a class tonight, a blog to write. I can fit it all in, I thought. I had a short lunch and a productive afternoon, so I allowed myself to leave work a few minutes early so I might squeeze in some family time before dinner.

Sometimes, I feel like I have it together pretty well. Those are the moments to watch out for.

10 Things That Happened Today

1. I forgot to put on blush and had to choose between looking paler than normal or streaking lipstick across my cheeks. After the second coworker asked me if I was feeling tired, I opted for the latter.

2. With patience, determination, and the clever use of folders, I got my work inbox under 100 emails, the threshold at which I go from "overwhelmed" to simply "busy."

3.  Following a late-afternoon meeting with my new coworkers, I absentmindedly responded "Thanks, you too!" to someone who said "Bye" because I thought she was saying "Have a good night." Then I tried to fix it by saying "Have a good night" but I stumbled on my words and it came out "Have fun" and I walked away wondering how on earth I have a job in communications.

Prepare to be disappointed

I have a group of friends who mostly communicate online. We're spread all over the country, and while each of us has met at least one other person in the group, none of us have met all of us. We've never all been in the same place at once.

Earlier tonight, we were talking about how fun it would be to organize a huge meetup, perhaps a weekend in Vegas.

After a flurry of excitement and energy, as plans started to take a more realistic shape, the posts changed tone:

Dairy Queen Days

On our way out of Fargo today, Sam and I took the kids to a very special restaurant:

I worked here for four summers, one school year, and a couple of winter breaks during high school and college. I will always think of it as my Dairy Queen.

Have cousins, will travel

My brother is 5 1/2 years older than me. 

Growing up, I was always one life stage behind him. When Chris was in high school, I was still in grade school. When I started junior high, he went off to college. The summer before I went to college, Chris got married and moved back to our hometown of Fargo. The month I got married, he became a dad.

Live from I-94: Driving with Wiants

I'm writing from the passenger seat of our Prius, driving through a cloudless twilight in western Minnesota. We are en route to Fargo to visit my family. 

A fresh mix CD is in the stereo, the snow is quietly melting into the farmland, and it's a beautiful night for a drive. We enjoy the music, we occasionally sing along, we look out the window, but mostly we talk.

If anyone asks me for marriage or relationship advice (which they don't, but that's ok) my best tip is to find someone you never grow tired of talking to. Marriage is a lot of long car rides and waiting for things at restaurants. 

It is my mess

I still remember the moment I found out about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It was 2009, and I was in San Francisco, talking to a man who had made it his personal and professional mission to help people and companies comprehend the environmental devastation caused by our careless consumption and disposal of plastic.

I wondered if he was for real. I Googled it, and sure enough, this was a thing. I comforted myself in the way that I often do when I hear about bad things happening in far away places: "It's serious, but smart people are on the case. It's not my mess. I'll take a deep breath, remind myself to recycle, and return to my regularly scheduled programming."

Balance is overrated: the ramblings of a sleep-deprived blogger

A week ago, I promised that I would write every day for 40 days. 

It's harder than I expected it would be. Some days, I sit down to write and the words pour across the screen like they were already written, tucked away somewhere, just ready to come out and greet the world.

Other days, like today, it's all starting, stopping, deleting. I'm so tired that I can barely see the screen in front of me. I've been awake for almost 19 hours, my body is crying out for sleep, and I ask myself why I made this commitment. Can't I just post a picture of my kids enjoying themselves at the car wash and call it a night?

The raccoons of Ithilien

I was at the keyboard, trying to think of a blog topic, when my cat, Rosie, jumped onto my lap. I moved her to the floor and resumed staring at the blank screen and trying to think of a topic. Rosie jumped back onto my lap. I moved her to the floor. Her brother, Max, jumped on my lap and purred loudly, as if to say "Could it be any more obvious?" Therefore, I present to you tonight's blog: The story of Rosie and Max.

Soggy shoes and nude pantyhose: the curse of the Midwestern optimist

I am not good at waiting for things.

I take brownies out of the oven while they're still gooey.

I touch things before my nail polish is dry.

I believe that Christmas gifts may be opened anytime in the Decemberish season.

Waiting for spring is very, very hard for me, especially after a winter like this one.

At first, the extreme cold was entertaining. 

The belly question

"Mommy, why does your belly look like that?"

My 3-year-old son, Felix, asks me this question while I'm getting dressed. He puts his little hands right below my belly button and gently pushes, perhaps to see if it's as squishy as it looks. He giggles. He has no way of knowing that he just focused on the most vulnerable part of my body.

I have one of those shapes in which excess weight immediately and stubbornly attaches to my middle. I've grown accustomed to strangers inquiring about my due date. I couldn't even catch a break when I was pregnant; the day before Evie was born, a woman tried to convince me that I must be carrying twins because no single baby could occupy so much space.

Hoarders, Electronic Edition: Life in the B-Roll

I got the dreaded notification: My iCloud storage is full.

My first impulse is to buy more storage, though I wonder if I'm like a hoarder renting a new storage unit: Am I avoiding a deeper problem? Do I need to get better at letting go?

I teased one of my friends for carrying a painfully outdated phone because she couldn't part with the photos on it - thousands of them. I've had my iPhone for 9 months and now I understand her pain completely. The hardest part is deleting the B-Roll.

Can you play me a memory?

Today, Evie played in her first piano recital. She and a handful of other young musicians visited a local senior center and played for the residents. Evie was the youngest performer there, and I was so proud of her.

Watching her perform brought back memories. It reminded me why I was so insistent that she start piano lessons, and why I'm so grateful that she is enjoying herself.

The journey begins: Adapting a centuries-old religious tradition to suit my personal growth goals

Buckle your seatbelts, folks. Today, I begin 40 days of blogging.

But, wait! Isn't Lent the time when Christians simplify their lives and say farewell to things like chocolate or Facebook?

I admit, I'm stretching a bit. Lent is the season of solemnity, repentance, and self-denial, and blogging is fairly self-indulgent. Despite my Googling, I can't find any Biblical or historical traditions to support the religious validity of my approach. I don't even know if Episcopalians are supposed to give things up for Lent.