We’ve discussed several times that I have a personality that tends to err on the side of obsessive. And I say that like it’s my personality’s fault, like I carry no real responsibility in terms of disciplining myself to DIAL IT DOWN A NOTCH.

So considering the way that I can jump on board with a project and just spin and spin and spin without making any real forward progress, I can’t thank y’all enough for your suggestions about affordable ways to give Alex’s room a little make-over. I feel like I have a game plan now – as opposed to just hopping in my car and driving from store to store to store with no real sense of direction. Yay, Internet, for the wise counsel. I appreciate it more than you know.

And while we’re on the subject of my obsessiveness, I figured I might as well mention a few things that have also captured my attention over the last week or so. Because as far as I’m concerned, the crazy cannot be conquered until it is shared.

(Is that on a free printable somewhere?)

(Or maybe cross-stitched somewhere on Etsy?)

1. Watching Pretty Woman for the first time in years

Saturday night was the first time in about five days that I’d watched something besides the news, and I happened to catch Pretty Woman about 20 minutes into the movie. I hadn’t seen it in forever, but I was immediately fascinated by the fact that it didn’t look nearly as dated as I expected that it would. The clothes still looked pretty modern, and the decor was fairly classic with the exception of some bright mauve carpet. But oh my goodness – THE PHONES.

I got so tickled. Because they were brick-esque, really.

I wish I’d taken a picture of Edward with his cell phone. It had to have weighed a solid eight pounds.

2. Soup

Seriously. Soup. Ever since the Virus-O-Doom hit our house a couple of weeks ago, I have been craving soup. The fact that it’s not winter anymore has done absolutely nothing to deter my soup-related enthusiasm. Tonight I made a new tomato soup recipe, and it was delicious. Ree’s tortilla soup will be on the menu for later this week. I doubt this soup phase will last long since there are some meat-and-potatoes fellas in this house, but I’m gonna enjoy it while I can.

3. The Great Gatsby (the new movie)

I’m oh-so-excited about the movie simply because I love the book so much. In fact, I actually started a post about ALL MY MANY THOUGHTS a few days ago. I know that book adaptations are rarely as good as books are, but I totally have my fingers crossed on this one. And if nothing else, I think that seeing the sets will be worth the price of admission. The trailer looks absolutely gorgeous.

4. Open Front Jersey Cardigans

Now to be clear, Old Navy calls these LOUNGE cardigans. I don’t know if that means that you’re only supposed to wear them with yoga pants when you’re relaxing around the house, but I am here to tell you that if you like a little extra coverage (amen) or an extra layer (I am such a fan of layers – especially in the fall and spring), these are super-soft and fun to wear with colored jeans. I just ordered the pink and the light blue – two colors that I have not worn much at all over the last few years – and I am crazy about them. Yesterday I wore the pink one with some green jeans, and I felt like it was 1988 all over again. Except that hopefully my bangs are in much better condition now.

5. CL by Laundry Date Night Wedges

Last year I saw these shoes in Stein Mart and didn’t buy them because I just wasn’t sure if I’d wear them that often. But I thought about them over and over again last summer, and when they showed up in Stein Mart a couple of months ago, I snapped them up (on sale, hallelujah). They’re almost like a flat on top of a wedge, and they run pretty true to size. What I like about them the most, though, is that they’re great with the skimmer length / ankle length / longer capri length pants and jeans that are everywhere right now. If you feel like you’re in a flip-flop rut (raising my own hand) and need something a little sassier, these shoes might be just the ticket.

All righty. That about covers it – at least for now, I reckon. And by all means, let me know if you’ve run across any movies / soups / loungewear / shoes that I need to check out.

Hope y’all had a great weekend!

Well, I have made it my personal goal and mission to finish out this weekend by watching some Quality Sunday Evening Television. In fact, I just sat through an entire episode of 60 Minutes for the first time in about twenty years, and do you know what? It was delightful. When I was younger I used to associate the sound of the 60 Minutes stopwatch with DREAD and DOOM and HORROR because SCHOOL IS COMING SOON, but now it just makes me think about Sunday nights at my parents’ house. And how we ate roast beef sandwiches a lot for Sunday night supper. And how Ed Bradley always seemed so cool and with it compared to all the other reporters.

The mind works in peculiar ways, doesn’t it?

We’ve had a really laid-back weekend at our house, mainly because there is a child in this house who is waging war with pollen right now. I’m guessing you know which child I am talking about since, well, THERE IS ONLY ONE OF THEM HERE, but he usually has four or five days every spring when the pollen makes him absolutely miserable, and that’s exactly where we were at the end of last week. Friday he coughed from the time he got out of bed until the time he went to sleep, and while on one hand I felt so sorry for him and wanted so much for him to feel better, I was also about ready to take that cough outside and give it a piece of my mind because OH MY WORD IT WOULD NOT STOP. We’d been to the doctor the day before, so I knew that there wasn’t much I could do, but that didn’t stop me from putting Vicks on the bottoms of A.’s feet, offering a steady rotation of cough drops and Lifesavers (for variety, you understand), and practically setting a timer so that I’d know when it was time for the next dose of cough syrup.

Thankfully, yesterday and today have been so much better (thank you, rain). I ran some errands yesterday morning, and since I needed to go to The Summit for a few things, I decided to stop by Belk to look at sandals. What I did not know, however, is that all of Belk’s dresses – ALL OF THEM – were 50% off, and quite frankly I felt like it would have been irresponsible to not investigate the sales possibilities. As you might imagine, the store was COVERED UP with some dress-fixated women (and a few despondent men). I seriously could have sat in that store all day long and soaked up some stories. In fact, at one point I was trying on a few things when I heard the very distinct voice of a man in the dressing room area, and as I stood there and tried to make sense of it all, an employee said, “Um, sir? You’re not supposed to be back here in the women’s dressing rooms.” And the man replied, “Oh, no. It’s fine. Because I’m watching our baby. I’m not just sitting back here by myself. This is different.”

And while I think every woman in that dressing room area who was listening probably agreed that it was kind of him to watch the baby while his wife tried on clothes, I think we were probably also in agreement that SIR, THIS IS A VERY LARGE STORE – LO, A STORE WITH FAR MORE SUITABLE BABY-WATCHING AREAS.

Have mercy it was awkward. But I was happy to endure the awkward because I found a really cute summer dress and I certainly wasn’t going to miss out on the 50% off (plus an additional 15%) just because a doting daddy made a questionable seating choice. That wouldn’t even make good sense.

This morning we went to a different church because our friend Shaun was speaking and leading worship there. It’s been a year and a half since Shaun led our Compassion Bloggers trip to Ecuador, and it was so good to see him and get to laugh for a few minutes. Afterwards we made our weekly pilgrimage to the Chuy’s, and then we came home and watched the Masters and napped and watched the end of the Masters and ate leftovers from our lunch and now I’m about to watch Oprah interview Mark Burnett and Roma Downey.

So all in all, I guess, it was kind of a boring weekend. But after last weekend and the Virus-y Plague of Doom, I’ll take it. It was just what we needed. A. is feeling better, D. and I are rested (we bought some new pillows – I will report our findings after we’ve had a chance to use them for a week or so), and hopefully there’s some springtime fun in store this next week – springtime fun that’s virus- and cough-free.

That would be a wonder, now wouldn’t it?

FINGERS CROSSED.

Happy Monday, y’all!

I met my friend Joni the summer before my sophomore year of high school. We were both pledges for a high school social club in our hometown, and while I’m really not sure how the social clubs became a tradition (a tradition that is still going strong, I might add), I do know that when I was 14, I was convinced – CONVINCED – that I would never have a meaningful social life if I didn’t join. That is why I spent the better part of three months making an utter fool of myself so that I could fulfill the requirements for membership. That is also why I am certain that if I could travel back in time, the grown-up version of me would tell the 14 year-old version of me to HAVE SOME PRIDE, ALREADY, and stop it with that pledging business.

Seriously. If I told y’all everything that we had to do, you would cringe. And you would also understand why the smell of maple syrup will forever make me shudder.

What I realized early on in that pledging process, though, was that Joni, who was a year older, was hilarious. Her dry sense of humor made me laugh until my stomach hurt, and her perfectly-timed one-liners made that very long, very hot summer just a little bit more bearable. I got the biggest kick out of being around her.

When school started that fall, Joni and I found ourselves in the same biology class, and we eventually became lab partners. That meant that we got to walk through all sorts of memorable moments together – like dissecting a cat that we christened “Diane,” for instance. Joni’s grasp of biology far exceeded mine; I usually had a hard time in classes that didn’t interest me, and for most of high school, English was my only interest (well, English and typing – and for whatever reason, I really loved calculus). Joni and I would often plan “study sessions” before a big biology test, but we usually laughed way more than we studied. I’m sure that at some point I memorized a few details about prophase and anaphase and meiosis and mitosis, but the fellowship was way more fun than the subject matter. Always.

There were lots of days when Joni and I would start conversations in biology class that time didn’t permit us to finish, so we fell into the habit of writing epic, novella-length notes to each other after biology was over. There’s no telling how many pieces of paper we passed back and forth between classes. And while I know that hard things happened and sad things happened and embarrassing things happened, we’d write those notes and try our best to find the funny in every single bit of it.

A couple of years ago I ran into Joni here in Birmingham, and after we visited for a few minutes, she asked me if I remembered the notes we used to write. I absolutely did, though I hadn’t thought about them in a long time, and she told me that she’d kept a lot of them tucked away in a box at her house. I couldn’t believe that she’d held on to them, but oh, did I ever want to read a few. And when Joni and I saw each other again at a Mississippi State football game this past fall, she assured me that she really was going to dig out that box of notes and see what ancient treasures she could find.

Monday night I clicked over to Facebook, and this picture was at the top of my feed.

I spied my 10th grade handwriting in the bottom, left-hand corner. And I grinned like crazy.

I’m not a person who gets overly nostalgic when I think about high school. It was fun and I had great teachers and I made some wonderful, life-long friends, but by and large I am infinitely more nostalgic about college. That being said, there was something about seeing that old note in Joni’s picture – that little sliver of my 15 year-old self – that made me so grateful for the blessing of sweet friends and healthy friendships. I had no idea how fortunate I was.

But I understand it now.

And I am ever-so-grateful.

Does anything make you nostalgic for your high school days?

Last Thursday night, I was minding my own business and doing something terribly important (I can’t remember, exactly, but I’m assuming that I was either counting down the seconds until Scandal started or watching my 4,378th episode of Diners, Drive-ins, & Dives when I realized that I didn’t feel so hot. I told myself that it was just a little indigestion, and that’s what I continued to tell myself several hours later, when I was still in denial about the possibility of a stomach virus even thought I was tossing and turning and basically longing for some Tums or maybe even a couple of sticks of sidewalk chalk.

But by Friday afternoon, the virus / plague / Masque of the Red Death (apologies to Edgar Allan Poe) had made a believer out of me. I thought the worst was over by Saturday morning, but that was only because I had not yet experienced what was coming my way Saturday night and Sunday morning. It was SOMETHING ELSE.

Today, though, I am so much better. I’m a smidge dehydrated and a little dependent on bananas as my primary food group, but compared to a couple of days ago, I am downright peppy. Doing high kicks in a field of daisies while puppies frolic nearby. Relatively speaking, of course.

Oh! And since I’m watching the NCAA Championship Game right now, I guess this is as good a time as any to point out that the most unlikely thing EVER happened after the first two Final Four games.

THIS IS UNPRECEDENTED.

Now if Louisville loses, I’m guessing this whole phase of being atop the leader board will be, as Joey Tribbiani would say, “a moo point – like a cow’s opinion, it doesn’t matter” – but given my embarrassingly poor showing in the early rounds, I’m a little tickled that things have turned out this way. Even if it’s only temporary.

So that’s pretty much all that’s been going on around here: a whole lot of virus-ing (D feel prey to the plague on Saturday, I’m sad to say), an impressive amount of sleeping, and a little bit of basketball-ing. I did watch parts of the ACM Awards last night, an experience that left me wondering when exactly the men who sing country music for a living started to get spray tans (at least they LOOK like they get spray tans – I have no real evidence, other than the muted orange head-to-toe hue that I noticed on several performers). To each his own, I reckon, and honestly, who cares what I think? I mean, I still can’t get used to the sight of male country singers wearing skinny jeans, so clearly I am all sorts of ancient.

Maybe tomorrow I can stand on my porch and shake my fist at the sky and find a reason to scream the word “hooligans.”

I’ll get to work on that first thing in the morning.

Love,
Mamaw

I wasn’t kidding around back in January when I said that I was not – WAS NOT – going to watch American Idol this season. I’d read a few things about drama during the auditions, and I just couldn’t muster up the energy to watch judges argue. I’d much rather use that energy to count the number of times that someone says “amazing,” “connection,” or “journey” on The Bachelor. I think that we can all agree that it’s a much more valuable (and productive!) use of a person’s time.

I didn’t watch a single second of Idol auditions – not even Hollywood Week, which has always been my favorite. I kept my distance all the way through the selection process, in fact, and even when the finalists started the “real” portion of the show in the studio, I stayed away. But once the finalists were narrowed down to the top 10, I took a little bitty peek at the singing when I was flipping around on the TV on Wednesday night, and I sorta / kinda / maybe got slightly hooked again. Granted, I don’t watch it as intently as I used to – if a contestant doesn’t grab my attention during the first few seconds of a song, I fast forward the DVR – but I have to say that I’m enjoying the show.

My favorite so far is Candice Glover, a South Carolina girl who can flat-out SANG. I also like Cree and Janelle a lot – they are super-likeable on stage, which is a big deal with me for some reason. Interestingly enough (well, it’s interesting to me, at least, but I certainly won’t presume to speak for the group), Candice won me over for good when she sang a song that I absolutely loathe, “I Heard It Through The Grapevine.” It’s a nice enough song, I guess, but I watched a lot of TV in the early 80s, and I saw those California Raisins commercials so many times that the “Grapevine” song was OH-SO-DEAD to me.

But then Candice made it better.

Now. Pretend that this sentence creates a lovely transition into the next topic.

I have never had a Facebook page for my blog. The reason I have never had a Facebook page for my blog is because I didn’t want one. It was one more thing to keep up with and one more thing to manage and I kind of like to keep the social media part of my life low-key and breezy. But what I am realizing is that over the next couple of months, I’m gonna have announcements and questions and ponderings that pertain to the book, and I don’t want for the blog to become All Book, All The Time. I also don’t want to use my personal Facebook page for book stuff, mainly because someone who hasn’t seen me since 2nd grade probably isn’t going to care a whole lot about whether or not I’ve scheduled any book signings.

All that to say: I caved and set up a Facebook page for the blog / book / general writing-type endeavors. I actually set it up on Tuesday, but it’s taken me a couple of days to work up the nerve to mention it because, well, I am weird. It is currently a very sad, desolate Facebook page with upwards of three “likes” (my friends Anne and Nicole found it somehow even though I hadn’t told them about it, so clearly they have magical Facebook powers). I do think that I’ll enjoy having a separate place to share book news / blog news / whatever news, and that way the blog can continue to be a place to tackle all the hard-hitting issues of the day: pillow selection, snack cracker flavors, meats we don’t enjoy, vegetables that strike us as friendly, etc.

So. Here’s the Facebook page.

And I would love to know if you’re watching AI and who your favorites are.

I’m glad we’ve had this talk.

Happy Weekend, y’all!