Experiment

Hey, everybody. I'm conducting a bit of an experiment. An experiment with my life.

So for a while, I'll be posting at another blog address. I don't know why I'm switching sites. Maybe I just need a fresh start.

The address is lifebydays.blogspot.com.

Hope to see you there.

Peace.

How to suck people into your blog (mwahahahahaha!)

Write a post and link to an older post in it.

Then cackle and do a gooney dance.

Hypocrite

I get annoyed with other people for not updating their blogs very often.

And because I feel (a little) guilty for my hypocrisy, I'll post a picture.

This picture was taken a week or so ago. Jeff and I are standing on the little dock mentioned at the end of this blog post.

A guy rode by on his bike and commented on how great a scene it was with us, the water and the pink sky and he asked if he could take a picture. I told him hell no.

I thought of something

Recently, I overheard Jeff and a mutual friend talking about the kind of work they do. They are each in non-traditional fields (8-5 work hours are the exception rather than the rule) and they were discussing the dream job versus the backup plan. Jeff said that he had recently heard, "If you want to make it in comic books, don't have a backup plan. If you have a backup plan, you'll do the backup plan. If you don't have one, if you have no choice but to make comics work out for you, that's the only way you'll ever succeed, because making it in comics is hard."

I think being a CFO is my backup plan.

Not that I want to succeed in the comics field, mind you. But this isn't what I want to do with my life.

But I am afraid.

I am afraid that even if I don't have a backup plan, I won't work very hard at the dream. And I'm afraid I don't really know what the dream is. In fact, I actually said once that my goal was to be a CFO. Now here I am, and I don't like it. What if it's like that with the next dream? What if I burn the bridges to my backup plan, work really really hard at what I think is the dream, and then I don't like the dream? That'd be bad. And what if I can't even decide what today's dream even is?

But then I think about the 40-year-old me and I am terrified of what she will say about what I did with my life. I'm afraid she'll say, "Why didn't you just DO something?"

Which thing am I afraid of more?

Why I need an iPhone

I think of lots of things I want to write about on my blog. But then when I sit down at the computer, I can't think of any of them.

I firmly believe that an iPhone would help me.

(And I'm only halfway trying to think of an excuse to get an iPhone.)

That's what she gets

Autumn spent a few minutes tonight looking for her tennis ball that she lost. I couldn't find it at first, either. But then I realized she LEFT IT ON THE COUNTER.

What was she doing up there, anyway?

Bad dog.

Blog entry in which I use the work "sucks" a lot.

Tonight, I found out that a friend of mine is hurting. Like "life is really sucking" kind of hurting.

And it sucks. I hate it when that happens, when people do what God said they should (or could) do and then it ends up being really painful. I won't say I know how he feels, but, man, do I know how he feels.

And even though I've "been there," I'm still at a loss for what I can do to help. When I was struggling most after moving to Philly and having a hard time finding friends even (especially) among God's people and feeling unfulfilled in my work, the only thing that I think would have been useful would have been just having someone listen to me. Let me talk and just listen and not even try to comfort me. Because the situation still is what it is and it still sucks. And then just say, "Yeah, that sucks. I'm sorry."

BJ, I'm listening to you (and by that I mean I'm reading your blog.) I pray that God sends someone to listen to you in person.

And until then - man, that sucks. I'm sorry, dude.

Crazy Dog

Last week at work, there was some sort of fancy event that required the presence of several 9-ft palm trees. After the event was over, the trees were up for grabs so I took one home.

My husband was a little surprised when I got home and asked him if he'd get the tree out of my car.

Anyway, I'm not really sure what to do with a palm tree. It won't get enough light in the house and I don't think I can plant it outside because it won't survive the winter here in Philly. For the time being, I decided to just take it outside, but then wind kept blowing it over and I'd pick it back up, and the wind would blow it over again and then...

So that got old. I finally moved it to the corner of the yard with the intention of anchoring it to the fence even though I still haven't done that yet. But with a few bricks to prop it up, it managed to stand up pretty well without it. So that was good.

But then...

Hurricane Autumn hit. You know about Autumn, right? Autumn is such a sweet dog and is very enthusiastic about just about everything. Just a happy little girl. But there are some things we don't want her to do and not only does she do them, she does them enthusiastically. Like eat poop. Like eat my plants, including azaleas, which are poisonous to dogs. Like drag my new 9-ft palm tree around the back yard.

I went outside to survey the damage and she decided it was time to play "crazy dog." She just ran every direction all at once at fast as she could go. There was lots of jumping over the fallen tree and slamming herself against the back door and then running to the gate and then slamming herself against the door again and then jumping over the tree and just going crazy. As I moved the tree back to the corner of the yard, she kept trying to bite at this one branch and every time I yelled, "No!" she just turned crazy dog up a notch. Once the tree was out of the game, she was down to running to the gate and then slamming against the door and running to the gate and slamming against the door and running to the gate and...

Autumn turns a year old this week. I think it's pretty safe to say that I have very high expectations of how calm "Adult Autumn" will be.

Please say a prayer for us all.

Baby Names

No, I'm not pregnant. Let me start with that.

I was reading MckMama's blog about baby names today, and then I started reading a bunch of the comments that had been left.

There were several comments that said something like, "I'm from the south, so there are lots of kids in my family with surnames as their first name."

This really makes me laugh! Because the last names in my family would make TERRIBLE first names:

Wear
Howell
Murchison
Goza
Lewis
Ross

Okay, so Lewis and Ross wouldn't be that bad, but I don't really like them. And can you imagine name your daughter Goza? Or your son Howell? And who would name their kid Wear?

What about you? What sort of family name could you give your kid?

PS I knew a guy once whose middle name was Flake.
PPS My grandma's name was Fairy.

Jackpot

I promise I'll never complain again. Ever. Not now that I know where it gets me.

You remember my last post, right? Well, guess what! I've got a story for ya!

Let me recount for you the last 15 minutes of my life:

I was lying in bed reading. The intention was to get to bed at a reasonable hour, preferably closer to 11 than to midnight. Jeff was downstairs reading the internet (he reads the entire thing everyday, you know) and Autumn was at his feet chewing a bone.

Suddenly I hear commotion! I hear Jeff say, "Oh, man, that's really gross. Ugh."

Autumn works up quite a saliva lather when she's chewing, and I assumed that Jeff had gotten slimed. But then he says it again, "Oh, man. That's disgusting. Ugh. Gross."

I hear Jeff come up the stairs. Then I hear a familiar sound - the sound of a dog puking. Splat.

"Meredith? Can you come help me?"

A little apprehensive by this point, I got up and went out into the hall and turned on the light. Massive pile of dog puke on the landing, right where Jeff would have stepped had he kept going in the dark.

He says, "There's a bigger pile downstairs. I'm about to throw up."

Here's the thing though. Dog puke is one thing. But did you forget? OUR DOG EATS POOP!

That's right, people. Our sweet little Autumn, the one that the vet said just today was JUST FINE, PERFECTLY HEALTHY, had just thrown up her own poop.

And then Jeff and I spent about 10 minutes (or more) trying to clean the whole mess up. It still smells like poop. We need some Febreeze off in here.

If you ever come into my house, I will NEVER TELL YOU WHERE IT HAPPENED. So don't ask.

Man, the mommy bloggers are on to something. This is way more fun that writing about how Jeff and I spent the evening watching Dancing With the Stars, and he put up with my own professional critique of the dancers...