Honey, I’m Home

We bought a house! For the first time in my life, at the age of 35 (which I shall be in five days), I am officially a homeowner. I was a homeowner before by virtue of the fact that I am married to The Guy, I’m the one who banished The Pink Carpet of Our Discontent and Louisiana is a community-property state, but this time, my name is on the paperwork. I am, in equal measure, totally stoked and completely terrified by that fact.

Moving Day is 15 days from now, and there is an almost unbelievable amount of work to be done between now and then. But I’m so in love with this house, I kind of don’t care.

(This is, in fact, the house on which we made an offer that the owners, on the advice of their realtor, ignored. There’s a very entertaining conclusion to the tale, but just to be on the safe side, I’m going to wait until AFTER we close to tell it.)

(My attorney’s chest swelled with pride just then. He probably even has a tear in his eye. “My little walking libel suit is growing up,” he’s sniffing.)

Now let’s take a tour, shall we? With somebody else’s stuff everywhere? At least it’s somebody who has good taste.

The photos are unfortunately small, as I ganked them off a number of real estate websites before the listing was taken down, but they’ll at least give you the general idea.

—-

WELCOME!

House 5

You better believe I asked homegirl during the housing inspection where she bought every stick of her furniture.

House 19

They use this front room as a giant foyer, which is a great idea, but I’m not sure yet how we’re going to utilize the space.

House 18

The fireplace is gas. They have three small children, so they don’t use it, and we won’t either, I’m sure, but it’s nice to have a potential heat source if the power went out. Not that one is very likely to freeze to death in a Louisiana winter, but it can get mildly uncomfortable.

House 3

House 4

Exactly one year ago, after searching to the ends of the earth (or at least the Internet), we bought a sectional sofa…

…which is probably not going to fit in this room.

D’OH.

House 8

The color of this room is one of the first things I fell in love with about the house.

House 9

Needless to say, we’re not changing it.

House 20

The female half of the couple who live here spent pretty much all her time renovating this place largely by herself, and I know it sounds kind of corny, but her love for the house is obvious in every square inch of it.

House 22

They don’t show in the photos, but the house has several large skylights, including one in the kitchen, and they definitely contribute the open, airy feel.

House 7

STAMPED TIN BACKSPLASH STAMPED TIN BACKSPLASH ZOMG FAINT

House 6

“We can’t buy a house for its backsplash,” The Guy said.

OH YES WE CAN, DUDE. OH YES WE CAN.

House 15

You can also buy a house because it has a cute laundry room.

House 16

And because the backyard is already landscaped. HOLLA!

The husband planted several fruit trees, all of which are now mature and bear fruit. There are pomegranates, figs, oranges, kumquats and apricots. The fig tree is so huge that one of the first things I need to do after this year’s harvest (HARVEST! I am Ma Ingalls.) is prune that sucker, so if anybody has any advice about that, feel free to share.

House 10

Painted wood floors. I died. DIED!

House 21

We bought their bed. That probably sounds kind of creepy, but we love that bed, and buying theirs is a heck of a lot easier (and cheaper) than trying to find one on our own, and now they have one less thing to move. (We’re using our own mattresses, of course. I’m not THAT boundary-less, y’all.)

House 11

The downstairs bathroom is the only room in which we’ll attempt a large-scale renovation. It’s in fine shape now, and we love all the storage, but the tub, vanity and lighting situation are nothing to write home about.

House 12

Since it’s separated from the master by only a bathroom, this room will be the nursery. The Guy and I have agreed that we’ll transition Harper out of our bedroom after we move in. She probably won’t mind.

I’ll be a wreck.

House 14

This open area upstairs, which they use as a playroom, will function as my office.

House 13

This attic area will for now be our guest room, but one day, it’ll be the big-kid room (when we finally have some big kids). As you can see, it has its own attached bathroom, which contains two big closets.

I didn’t think about such a thing when we viewed the house, but during the inspection, we realized that the nook on the left underneath the skylight where they keep a small TV is actually an escape hatch onto the roof in case of a fire. Clever, huh? Actually, because all their children are so young, the couple have a lot of safety features built into the house, which is really nice for my peace of mind.

In addition to gorgeous paint colors and cute backsplashes and skylights out the wazoo, we have three friends who live on our street, sidewalks where Harper and the other small fries can ride their bikes and rollerskate and a neighborhood that has an annual block party.

There’s no place like home.

Your ecstatic
Kel

What I’ve Been Doing Instead of Blogging

Well, there’ve been several things, actually.

1. Writing, as always.

2. Editing photos every single night, often till 1:00 a.m. or later.

3. Tending a chubby-cheeked little baby whose favorite activities are blowing raspberries, screeching like a howler monkey with its tail caught in a screen door, rolling over and getting pissed off when she finds herself on her stomach instead of her back. In that order.

4. (Reasoning abilities: Harper can haz them?)

5. Also getting my FACE thrown up on by the aforementioned baby. YES.

Bathing Beauty.

6. Trying to make showers happen more often than every three days.

7. Giving a shout out to Cousin Emily for helping a sister out with Number 6.

Emily and Harper.

8. SELLING OUR HOUSE!! Awww yeeeaaahhh

9. Convincing myself that, if I just wish hard enough, our household objects will animate and pack themselves. And maybe talk to me, cook me food and sew me dresses while they’re at it. Kind of a Beauty and the Beast/Cinderella hybrid-type thing.

10. Looking for a new house.

11. Searching high and low for a new house.

12. Praying fervently to God every single night to PLEASE HELP US FIND A HOUSE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE.

13. Intermittently sobbing uncontrollably because OH MY LAWD, WE’S GONNA BE HOMELESS, PERKINS.

14. Envisioning having to live in my in-laws’ RV in my parents’ side yard and sobbing some more.

Shitter was Full.

15. Relatedly: Considering taking up heavy drinking.

16. Going through a veritable French farce in trying to get treatment for postpartum depression.

17. Who gets postpartum depression when her baby is four and a half months old? That’s right: THIS GIRL.

18. Watching Dr. Brandi throw an over-educated hissy from 450 miles away about my difficulties obtaining adequate medical care and remembering exactly why one should not mess with her. Sister-woman will EFF. SOMEBODY. UP.

19. Being intensely grateful for a good husband, good doctors and good friends and even more grateful that I feel better every day.

20. Making up my mind not to tell you guys about Numbers 16 through 19, but reconsidering when my friend Jenny reminded me that humility is an excellent quality in a blogger.

21. Remembering that I don’t always have to be all like, “Yeah! I got this! I’m fine! Everything’s cool! I AM SUPER AWESOME COMPETENT PEARLS-AND-SKIRT-WEARING JUNE CLEAVER CAREER MOM BARBIE, HEAR ME ROAR OR WHATEVER. Sure, I’ll join your committee!”

22. Thinking that, in the final analysis, Numbers 13 and 14 probably don’t have anything to do with postpartum depression. I mean, we’ve probably all figured out by now that I’m pretty neurotic even when my hormones aren’t out of whack.

23. Making an offer on a house, only to have the owners of said house and their realtor COMPLETELY IGNORE OUR OFFER. IGNORE. IGNORE. IG. NORE.

24. OH YES THEY DID, PEOPLE. OH YES THEY DID.

25. And our offer was only slightly below their asking price! The nerve! Some people, man. Some people.

26. Trying to talk myself out of sending the owners of said house a bill for the treatment of my postpartum depression.

27. Playing Dance Central with The Guy, and even though he’ll be the first to admit he can’t dance a lick, being utterly DELIGHTED every single time I beat the crap out of him. I know, I know. MEAN.

28. Making up Downton-Abbey-esque stories about the toys in Harper’s Easter basket.

Hippolyta.

Honora.

The Twins.

WHAT.

29. Hinting broadly to The Guy about stuff I want for my birthday.

And finally…

Perhaps most importantly…

THIS!

(Well, technically, I didn’t work on that, Lisa did, but I did have to upload a lot of photos, and I minded her when she told me not to touch the buttons.)

I think she did a marvelous job, don’t you?! And all in all, I’d say it’s a pretty good excuse for shirking my blogging responsibilities.

I’m sure we can all agree it’s a heck of a lot better than No. 28.

Your recovering
Kel

Icons

The most beautiful and glamorous women in the world, according to Kelly Phelan, age 6:

(Besides my mom. No, really. I was convinced that my mom was literally the most beautiful woman in the world and that she looked exactly like Barbie. In fact, I used to cut all my Barbies’ hair short so they would look more like my mom.)

(That’s not weird or anything.)

(OK, now that I’ve fulfilled – no, SURPASSED – my Awkward Quota for the day, here we go.)

Wonder Woman

The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders

Miss Piggy

Lucy Ewing on Dallas

Francesca Annis, a.k.a., Lillie Langtry on PBS Masterpiece Theatre’s Lillie

Um. One of these things is not like the others. To say the least.

(I was a really weird little kid.)

(I know, right? SURPRISE!!1!)

Although I’m proud that I’m limiting Harper’s media exposure, that means her personal style icon at this point is probably Father Phil.

So who were your heroes when you were six?

Your admiring
Kel

B**ch in a Box

I can’t pinpoint exactly when or how I first heard about Birchbox, but the minute I did, it became nothing short of an all-consuming obsession.

For those of you who don’t spend an inordinate amount of time playing with makeup, the Birchbox concept is simple but brilliant: Subscribers pay $10 per month, which includes shipping, for a box of deluxe (often larger-than-normal) samples of premium-brand beauty products. Think Nars, Stila, Philosophy and Benefit.

In sum, it’s an idea made of pure, uncut, Colombian-grade KELLY. Birchbox couldn’t be any more perfect for me if it was made of non-conflict diamonds and tasted like Halloween Oreos and booze.

It was a complete no-brainer that I HAD to have a subscription. Debit card in hand, I went to the website and clicked “JOIN.”

“Birchbox subscriptions are sold on a first come, first served basis. Join our mailing list, and we’ll let you know when it’s your turn to sign up. Subscriptions are released regularly!”

“WHAT THE FIIIIIIIIG*?!” I screamed.

*FIIIIIG = Something way more prurient than “fig.”

But…but…it’s…made for me, you know? What do you mean, I’m going to have to wait? But I don’t want to wait! PLEASE DON’T MAKE ME WAIT! PLEASE!

I clicked on “Monthly Member” about 800 more times just to be sure it wasn’t testing my level of desire to have a Birchbox subscription. You know, to make sure the people who have them REALLY want them.

Alas, no.

So I had to wait.

And wait.

And wait.

But then, lo! The magical day finally came! In my email inbox: “The Wait Is Over! Join Birchbox Now.”

DON’T MIND IF I DO!

And that, my friends, is when The Guy’s Month of Misery began.

See, as the mother of a new baby, your days tend to go one of two ways, with no in-between: They’re either really good or really, really, REALLY bad. Now, don’t get me wrong; my worst day with Harper in my life is still better than my best day without her, but those bad days, man…they’ll eat your lunch. Some days, I swear she engages every single one of her infant brain cells in a pursuit she calls “State-Run Psychiatric Hospital: Let Us Drive Mother to It.”

She’s currently going through a bit of a stage. We can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but she’s been struggling with reflux and a fussy phase that babies her age often experience, and for a few weeks there, the evenings, in particular, were extremely rough. The Guy would come home to find me and Harper both crying our eyes out, with neither of us able to do a single thing to console the other.

The worst part was it didn’t get much better after The Guy came home. I could hand her off to him for a little while, but our house is so small that no matter where I go, I can hear her crying like she’s sitting right next to me. And this is going to sound kind of weird to the non-moms among us, but Harper’s crying bothers me. Really, REALLY bothers me. Like, it’s physically painful in a way. Which makes sense, if you think about it – I’m biologically programmed for her crying to bother me. But the point is, going in another room and trying to ignore it and let The Guy handle it is pretty much pointless, because as long as she’s crying, I can’t rest. My brain knows she’s just irritable and over-tired, but my body reacts like she’s being systematically attacked and tortured by squirrels.

So my Birchbox constituted something to look forward to. When I was single, I looked forward to Friday or payday or date night, and those days are still pretty cool, but they’re no longer fundamentally different from any other day. The arrival of the Birchbox would make that day totally different from all the ones before it.

Essentially, my Birchbox became a shining beacon of hope.

Finally, I got the email that it had shipped! I anxiously awaited its arrival.

I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

AND WAITED.

All the while getting more and more upset. I was seriously ready to throttle the postman. The wait for my Birchbox became a totem of sorts for all my frustrations.

ALL my frustrations.

AAAAALLLLL.

You know where I’m going with this, right? My anticipation for my Birchbox got blown way, way out of proportion, because it became like, “WHY ISN’T MY G@$#!*& BIRCHBOX HERE YET I AM SO SICK OF WAITING FOR S@*% OUR HOUSE WON’T SELL AND THE BABY WON’T STOP CRYING AND SPITTING UP IN MY HAIR AND I WANT TO WEAR MY SKINNY JEANS THIS WEEKEND AND WHY HATH MY GOD FORSAKEN MEEEEEEEE.”

Reminder: We’re talking about a box filled with MAKEUP SAMPLES, people. Maybe that state-run-psych-hospital business isn’t such a bad idea after all, is my point here.

The Guy, not really having much of an idea what this Birchbox business was, naturally assumed that we were waiting on a box made of actual birch wood that was filled with…I’m not sure he was even prepared to hazard a guess. Maybe something to do with perfume? A pygmy marmoset? Henry Rollins himself? Illicit drugs?

Finally, finally, FINALLY it arrived!!

Birchbox.

The Guy, Harper and I went to lunch and, with much fanfare, I opened it.

Surprise Inside.

Contents: Tea Forté Skin-Smart Teas (3 samples), Harvey Prince Ageless perfume, Color Club Neon Nail Polish in Age of Aquarius, Lulu Organics Lavender + Clary Sage Hair Powder, One Love Organics Skin Savior Waterless Beauty Balm and Supergoop! Sunscreen Swipes (2)

Was it everything I hoped it would be?

Eh…you know. Pretty much.

It was definitely more about the anticipation than the actual contents, but all in all, I was pleased. I mean, they’re certainly better and more useful than the samples you get at the mall (I actually use most of these items, though I’ve never tried any of these brands), and you spend a heck of a lot more than $10 to get those. No, it didn’t magically cure the baby’s reflux, and 10 pounds didn’t evaporate the moment I lifted the lid, but waiting for it did give me more time to come to terms with those things.

The Guy, on the other hand, was very disappointed. Not only was the box cardboard and not wood, it was filled with…samples?

“It’s like you got a box full of samples,” he said incredulously.

“Exactly!” I said.

(As much as we have in common, there are some areas where we will never, ever understand each other. His is the fact that he can quote Shakespeare to me, then sit down to watch NASCAR and drink domestic beer. Mine is clearly the Birchbox.)

However, we both tried this stuff (me around my eyes, him on his lips) and agreed that it’s super awesome and worth $10 all by itself, although I’m not sure he’d be down with me spending $68 on a full-sized jar of it.

One Love.

And here is a picture of Lola Mowis cleaning herself just because:

Sluuuuurp.

So have you ever gotten just, like, disproportionately excited about something?

Did it live up to your expectations?

Was it makeup?

Your moisturized, sun-blocked, shiny-haired
Kel

The Body Dysmorphic

I’m normally not a strict dieter. I don’t believe in it. Eating a healthy diet and exercising are vitally important, to be sure, but life is too short not to thoroughly enjoy the occasional chocolate Martini or Hostess Sno Ball. So I follow the “80-20″ rule: I eat clean 80 percent of the time, and the other 20, I eat what I want guilt-free.

My attitude toward food, weight and self image weren’t always so healthy, but over the course of the last several years, I came to a few realizations:

1. If my doctor is OK with my weight, then I should be OK with it, too. He doesn’t give a you-know-what what size my jeans are; his only concern is that I’m healthy. Which is as it should be.

2. If I meet my own standards for reasonable attractiveness and physical fitness, then I’m not going to tear my hair out worrying about those last 10 pounds. I have more important things to think about.

(No, I will not tell you what those standards are, not because I’m ashamed of them – I absolutely am not and will, when not pregnant or postpartum, happily tell anyone what I weigh – but because they’re MY standards, not anyone else’s. Some people are funny about weight and body image, and I don’t want to write anything that might make it worse for someone than it already is.)

3. Speaking of attractiveness, it’s really unattractive to spend too much time thinking about yourself and how you look. If someone doesn’t like me or makes fun of me because I’m heavier than they think I should be, that’s their problem, not mine. My weight shouldn’t be the topic of anyone else’s conversation anyway.

Toward the end of my pregnancy, my self-image was pretty lousy. But I guess that’s understandable. Let’s face it, it’s hard to feel sexy in the slightest when a trip to Target leaves you exhausted, you have to pee every single time you stand up and you’ve outgrown even your MATERNITY clothes. But I wasn’t too worried about it. I had a plan to lose the baby weight after Harper was born, and I started watching what I ate even before we left the hospital.

Admittedly, my expectations for myself were unrealistic, but that’s a pretty common rookie mistake. Regardless, I was eating healthily, exercising and losing weight. While it was definitely going to take more than “six or eight weeks,” I was off to a good start at shedding what remained of the 55 pounds (yes, 55) that I gained while I was pregnant with Harper.

(I lost 19 within a few days of giving birth. Harper weighed 7 pounds, 11 ounces, and the rest was retained fluid, etc.)

I was “dieting” (I hate that word, because the way I eat is a way of life, not a “diet,” but I guess that’s the most efficient way to describe my now-much-more-conservative eating habits) during the holidays, but even that wasn’t a problem. I just made a few rules for myself:

–No commercial junk food (i.e., no Hershey’s Kisses, holiday Oreos, store-bought eggnog, etc.).
–If someone gave me homemade treats, I tasted each one, enjoyed them, then passed the leftovers on to someone else.
–On Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, I allowed myself one indulgence (usually dessert) at one meal.

That’s stricter than normal for me, but then again, I’ve never had to lose this much weight before. It worked, though – I managed to keep losing throughout the holidays.

Until shortly after the start of the new year, when my weight loss stopped. In the month and a half or so since bringing Harper home from the hospital, I had lost eight pounds (a little slower than my normal rate of loss, but still pretty good), but now the scale refused to budge.

Well, I thought, I must be eating more than I think I am. Time to tighten the reins.

Still stuck.

OK, let’s keep a food journal for a few days just to be sure.

No dice.

I tried a cleanse.

Still nothing.

Huh. Fine, I’ll cut out a few more carbs.

And then the number on the scale starting going UP.

I had eliminated almost all sources of carbohydrates from my diet. I was exercising as much as I could, given that I still had to take care of the baby, work, run the household and pay a little attention to my husband. And I was still GAINING weight.

I went to see my OB in early February, and by then, I was only three pounds down from the weight I was the day we brought Harper home. I took The Guy with me to testify that I was NOT one of those people who bemoans the fact that she can’t lose weight while eating fried chicken and ice cream every day. Meanwhile, exercising was getting even harder. I developed tendonitis in my left knee because, at five feet, four inches tall with a smallish frame, I’m simply not built to weigh that much.

The OB ran a number of tests, none of which indicated that anything was wrong. I was even further demoralized, not to mention hungry. I cried every single day.

The Guy and I scoured the Internet, to no avail. I even saw a psychiatrist to see if he thought my OCD medication might be to blame. He assured me that was extremely unlikely.

My plan of last resort was a diet doctor in Sugarland, TX, who is not covered by our health insurance. At that point, though, The Guy was willing to pay almost any price imaginable to put an end to the daily crying jags that inevitably began when I had to get dressed to go anywhere.

The Guy was getting ready to kiss his line of credit goodbye when suddenly, and without any obvious explanation, the weight rapidly began to come off again. In the last 11 days, I’ve lost a little over nine pounds and counting.

My personal theory (and as you may or may not know by now, I have the least scientific mind of anyone you’ll ever meet, so take this for what it’s worth) is that my body finally figured out it isn’t pregnant anymore. At almost the same time the first of those nine pounds came off, I started growing hair on my legs again, and my hair, which had, like a lot of women’s, become extremely thick and heavy while I was pregnant, started shedding the way it used to before I got pregnant.

It’s easy for me to understand why some women just give up and never really lose the baby weight. I assure you, I didn’t keep dieting because of any superior willpower; like so many things with me, it was the sheer force of pathological stubbornness.

So why tell you this besides to relay my own personal horror story? Because according to my doctor, this is just one of a hundred versions of “normal” where pregnancy and the postpartum period are concerned. Some people lose all the weight immediately without even trying; some take “nine months to put it on, nine months to take it off”; some lose weight like crazy while breastfeeding; others can’t lose weight until they stop breastfeeding. And still others turn themselves inside out trying to lose weight to no avail until one magical, random day in February, the stars align and the pounds start to come off with no apparent explanation whatsoever.

What’s even more interesting is that a person’s ability to lose weight post-pregnancy doesn’t seem to correlate with how easy it was for her to lose weight before. I’ve never had any problem losing weight as long as I was even halfway disciplined about it, but friends who’ve struggled with weight all their lives lost their baby weight without even seeming to try.

All I know is I’m happy my hard work is finally starting to pay dividends. Only nine pounds gone, and my knee is pretty much healed. I already have more energy, and more items from my old wardrobe are starting to fit again. And that feels pretty good.

I really want Harper to grow up with the positive example of a healthy mom who feels good about herself, and I’m going to do my best to give it to her.

Your walking, yoga-ing and Xbox-Kinect-ing
Kel

Very, Very Pinteresting…

Not long ago, I overheard two women discussing Pinterest and its sudden, enormous popularity.

“Everybody pins all this crap,” one said, “but nobody ever makes any of that stuff.”

(EXSQUEEZE ME?!)

“And even if they did, it would be a complete disaster! None of those projects ever turn out like they’re supposed to!” the other one laughed.

WELL!

I am so very sorry if you failed fifth-grade art class and the bulk of Pinterest projects far exceed your skill set, MA’AM, but some of us ARE ACTUALLY CAPABLE OF FOLLOWING DIRECTIONS and would have a much harder time cooking dinner, entertaining our children, thinking of birthday gifts, getting dressed in the morning and finding excuses to use glitter every day if it weren’t for Pinterest.

So there. NYUH.

(Yes, I realize it’s ridiculous to get this defensive about for-God’s-sake PINTEREST, but that’s the world I live in.)

It’s true, though. Crafting relaxes me, so I do Pinterest projects every chance I get. A good 85 percent of our current dinner menu rotation consists of recipes I’ve pinned, and everything from my friend Haley‘s last birthday gift to Harper’s baptism reception decor are complete Pinterest rip-offs.

If you’re unfamiliar with Pinterest, it’s pretty much like the bookmarks menu on your web browser. The difference is that instead of relying on an abbreviated text description to remind you why you saved this or that link, you have a photo from the website to jog your memory. Beyond that, a person’s various “boards” – the categories under which they file each “pin” – serve as virtual inspiration boards. That may not mean much to you, but for those of us accustomed to wasting copious amounts of color printer ink to print pictures to tack onto overcrowded cork boards that fall on the floor all the time, this is extremely helpful.

Below are some of my Pinterest projects and my assessment of each. In other words, I wasted my time so you don’t have to.

You’re welcome.

—-

1. Gift card in a DIY snow globe
Grade: B

I did this with a World Market gift card for Haley’s birthday last summer. It was easy enough, but I ran into two problems. First, because it wasn’t Christmas, I obviously didn’t want to use ornaments, but it was difficult to find small, birthday-appropriate objects that floated (AND that looked good in a snow globe). Second, while hot glue is not water soluble, something about the water kept the glue from adhering well to the jar’s lid. It came loose once, so I glued it back, crossed my fingers and prayed that it would hold at least until Haley opened her gift.

2. Wedding card album
Grade: A

Wedding card album.

This called for a ridiculous number of supplies, so I didn’t follow the instructions to the letter, but it still came out extremely well, and it’s an excellent way to organize cards you want to keep besides just stuffing them in a shoe box that you’ll never look in again. And then your kids will curse your name after they have to move you to a nursing home and clean out 50,000 boxes of crap from your attic. At least this way, they’ll feel kind of bad for chucking it in the trash.

P.S. Unless you want the plain silver ones they sell at Office Max, binder rings are a pain in the ass to find.

3. Frame for bathroom mirror
Grade: A+

We did this in Harper’s bathroom, and it was STUPID easy. The only (somewhat) tricky part was we had to use a Dremel to shave down an outlet cover.

4. Sock bun
Grade: A+

Sock bun 1.

Sock bun 2.

Sock bun 3.

I did this one this morning, as a matter of fact! Took less than 10 minutes. I like messy hair with a lot of texture, though – if you insist on smooth perfection, it’ll take considerably longer. While I’m still a huge fan of Beth Jones and her Carrie Bradshaw bun, this was WAY faster and much less damaging to my hair. A fantastic way to squeeze one more day out of my hair before I have to wash it.

P.S. If you’ve got the greasies, use a little spray-on dry shampoo – not only will it tame the oil slick, it makes your hair a bit sticky, so it’ll hold better!

P.P.S. Nothing against footwear as headwear, but skip the sock and get yourself one of these.

5. Emergency Preparedness Kit
Grade: A+

I don’t know any Mormons, but if I did, I’m sure we’d get along famously. (Well, you know, except for that whole “devout Catholic” thing.) If you’ve ever had the displeasure of listening to Glenn Beck for more than three minutes, as I do each time I eat dinner at my parents’ house, then you know that emergency preparedness is a big part of Mormon culture. They believe that not only should you be prepared to sustain your own family, you should have enough to help your neighbor as well. I LOVE that! Especially given that I’m pretty obsessed with preparing for the zombie apocalypse and assessing my home in terms of its defensibility against velociraptors.

And no, I’m not a firearms-stockpiler who’s obsessed with The End Times (see above re: Catholic). But having evacuated New Orleans just in the nick of time before Hurricane Katrina hit, I am intimately familiar with what happens when one is ill-prepared for a disaster (see prior post re: anti-anxiety medication and enough money spent on therapy to send Harper to college four times in a row).

As it turns out, I was a little better prepared than I thought I was. Last Saturday, I set about assembling my kit, and here is just the stuff I already had on hand:

Emergency preparedness kit 1.

The idea is not to go and buy everything all at once (which would not only cost a fortune, it would also make you look like a paranoid lunatic to anyone observing you loading up your grocery cart), but to buy a little week by week. So our kit, while off to a good start, is far from finished. Here’s what we bought during Week 1:

Emergency preparedness kit 2.

If you promise to be nice to me and not make fun of my emergency preparedness kit, then when World War Z breaks out, I might give you some bottled water to stew your rat for dinner.

—-

I know some people say the whole Pinterest thing is way too June Cleaver and exists solely to make people feel inadequate, but they can think whatever they want.

Ryan and I understand.

Your crafty
Kel

The Breath of Life

Whenever people learn that I pledged a sorority in college, they have one of two reactions:

1. No f^&$!%g way.

2. Well, DUH.

(It seems there is never any middle ground with me.)

For some reason, I tend to hear No. 1 slightly more often than No. 2. “You don’t seem like the sorority type,” they say. And in some ways, I guess, that’s true. After all, one can’t easily imagine Elle Woods trolling the comic book shop, listening to Stabbing Westward (shut up) or getting a tattoo.

But anybody who’s ever been to one of my parties, seen me in my Sunday best or sat next to me at a Junior League meeting can’t imagine a horde of zombie velociraptors keeping me away from Bid Day.

Looking back on it, it was probably that dichotomy that drew me to Delta Gamma.

I could easily write a book about my sorority experience – and one day, I just might – so there’s no way I could describe it here, but suffice it to say that while it was typical in some aspects, it was pretty unique (from what I understand, anyway) in a lot of others. For one thing, not all the girls fit the sorority mold. Some did, of course, and outwardly, at least, I was one of them, but we also had musicians and artists and gamers and hippies who refused to shave their legs.

(OK, so there was just the one hippie, but still. One’s all you need, right?)

People, usually people who never belonged to a sorority or fraternity (isn’t that always the way?), accuse “Greeks” of buying their friends, and frankly, there is a little truth to that. I mean, yeah, I wanted to make lifelong friends and belong to something bigger than myself and network and blah blah blah blah blah, but having people to hang out with at this big scary urban campus where I knew a grand total of, like, two people was a big part of the equation as well.

But there’s an essential truth of Greek life that cannot be ignored:

If you’re a total wing nut, it doesn’t matter if your daddy bought the chapter its very own party bus, you’re still not gonna have any friends.

Fortunately, we never really had that problem during my time in DG. Let’s be honest, when you put 100 women together in close quarters, some people are going to get along better than others. But – and I know nobody will believe me when I say this – while we weren’t all BFFs or anything, we actually, you know, liked each other. It was the first time I had ever been part of a large group of females where there wasn’t all this jealousy and backbiting and manipulation. It was, in short, freakin’ AWESOME, and if there was some way that I could be married to The Guy and have Harper but still walk across campus every day at lunchtime to eat Arby’s and watch Days of Our Lives in the suite with my sisters, I would do it in a hot minute.

Thirteen days ago, I lost one of my beloved sisters, Brandi Thorpe. Not Dr. Brandi, but her little sister in Delta Gamma, actually. Thorpe, as we always called her, was just 33, and she lost a lifelong battle with cystic fibrosis.

(It looked for a little while like she might leave us the day before, on February 14, and I had to smile, knowing that would be the biggest double middle finger in the history of the world to Valentine’s Day, a “holiday” of which neither I nor Thorpe, as perpetual single gals, were ever very fond.)

Despite work schedules and deadlines and Junior League projects and infant daughters who had just started sleeping through the night, there was never any question that the Powells Three would make tracks for Birmingham immediately. The Guy didn’t say a word, never once challenged the wisdom of driving 20 hours in four days with a three-month-old baby, but I know my husband, and I know that inwardly, he was a little perplexed: All this? For a sorority sister? Really?

Of course I’d told him about the closeness among the DGs, but I don’t think he really believed it – hell, even I had started to think, on some level, that I had mythologized the whole thing in my mind – until we got to the funeral home Friday night and he saw. We saw, really. How it was as if literally no time had passed, as if we’d all hung out in the suite yesterday, how we fell into each other’s arms and hugged and cried and comforted one another like, well, sisters. I overheard The Guy remark to another “DG Husband” that he couldn’t even remember all his fraternity brothers’ names; he was amazed that after 15 years, we could still be this close.

The next day was Thorpe’s funeral, and I don’t really want to talk about that yet except to say it was perfect and beautiful and moving, and I’m pretty sure it was everything Thorpe would’ve wanted it to be. Including rainy. With her great love for musicals, Thorpe definitely had an appreciation for the dramatic.

Her family had a special section for us in the front, and the 20 or so of us who were present took part in the Cream Rose Ceremony, a ritual that Delta Gammas perform when a sister passes away. We all more or less held it together until the bag piper began to play, and as Mere’s fiance, Andrew, said, “If you can listen to a bag piper play at a funeral without tearing up a little, even if you don’t know the person, you have no soul.”

(I have to brag on Harper a bit: Because it was raining, the bag piper played indoors and loudly. The minute he started blowing, I turned to my sister Katrina and said, in between sobs, “It’s only a matter of time until Harper starts screaming.” But she never did! The Guy said she looked startled, then broke out in an enormous grin. As Katrina said, “She’s just like her momma. She knows when to act up and when to be a lady.”)

At the end of the weekend, we all said that despite the terrible reason, we were glad it brought us all back together again. Before Thorpe’s departure, we had started planning a chapter reunion for this summer, and now the Birmingham girls have a standing monthly dinner date (with a quarterly Saturday thrown in for those of us from out of town). Thorpe would’ve hated missing all the fun, but I know she’d be happy that these renewed friendships are part of her legacy.

Through various circumstances, some of my pre- and post-college pals are Facebook friends with some of my sorority sisters, and after Thorpe’s passing, several of them remarked that they wish they’d known her. I could write the rest of the day and not even put a dent in everything there is to tell you about Thorpe, but here are just a handful of things that she was:

Me and Thorpe.

–She was a daughter, granddaughter, niece, cousin, sister and friend.

–She had a degree in English, but she worked as a banker, a career she began while we were still in college. She’d been off work for a while because of her hospitalizations, but she held her job until the day she died.

–She had an awesome condo in downtown Birmingham, where she lived with her three cats, Issy, Beau and Hallow.

–She liked to get her party on every once in a while, but she was nevertheless one of the most responsible people I have ever met.

Eric.

–She loved Halloween as much or more than I do.

Malloween.

–She played her illness pretty close to the vest most of the time, but she was a tireless advocate for her fellow CF patients.

–The night before the Golden Anchor Ball (yes), we dyed her hair in her hospital room. Did a pretty good job, too. (See the third photo down for proof.)

Golden Anchor Ball.

–Girlfriend loved her some hair dye.

Pink.

–She introduced me to the deliciousness that is cream cheese and Keebler Club Crackers.

–She was a stellar example of doing all you can do but not sweating it when you’re doing all you can and you can’t do any more. Which is the chief reason I haven’t abandoned this blog in a fit of misguided penance and remorse.

–There was nothing she liked more than talking about high school and college. We used to give her a bit of a hard time about that, but the other night, it hit me: The past was the one thing Thorpe could be sure of. Because of her health, the future was even more uncertain for her than it is for most people, and even the present was sometimes a little shaky. So she focused on her good memories.

–She was the sweetest, smartest, cutest, feistiest little sprite, and I am so grateful for the privilege of having known her.

Goodbye.

I will always love her very, very much.

Delta Gamma’s motto is “Do Good” (get it?), and that’s exactly what we’re going to do here today.

For every comment on this post, The Guy and I will donate $1 of our own moola to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

We’re also trying to find a business or organization to match our donation, so if you know of anyone who might be willing, please email me.

In your comment, tell me about something that helps you breathe a little easier. Or a story about someone you miss. Or your best Halloween costume of all time. Or your favorite snack involving a Keebler product. You get the idea.

Source: anchorssaweigh.tumblr.com

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