Five Things Friday

• It's been one of those weeks, hasn't it?  Everywhere you turn, terrible, terrible things are happening, and then, when you're still reeling from the news, people start saying the most moronic, the most utterly hateful things and then have the gall to call it capital-T Truth, because apparently you get to do that when you're a Christian blogger and there is no end to your finger-pointing and your ugly, disturbing pride.  I see this man's blog shared and liked by well-meaning Christian acquaintances all over social media, and even though I know it's going to make me so angry stars bust across my vision, I do it.  I click through and I read.  Then I go on and on and on about it to Derek who eventually asks, "Why were you reading this guy's blog again?" and I have to say "I DON'T KNOW."  

I ended up spending waaaay too much mental energy on the whole thing, but thankfully I had the two Ann's to pull me out of the fury twister I was riding; both wrote beautiful pieces on mental illness and Christ and suicide and compassion.  (Actually it's Anne and Ann- I think I've made it clear how important spelling is to me.)  I encourage you to click on their correctly spelled names and read what they had to say.

• I have seen one, I repeat, ONE, Japanese beetle this year.  According to the Iowa Gardener, this is because of our last brutally cold winter; it killed most of the larvae happily sleeping in our soil (now millions of tiny corpses, MUAHAHAHA), and the large amounts of rain we got in the spring drowned out the rest.  Hal-lay-loo-yer and pass the basil that hasn't been eaten alive by beetles this year.

• This was our last full week of summer vacation.  School begins next Wednesday.  Adelaide is mostly ready.  Atticus is pensive.  I am saying what I say every summer:  "Hmm.  Homeschooling is suddenly very, very attractive."  Caedmon still believes he will soon be attending preschool, because he's three and when he says, "I am Batman," in his mind he is Batman, so why shouldn't "Adelaide's going to third grade, Atticus is going to Kindergarten, and I'm going to preschool!" likewise work?  Never mind that I've spent the last four months telling him he has a whole 'nother year before preschool- I'm just the Mother, what do I know?

• This week has been a good running week.  Not too hot, not too humid, and my various injuries have finally shut themselves up enough for me to run, run, run. 

I appreciate this all the more because this summer was the summer that I realized I'm not 21 anymore, and when my old lower back injury flares or my shin splints make themselves known I don't just get to elevate a foot or apply a heating pad for an evening; nooo, I have to rest and ice and coddle these high maintenance body parts for days on end before they'll give me so much as a couple miles.  Let's not forget about the asthma attacks, either, one that started to hit me when I was four miles from home and turned legitimately scary- and honestly, I don't scare easy when it comes to these two divas that I call lungs- I imagine the home that they have made in my rib cage to be some sort of Liberace-meets- the creator of the Bedazzler monstrosity, and they have one whole wall with different velvet knotted ropes hanging, each with each own placard:  "the gut," "the throat," "the skin," and on and on, and when they pull on each they make its subsequent organ break out in hives or swell or do a peristaltic boogie and Dance, Monkey, Dance.  I realize that it's my immune system that's really the problem, here; it's just that I've long thought of my lungs as my own personal mental whipping boy.  They're not to be trusted, and I'm sure they feel the same way about me.
I do try to keep in mind that even when All The Parts are hurting All at The Same Time, I still don't feel as bad as I did in my third trimester of my pregnancy with Caedmon, when my body said, "You want another pregnancy?  Okay, lady, I'm going to pregnancy symptom you TO DEATH."  This is why I laughed so hard when I first saw this on Pinterest a couple weeks ago:

I feel like that cat's face is the mental face I'm making half my waking hours.  Somehow Derek didn't find this photo as funny as I did (I roar every time I see it)- but then, he's never been pregnant.

• I couldn't think of a fifth thing in the three minutes I have to finish this post, so I called upon Adelaide in my hour of need, and here's what she's happy about right this second:

"Back To School Night is only three days from today, and school is only five days from today."  It's almost like she wants to leave me.  

Samson and Rapunzel

You know how much fun it is to be around a little kid on Christmas Eve?  They're all excited and anxious and a little bit crazy just waiting for the next day to arrive.  Just being near them is enough to get you hyped up (and possibly drive you a little bit insane).

That's kind of how I felt the previous weekend.  I was down visiting my sisters, both of whom are expecting their first babies.  I got to experience a vicarious thrill just being surrounded by so much eager anticipation.

At this point, my middle sister is probably edging the younger one out on eagerness, simply because she's due any day now, so she's got the whole can't-wait-to-meet-my-baby thing going on combined with a fair amount of I'm-so-done-being-pregnant.

I'm super excited to see this baby, too, for many reasons; the foremost of which is to find out just how hairy it is.

Let me explain.

My sister and her husband are both very hairy- not in a sideshow freak/ front page of the National Enquirer kind of way- more like a shampoo commercial/ no amount of product will ever make mere mortals' hair look like that.  As a result, I am fully expecting their baby girl to exit the womb with long, shiny, chestnut-colored hair.  She'll have to get her first haircut at one month, and her hairdresser will call it The Mane- the same title that has been bestowed upon my sister's hair.

Added to this is the fact that over the weekend, my brother-in-law mentioned their most recent ultrasound, and that the technician was amazed at the amount of hair they could see.  I said something like, "What, could you see her hair floating gently in the amniotic fluid?"  I was joking.

He said, "Yes, you could."  He was not joking.

I'm thinking about starting a pool amongst family members where you not only guess the weight and length of the baby, but where you also must give an estimate on the length of hair- in inches, not centimeters.

I'll go first:  8 lbs, 5 oz, 20 inches long, hair length... let's go with right around 4 inches.

Believe it or not, that's a conservative guess.