*tap* *tap* *tap* is this thing on? *tap* *tap*

Hello? I can't tell if I even know how to use this thing anymore, this blog o' mine. It's been so long.

I've been thinking about writing for a long long time. Does that count? No? Oh right.

Well, here goes. Remember that post I wrote around New Year's? The one where I was all like "hey, I kept the band together!" Yeah, that was so 2010. I'm all moving forward into 2011.

I'd love to make this space my own again. I need to do that, for my sanity. I've been drifting through my own life for the last two years months, holding my breath. I want to let it out again, shake the cobwebs from my head and get my tippity tappity fingers going again.

I am tentatively trying my arch-enemy as well. You read that right. I'm actually reading and occasionally posting on facebook. I still hate it, but that Zuckerberg kid has made any other form of connectivity nearly obsolete. So facebook it is. It's a great tool, though, if you're uncertain about whether someone in your life is a true friend or not. Highly recommend it for that.

It's kind of fun, actually. To write! To read! To breathe! Hey, did you know two spaces at the end of sentences is totally dead? The new rule is one space. I'll give it a shot and let you know how it goes. My guess is not well, considering the fact that my high school typing classes left me with so much anxiety I dreamt about typing for four straight years.

And I'm going to try to do this without censorship. From myself or from others. Which means my content may be fairly bland for a while. Wait, that's censoring! Crap this is hard.

Remember me? Me neither. But I hope to again soon.

- H

Career aspirations

Let's just pretend I haven't been gone for months, and carry on, k?

This morning in the car, after listening to John Tesh tell a story about a child who became a musician:

Mom: Cooper, do you want to be a musician when you grow up?
Cooper: NO.
Mom: What do you want to be?
Cooper: Mom, I just want to be a regular worker person.
Mom: Oh, ok.
Cooper: And then, I can do a really bad job and get fired so I can get another job.

Interesting what he's learning about career aspirations in this household?

- H

ready for a chuckle?

If you're like me, you cringe and quickly click away when you run into one of those "I'm a regular girl with dreams of being a stylist so I take daily pics of what I'm wearing" blogs out there. There are a million of them.

I hope this didn't hurt anyone's feelings. Sometimes I like to share things like my favorite sandals or an awesome dress I found at Target, too. But the stylist-o-the-day thing is just not my gig.

Which is why I laughed deep belly laughs when I stumbled across The Man Repeller. Seriously, you must not only scroll through her posts as she takes normal clothes and turns them into hideous runway fashion that men would hate, but you must also read each and every one of her brilliant and snarky words.

Enjoy.

- H

This is going to hurt you more than it hurts me.

Cooper had his surgery today. Surgery on the whole doesn't freak me out anymore, after spending a number of years working in anesthesiology. I understand the process, I know the drugs they're giving him and how he's going to feel (or not feel). I'm not scared about the actual process.

Still. It's my little boy, and he's little. And now he's missing his tonsils and adenoids and has two shiny new ear tubes to help him hear again. And he's hurting.

Not in pain, per se. No, for some reason he is in no pain, but he can't swallow. I literally saw him hold a sipful of water in his mouth for ten minutes so he wouldn't have to swallow it.


I am confident the new tubes will help him hear again. In fact, he's been holding his hands over his ears pretty regularly today, which tells me the real world is a whole lot louder than he was used to.

I'm sure he'll improve as the week moves on. I just wish there was more I could do for him than popsicles and Tylenol.

- H

I've survived but the downside is I created a monster.

Three. straight. weeks. It is not even March yet and I've been away for three separate weeklong meetings. The good news is the meeting season is OVER. The bad news is I can't feel my fingertips and I have a strange pain in my lungs. I swear I caught some sort of African flu at the Opryland hotel last week. It was under water six months ago, and my room was on the ground level. Can you say mold?

Never fear, I will survive as we all do, right?

On one of the sixteen flights home, I sat next to a techno geek. I wouldn't have called him that myself, he used that phrase to describe himself. So I'm not being catty, I'm merely quoting.

Anyway, he was showing me how to work my new iPhone (thank you, company, for making me turn in my beloved Blackberry and learn this dagnabbit* contraption) and some fun apps to put on it. I sheepishly pulled out my iPad, a Christmas gift from my husband, and confessed I've done nothing with it other than surf the net.

So when I got home last night, and the dust had settled, I set about loading up that iPad with games for the kids. It is now 5:15 p.m. Less than 24 hours later, and one of my sons will cry giant crocodile tears if he can't play his "games."

I have created a monster.

Sadly, this monster does not yet know how to fold laundry. Apparently his father doesn't, either, as this is the scene I returned home to. I had washed and dried all of this loveliness before leaving.


That's ok! I love folding laundry! Doesn't bother me a bit! I have a whole second weekend day I can devote to it.

- H

*I was in Nashville. What do you expect?