a.rose

The other day Hallie suddenly said to me, "Mommy, I don't think we should potty train Hanna until GramB is here with us." Well, I'm always up for suggestions about potty training, I just don't usually get them from my four year old.  But, like I said, I keep an open mind, so I asked her why she thought it was so important to wait for GramB to be here. "Well..." she slowly began, "I think it is just because if GramB is here when Hanna has to just sit on the potty and wait for something to come out and it might take a long time and GramB just has that phone that has videos and pictures and we can play games.  And mommy, your phone just really doesn't do that." Understanding slowly dawned on me.  "Oh..." I said, not sure how to respond. "Because GramB just has that phone and it will help Hanna and me to have something to do.  So we should just wait until GramB is here.  It will be so better that way." Last night ...

Today in the parking lot I saw a green Chevrolet.  Not only that, but it was a Cavalier.  I remembered seeing Devin drive up in a green Cavalier to take me on our first date.  I remember the blue shirt he was wearing, and the sunglasses he was wearing.  I remember there was absolutely nothing special or exciting about that moment, except that he was him and I was me and we were going to be together, eating something somewhere. I remembered when I needed to drive to my elementary school where I would student teach the following semester but I didn't have a car and didn't know how I was going to get there - the school was 15 miles outside of the town where I lived.  Devin offered to let me drive his car to it.  I remember waking up that morning, full of excitement and nervousness, feeling so grown up and so young at the same time.  I walked out of my home with all those anxious excitement butterflies jittering around in my stomach and looked up and ...

Dear Sir - I hope your flight to China wasn't too awful.  I am sorry for your four hour delay in Lincoln, and for your hour delay in Chicago - all of which resulted in you missing your flight and spending the night in Chicago.  It is crazy that they wanted you to fly from Lincoln to Chicago to Denver to San Francisco and THEN finally to your actual destination. Who plans these things? We are doing well around here.  We had a fire in the backyard and roasted hot dogs for dinner, and then of course we roasted marshmallows.  Hallie and Hanna insisted on calling their root beer "juice".  I think it is clear we don't drink very much of either soda, or juice. The weather has been so nice, and my mom is so willing to let me take advantage of her that I have been going running the past few days.  I think to myself, "I wonder if he runs on this same road?"  And I imagine you there, running with me.  The things we would see and point out to each oth...

When my cousin Andrew and his family came to visit I was not expecting us to hit a sudden thirty degree drop in temperature.  The cloudy skies plunged us straight into the shivery sixty? seventy somethings.  We went outside anyway because glory be, I thought it felt so good. Hanna and Olivia pulled their chairs all the way to the far side of the yard and planted them right by the fence, looking in to the neighbor's yard. I ask you, what can be of such interest to two 2 year old people?   Please, take a moment to admire our sad, sad grass while you're thinking.   And then, of course, the answer is the neighbor's new dog.  Hi Dog!   Also fun is painting.  Especially when it involves no paints, just water.  That's my favorite.

There was a time that I prided myself on my chocolate chip cookies. Then we moved to Nebraska, and everything fell apart.  I like to blame it on the oven, but perhaps I lost my cookie baking mojo, or perhaps I was being punished for my prideful proud feelings every time I baked cookies. Whatever the case, whatever the cause, I could no longer bake delicious looking cookies.  See, they still tasted delicious.  They just looked... awful.  I got so frustrated that I stopped baking cookies.  When I wanted a cookie, I'd either talk myself into brownies, or I would bake them in a baking dish, like what are they called?  You know... the word is eluding me right now.  Well, that's really neither here nor there. It all came to a climax on the fourth of July.  I had this idea that was so novel and so exciting and you've probably all seen it a million times - I was going to bake cookies with red and blue m&m's and flakes of white chocolate.  ...

Maybe it was the Great Depression, maybe it was her own natural sense of resourcefulness, or maybe it was some other possibility that I have never considered.  I don't know.  What I do know is that my Grandmother was loathe to throw away something that might have a use at some other time, and she passed that sentiment on to my mother.  Completely unbeknownst to me, and without my permission, my mother passed it on to me.  This is somewhat ironic as I can hear myself saying to my mother every time I go home to visit, "But why don't you just get rid of it?  But, why are you keeping this?" And now, in my own home, when I find myself storing some tiny scrap of fabric I hear it echoing through my mind, "Why are you keeping this? What on earth could you make with such a tiny piece of fabric?" I'll have you know those scraps of fabric have made a pair of overalls (for Baby Doll - we call her Rotha around here), and a dress (for Rotha), and a shirt (for Rot...

Well, thanks for playing Kristen and Laura Lee!  I will be giving you/ putting your candy in the mail soon! Here are the correct answers for anyone (else?) who cares. The last Olympic Gold medals awarded that were made entirely out of gold were awarded in 1912. (I had written 1915, making this one FALSE.) I can see now that that was a hard one.  I should have made it much more obvious whether or not it was true.  Sorry, most of my quiz writing is from when I was teaching BIO 205 and 206, and back then I was trying to trick the students.  Badminton, table tennis, and handball are the only sports in which the U.S. has never won a medal. (TRUE) At the London games, the medals will be the largest and the heaviest in Olympic history. (TRUE) The United States won 112 medals in the Beijing Olympics.  (FALSE, again, shameful trickery. I should have made it much more obvious. The correct answer is 110.) At the Olympics in Paris in 1900, no medals were awa...

This morning I had energy.  As a totally foreign concept, this energy thing felt pretty good in my body.  A while ago we got a jogging stroller from a friend who is moving.  It's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.  I got all sneaker-ed up, and Hallie got her running stuff on as well, and I strapped Hanna and Heather down tight.  We were off! The front tire was completely flat.  Undaunted, I transitioned to the double walking stroller.  We could still go out on a walk, right? Right.  Off we go!  Hallie shot off, running ahead of me.  The sun is hot, and the moon is still hanging around too.  Hallie and Hanna yell at it to go to bed, silly moon! We walked to the park down the street.  I sat down on the bench with Heather and watch Hallie and Hanna run and jump and play.  In the distance I thought I heard the faint meowing of a cat.  I looked around, but didn't see anything. Then, out of nowhere, t...