Just Heather

I love Lorelai’s “accent” even though I occasionally have trouble figuring out what she means. She speaks very well for her age, but sometimes what she says doesn’t come across because you would never expect a 2-year-old to know that word. Today’s lunch is a perfect example.

She’s eating already because she brought a can of veggie soup to me at 10 and asked for soup. I was saying no (repeatedly), until she said please. We’ve been working on that word so it resulted in lunch at 10:30 in the morning. I thought she wanted to watch the new Chinese show on Nick Jr. called Kai-Lan while she ate because while I was getting her soup ready she kept shouting “Tie-yan! Tie-yan!” Our kids have all had a strange T pronunciation for the K sounds so it sounded just like Kai-Lan to me.

Then I opened the fridge to grab a drink and she pulled out the salad dressing. The Italian salad dressing. She is now having soup and salad and thrilled to no end.

My girls are allowed to choose their own outfits each day so long as they are weather appropriate. I have threatened to lay out Stacia’s clothes recently since she keeps leaving the house in short sleeves. Why do I have to remind her that it is winter when there is snow on the ground?

Last week, Brenia insisted her pink shoes matched the red dress she had chosen because pink is made from red. How do you argue with that?

Today she is wearing a fancy purple dress with gold & pink polka dots. The tights she has paired it with are blue with red, green & yellow polka dots. Because polka dots match polka dots.

There’s just no competing with that logic.

That is how you start a phone call to report an accident in which no one is injured. You do not sob into the phone telling the girls’ mother that you were in an accident and you’re so, so sorry.

On Saturday night, my sister took my 2 oldest girls to see the Hannah Montana movie in a city an hour away from my hometown where we were staying. I receive the above mentioned phone call around 8pm. I was saying goodbye to my brother and his wife after dinner, buckling my youngest into her carseat when she called. My brother says my knees buckled and I nearly went down. I jumped in the car and raced off, apparently leaving my sister-in-law in the dust as she tried to jump in my car to go with me.

My brother called and told me to take the little one to my parents house, which I finally agreed to do against my better judgment. I just wanted to get there, 5 minutes ago. I dropped her off and raced off again, in tears.

As I approached the scene and realized it had traffic stopped on the wrong side of the highway, I started to shake. I went around the traffic and stopped in front of the officers. When I saw the car on its side, I threw up in my mouth. The sheriff helped me out of the car (at which point my knees buckled again), all the while assuring me that the girls were fine and it looked much worse than it was.

The girls were, in fact, unharmed but I’m pretty sure it looked about as bad as it was. My sis fell asleep at the wheel and went off the road. The car hit the median, flipped end over end, landed on its roof and slid a block down the highway in the wrong direction with my babies hanging upside down inside!

Their injuries include a matching scratch on their neck from the seatbelt, a bruise on Stacia’s arm where she landed after she unbuckled, and a bruise on Brenia’s knee from tripping on the highway after she climbed out of the car. My sister has a nasty bruise on her hip from the seatbelt and a bump on the head from a flying object in her passenger seat.

I’m sure there is some sort of irony in the seatbelt Miley neglected to wear in her movie saving the lives of the girls who were on their way home from watching it. It’s just lost on me right now.

Spencer and I have been together for almost 12 years, married for 10.5. It’s been a roller coaster—many ups & downs, but we just hold on tight and enjoy the ride. The last few months have been a long series of lows. It’s starting to wear on both of us. We’re figuring it out, and we have a plan now, but it was really touch and go for awhile. Christmas and New Year both sucked so we had it our head that we would start over on the Chinese New Year.

That didn’t go so well either. We’re running out of do-overs. It’s time to just move on, but I’m the type of person who needs the celebration of each passing moment. I need to mark it somehow. Sometimes that comes in the form of a party, sometimes I commemorate an event or year in a scrapbook; this time around I’m using a playlist.

Music is definitely more his thing than mine. He’s all about he music—from his iPod to his guitar to his latest video game. I, on the other hand, am all about the lyrics. I love words. It’s why I am a voracious reader. It’s why I journal in all my scrapbooks to tell my children our stories. It’s why sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will hurt me more.

In honor of Valentine’s Day, I have put together a list of songs that mean a lot to me in respect to our marriage. Maybe they tell our story, maybe they remind me of him, maybe they came out during a time they seemed relevant but mostly they say musically what I can’t seem to get across. I’m sure he’ll find it incredibly cheesy and hate most of the songs on the list, but marriage is all about compromise.

  1. Just What I Needed by The Cars
  2. Head Over Feet by Alanis Morrissette
  3. This Kiss by Faith Hill
  4. Accidentally in Love by Counting Crows
  5. Morning Song by Jewel
  6. You Gotta Be by Des’Ree
  7. Stick Shifts and Safety Belts by Cake
  8. Luna by The Smashing Pumpkins
  9. Green Buckets by Clutch
  10. Still the One by Shania Twain
  11. One Week by Barenaked Ladies
  12. Clumsy by Fergie
  13. Bubbly by Colbie Caillat


I am sick. I have been sick for almost a week. I am sick enough to actually cancel my Girl Scout troop meeting today. I have only done this once before, for a car accident. I wasn’t going to make it back on time so I canceled the meeting only to find out that the school canceled all after-school activities later that day due to weather.

I had the same luck today! After making arrangements all morning to reschedule, I just found out that the school canceled today’s activities due to the weather. I could have let them make all my phone calls while I took a nap!

This school system is funny. It takes a lot of bad weather to delay school, and practically requires a blizzard to cancel altogether. However, they will cancel after school activities at the drop of a hat. I really should have known this would happen. After all, there is wet stuff on the ground. Heaven knows no one can drive when that happens.

We passed around a fantastically fun stomach bug this week. I spent Wednesday cleaning up vomit and Thursday laying on the couch myself so I’m about 5 days behind now! Tonight I am taking one of my Girl Scout troops ice skating. Sunday I’m ice skating with my Daisy troop. By Monday I’ll be one giant bruise. It should be fun anyway, but not so helpful in getting caught up.

I started this post with the intention of blogging out my to-do list to give me some accountability. However, I’ve come a long way recently in organizing, cleaning and maintaining a few areas of my life. It just might kill my motivation to look at a long list of things I still haven’t done. Instead, I’m going to focus on a Ta-Da list of things I have actually completed already this year!

  • cleaned an entire shoebox of overdue paperwork
  • sorted coupons and recycled a box full of expired inserts
  • submitted 2 months worth of segment ideas to my producers
  • completed & filed 2007 taxes
  • reorganized hundreds of srapbooking sticker, papers and die cuts
  • followed a menu plan, stocked emergency meals and avoided the drive-thru (okay, so this was for January only and I didn’t completely avoid the drive-thru, but we cut way back and I’m starting over this weekend!)