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Apparently I accept selective injustice
So last week I get a phone call from my brother Nick. Since I never know what to expect from those calls, I almost always answer them.
Me: Hello?
Nick: JENN! MOM GOT THE BOYS CELL PHONES. IT’S SO NOT FAIR.
He then launched into a minor tirade about the injustice of it all—the boys are only 15 and he begged for one but didn’t get it until he was 16 and their phones are nice and new and his is old and broken, etc., etc., etc. He was really funny about it.
It doesn’t bother me at all that Matt and Cole got phones at 15. However, I can totally relate to him—not about phones but about curfews. I still get moderately ruffled when I think that Nick was allowed to stay out until midnight starting his 9th grade year and I wasn’t allowed to stay out until midnight until after I turned 18. That’s almost FOUR YEARS of leaving parties before the movie was over, leaving games unfinished, and missing out on inside jokes at school the next week. I so know that feeling of injustice—it just didn’t apply in this case.
It turns out I really, really like my brothers having cell phones. I rarely get to talk to them at all—when I call, I’ll get one word answers to any of my questions, if I’m lucky. But now that they have unlimited texts, we’ll send stuff back and forth, and I’ll actually get to talk with them. (Well, with Cole at least. Matt still sends back one-word responses. But I’ll take what I can get.)
Telling the Parents
Okay, seriously, how do you tell someone you’re pregnant? Especially when the people you’re telling are your parents and they’ve been impatiently awaiting this kind of news since the wedding day??
Since we’d found out I was pregnant about as early as is scientifically possible, we were in a bit of a conundrum—tell or not tell. Since I am nothing if not rational, it was clear that if we told anyone about the pregnancy before, say, the delivery room, the pregnancy would be jinxed and I would miscarry and probably never, ever have any babies. However, sitting on a secret THIS BIG didn’t feel right either—especially when the people involved potentially possessed knowledge that could prove crucial to surviving my pregnancy.
What to do, what to do?
Ryan, possessor of the logic in our relationship (especially in situations like these), convinced me that we should go ahead with our plan—whenever we’d see them next, we’d simply give them the Grandparent Book and then let the conversation go where it went.
So, two days later, we went to my parents’ house for my dad’s birthday. At this point, I was still pretty convinced that our plan might somehow rip a hole in the space-time continuum, but Ryan insisted that we at least hide the book in the backseat of the car, and I could choose whether we’d bring it in the house or not—he’s even run outside and get it if I changed my mind after we’d arrived.
So we went in the house and were immediately enveloped in the normal family conversation—we were brought in to admire mom’s new bed set, help with the dinner she cooked for dad’s birthday, and sometime during dinner I decided I definitely wanted my parents to know. So Ryan snuck out to the car and slipped the book behind my pillow on the couch—without anyone noticing (he’s very sneaky). After we opened cards, mom talked about having grandkids and I was like, “Speaking of grandkids…”
It was a pretty sweet moment.
Pay it forward
So Christmas has gone, the tree is down, and thoughts of springtime are on everyone’s minds (admit it…). But let me take you back a minute to tell you my favorite Christmas story of this year (which actually happened the day before Thanksgiving).
Here’s the backstory: my big idea for Ryan’s Christmas present this year came out a little camping trip to Harry Potter’s Pond. Ryan got a fishing license and borrowed one of my dad’s fishing poles. He was so excited to get to the lake. However, within 15 minutes of getting to the lake, Ryan had already had to cut and restring the line 5 times. My dad has a good fishing pole and a bad fishing pole—clearly we had chosen poorly. Ryan was so disappointed. Luckily, Brady lent Ryan a pole, which resulted in pure happiness.
Clearly, something that could make him this happy was a surefire Christmas gift. So the day before Thanksgiving, I was able to get off work at 3:00, and since Ryan wasn’t due home for another three hours, it was the ideal shopping time. So I headed to Sports Authority, where I wasn’t too impressed, then headed over to Sportsman’s Warehouse. I don’t think I’d ever been there before, but all the people I talked to recommended it, and I counted several mullets upon entering, so I was pretty sure that place was for real. I walked to the fishing section, got help right away, and I was able to get everything under budget.
Here’s where the story starts to be remarkable. When time came to pay…no purse. While it’s never fun to lose a purse, I’ve misplaced things often enough that I didn’t really freak out. I looked all over the store, my car, and the parking lot…nothing. So I took my purchase up to the customer service desk, explained the situation, and gave them my phone number in case anything turned up while I went back to search Sports Authority and my house.
About five minutes after leaving the store, I get a phone call from the store manager—someone had overheard me in line and had paid for my entire purchase, just so I would have one less thing to worry about while I was searching for my wallet. They didn’t leave a name, and I certainly wasn’t aware of who they were. But I cried all the way home (where I found my purse) and all the way back to the store where the store manager handed me my things and gave me a hug before I left. I really couldn’t believe the generosity of this anonymous person—this was Ryan’s big Christmas present and I just couldn’t imagine spending that much on a random act of kindness. The gift of the Christmas spirit was just as valuable to me—especially in light of my grandma’s death the next day. We tried to pay it forward throughout the season, and hopefully we did well enough, but I don’t feel like there was anything I could have done to equal the magnitude of what I was given. This kindness touched my heart and I am still so grateful for this person’s generosity.
So at this point, that fishing pole is one of my favorite things we own. It’s among the many reasons I am impatiently waiting for summer—I can’t wait to get out there and use it.
Maybe Plus
So…8:00 yesterday morning, I decided to take a pregnancy test, mostly on a whim. As a Christmas present, Ryan and I had given ourselves a month-long break from ovulation cycles and fertility windows. Therefore, I had little-to-no expectation that anything would happen.
And, at first, it didn’t. The strong negative line showed up, as expected. a But then, maybe 30 seconds later, a faint intersecting line started to form.
What the what?!
So what’s my reaction? Go get Ryan and have him verify that I’m not crazy. In hindsight, there are clearly a million more romantic, adorable ways to tell him we’re expecting. Instead, I walked out of the bathroom, wordlessly grabbed both his hands, pulled him out of his chair, then pushed him into the bathroom.
“Ryan, is that a plus? Because it looks like a plus. Is it a plus? Or am I crazy?”
And it was. In just the few seconds it had taken me to get him, the plus had become much, much more clear.
“I think it could be a plus!”
“So…what does that mean?”
“I think it means that we have a maybe baby.”
We both sat there, staring at that tiny pink plus. I don’t think either of us quite believed it. However, the shock soon gave way to excitement and Ryan gave me one of the greatest hugs ever. My tummy created an elaborate backflip routine in honor of the celebration.
I oscillated between shock and giddiness throughout the rest of the day. We talked about what if it is, what if it isn’t. When Ryan took a nap, I read three chapters in the book to figure out what was supposed to be happening. Ryan woke up and we talked about it through football, dinner, games, and cleaning. Right before bedtime, I couldn’t wait any longer, and so I took another test.
It was positive. As was the third test the next morning and the fourth the morning after that. I probably would have continued to take tests, but we’d run out.
Honestly, it doesn’t quite feel real that this thing is seriously happening!!! At the moment, I just feel an overwhelming urge to make sure I just don’t screw things up. (I’m not sure how I could screw it up at this point, but the lack of knowledge doesn’t hold back that fear in the least.) I still get butterflies when I think that there is actually a baby in my belly.
I am so excited.
Real Love Letters
Somehow, Ryan and I have developed this habit of corresponding about normal things in love letter format. I’m not sure how it developed, but it’s one of my favorite things.
Dear Ryan,
Regardless of what you may or may not have seen online, I promise you that I did not marry Hulk Hogan.
Love,
Jenn
Dear Jenn,
I don’t see anything online about who you married, so I will assume we are still married.
Love,
Ryan
Dear Ryan,
Here is a link. Just to clarify, that is not me. It is strange to see my name attached to Mr. Hogan. I remain, ever your loving wife.
Love,
Jenn
Dear Jenn,
Thank you for the clarification. I probably would have worried when I saw the story title. However, upon further inspection I would have realized the lady in the picture was certainly not my beautiful, sweet, angel wife.
Love,
Ryan
Generations
Seriously? Was Thanksgiving not quite even two weeks ago? And Harry Potter just the week before that? Because it feels like it’s been about 100 eons since then.
My Grandma Nadine died on Thanksgiving.
I’ve put off writing about it, and even thinking about it to a certain extent, partly because of the grief, but mostly because it just doesn’t seem real yet. At all. Continue Reading
Harry Potter & Me
Suffice it to say that Harry Potter has been a big part of my life. Since I’m sure this is news to no one who’s ever met me, feel free to watch this awesome internet video instead. However, I wanted to write a bit about how this whole thing started… Continue Reading
Freedom!!!
I FINISHED MY 400 PAGE EDITING PROJECT!!!
Despite my many worries, I did not (permanently) crumple into a ball of stress and discouragement. Let me take a minute to congratulate myself on this.
YAY!!!
Other things that did not happen: I did not die, I’m pretty sure my boss doesn’t hate me, I did not become permanently disfigured from spending 12 hours at a time hunching sitting in a chair, and my house did not fall apart (thanks to my superhero husband).
When I received this project, I knew it was going to require some discipline to get everything finished before deadline. What I didn’t realize, until after I accepted the project and was firmly in the trenches, was that this particular project was going to require a much deeper level of editing than I had anticipated. I was expecting to do a thorough copyedit; I ended up doing a deep substantive edit.
For those of you unfamiliar with editing terms, it’s a bit like expecting a canoe and getting the titanic.
And I had a similarly difficult time staying afloat. I can’t even articulate the stress of this project—especially at the beginning, when I was making several editorial decisions that would affect the entire scope of the work. I pushed really hard to get everything done by mid-September…and here we are in November. In my defense there were a number of setbacks—getting knock-down sick for a week, miscommunications and server problems in sending files, extra hour projects at my day job—however, in all honesty, I simply did not realize the massive amount of work this project required. I’ve never been to blame for a project going past deadline before, and, oh the self-imposed guilt! Still, I tried hard to be a grown up about it—I kept my boss notified on all delays, and I know that I put in at least double the hours I expected to (about 160), but I still felt so discouraged. It was miserable.
However, with everything in the rearview mirror, now, I feel nothing but accomplishment. And a HUGE desire to get back to the things I’ve been delaying, like Mockingjay, gym nights, my routine, shopping, FREE TIME, and even housework (we’ll see how long that one lasts). I still have a few editing projects in the pipeline, but they’re 13-page lightweights when compared to this 400-page behemoth.
I am so done with this project. And it feels SO GOOD.
Jenn: 4 Editing: 0.
YAY!!!
Are you kidding me?
So Ryan and I are sitting side-by-side on the couch–I’m replacing a button on a shirt and Ryan is absentmindedly watching a football game on TV. Shortly before halftime, Ryan turns to me and says, “I think it’s naptime,” and he rests his head on my shoulder. And falls asleep. Almost immediately.
Now, Ryan’s quick-to-fall-asleep abilities have already been well documented by this point. Since he was so sweet, just sleeping on my shoulder, I just let him be and proceeded to finish my button. And then went on to stitch another three buttons. The football game went to halftime, and I just left it on. Ryan stayed asleep, not even moving a muscle, for another twenty minutes.
UNTIL.
The ESPN halftime show moved on to discuss other games around the country and talked about Iowa, Florida, and TCU. Then the announcers said, “And another good team from the Mountain West, the University of Utah.”
And Ryan’s head just popped off my shoulder, mostly awake, and attentive to everything the announcers were saying.
Seriously?! You’ve got to be kidding me.
