More powerful than the President

A few weeks ago I had jury duty.  I wasn't annoyed by it, I was actually kind of excited!  The only factor that caused me a bit of anxiety was the logistics of how I was going to pump during the day, but I emailed in to make arrangements and they assured me that there was a "Mother's Room" that I could use. (See exhibit A)

I showed up and was fascinated by the process immediately!  We all checked in, and then different courtrooms would show up and request a certain number of jurors, and they would call out numbers of who was going to that courtroom.  We watched a video about how important jury duty was.  The video even mentioned that we, as jurors, were more powerful than THE PRESIDENT.  Oh reallllllllllly!?

Senator Michael Bennett was even there.  He walked in and it was like a political ad.  Women coming up to him for a hug.  Men shaking his hand.  He sat towards the front and stormed away on his blackberry.

A girl walked in wearing lace shorts and a shirt that said "POT HEAD".  Listen, sister...we all know your game.  You aren't getting dismissed by dressing like a bohemian druggie!

I thought there would be coffee?  Is that wrong?

I still hadn't been called around 9am, so I went to the front and told the lady I would need to pump soon.  She was extremely kind and told me I was being called with the next courtroom, so if I could wait a bit longer, I could be escorted to the "Mother's Room" by the court clerk.  Sure enough, I was called shortly thereafter, and sure enough, I was escorted to the "Mother's Room" by the court clerk, aka a 25 year old intern dude.  We walked to the 1st floor, checked the key out with security (had to provide my ID and everything!), then intern and I walked down to the basement, through a long hallway, and he dropped me off at a little room with a picture of a woman and a baby on the door.  He said he'd come back to get me...is 10 minutes enough?  TEN MINUTES??  Bitch please...I'm feeding a human here.  See ya in 30.

So, I settled in to the room and did my thang.  As I emerged from the room, there was intern, waiting like a good boy to escort me back upstairs to our courtroom!  And even better, all 50 potential jurors were lined up in order, waiting for me to return before they could enter the courtroom.  Maybe I AM more powerful than the President....

We filed in, and I was part of the first 17 that got sat in "the box" for questioning.  This was just so so so so interesting!  We were told about the case, and were instructed to let the judge know if there was any reason we shouldn't be a juror on this case...do we know the plaintiff?  the defendant?  the law firms representing either side?  Yada yada.  People who haven't learned how to be sly yet went on and on about why they shouldn't be on the jury.  I just decided to accept my fate and if I was chosen, so be it.  I had this attitude until they said the trial would last 7 days.  Seven WHAT????  And right before a holiday weekend?  Oh hellllllno!  I was nervous.  But I didn't want to join the group of those who were so painfully obvious about not wanting to be chosen, so I settled for telling the judge/attorneys (in private, in the judge's chambers, of course) about how I would need to pump every 3 hours, and that it would not affect my ability to serve on the jury, but I just needed them to be aware of my scheduling needs.

Anywayyyyyy, after a full day's worth of them asking us questions at random, and dismissing some weirdos, and replacing the weirdos with newbies, and then asking more questions, and hearing a vegan potential juror tell everyone that she was probably going to judge the plaintiff more harshly because she was overweight, etc....it came down to the final selection.  Both attorneys felt they had a good group to choose the 7 real jurors from.  They did a little song and dance about passing a piece of paper back and forth and crossing off juror names.  Meanwhile, the hate crime detective/potential juror that was sitting next to me was taunting me, saying I hadn't said anything weird enough to be dismissed so I was definitely going to be on the jury.  I watched the next 7 days of my life get flushed down the toilet.  But then, glory hallelujah, I was dismissed!

In summary, the entire process was extremely fascinating.  I'd like to serve on a jury, but on a case that lasts for 2 days, tops.  I'd also like there to be coffee. 

Sincerely,

The most powerful woman in America

Exhibit A: the Mother's Room

Controversial craft?

Over the weekend, I was a part of a special invention with a potentially controversial name: "the Talibun". 

(I worry that the more I put this word out there on the interwebs, the more the NSA will be a'watchin me. Oh wells!)

I found these awesome headbands on some random site, and I was determined to make them for myself, my sis, my cousin, and any other human who was interested. This craft was especially simple which made it all the more realistic that I would actually complete this craft. A few yards of jersey fabric and/or a few old tshirts, a couple folds/loop throughs/fabric smoothing, and my new headband was born!! They slightly resemble a turban. Initially, the group concluded that we would call them "turbuns", as the headband is a perfect compliment to a good 'ol messy bun. But then we started to joke that I had found this craft on www.taliban.com (hi, NSA!) and then we started to call them the "talibun". It took off! We made talibuns for all the gals, swept our hair into messy buns, and my new weekend hair was decided.

However, my friend mike still needs some convincing. He said the Talibun is not allowed in our marriage bed. Whaaaa??? 

I wore it to the grocery store the next day and I sort of expected to be so bombarded by compliments that I would have to set up a make-shift stand in the parking lot to take orders. Not so much. That might be because I started to frequent the Sprouts that all the grumpy old ladies go to. 

Anyhow, I look forward to incorporating the Talibun into my life and I also hope that Mike can find room in his heart for my new craft.

I present: The Talibun Gang!

Then, check out this tummy-time pro!

And heck, how about a sleeping baby pic just for the fun of it:

Pregnancy math and a series of annoying things

One year ago today (also our dear Addyson's birthday) I took a little test that changed our lives in a big way.  I think back to that morning, when I was so nervous that it would be negative and that it would start a panicky month of googling things and counting down the days until I could take another test.  I was hoping so so so so so much to see a positive test, but I was expecting a negative test.  Being pregnant seemed like such a peculiar experience, and was something my sister did, not something I did!!  Looking back at the past year, I almost can't believe all that happened.  Not that I did anything out of the ordinary, but I just can't believe I got to be pregnant and I got to give birth and now we have this handsome little fella.  Its like, when I go into the bathroom stall at work and I think, remember when you almost couldn't fit in here??  Having a big belly...did that really happen??  Hanging out with little Maxer last night and thinking about how much has changed over the past year was surreal.  Which brings me to my point:  pregnancy math doesn't make sense. Let's look at this in weeks: I found out I was pregnant 52 weeks ago. I had a full term, 40 week pregnancy.  Maxwell is 16 weeks old.  There are 2-4 weeks in there that I'm not sure what happened to.  I'm no scientist so I'm sure there is a reasonable explanation.  Like, there was a semi-rapture that deleted 4 weeks from my life.  Not a problem.

We went with Mike to Colorado Springs last night for the start of their fall season.  I drove so that Mike could get some work done, and his car wouldn't shift into 5th gear, and sometimes 4th gear, so driving on the highway in 3rd gear made for a unique driving experience.  Traffic was a beyotch, but we finalllllly made it.  Right as we were pulling into the park, Mike realized he forgot the team shirts.  DOH!  That was just the beginning of the series of annoying things.  I was ultra hungry, and Max was screaming, but I knew if I didn't eat things would get weird.  So after unloading Mike, I loaded Max back up and drove to the nearest Taco Bell.  In my extreme hunger state, when the lady told me my food would be right out, all I could say was FOOOOOD.  I think I meant to say, "Good, thanks."  But even then, "Good" is not an appropriate response.  Like, it BETTER BE COMING!!  I got my bag o'burritos y tacos and sped back to the park.  Threw Mike and his refs the bag of food and rushed back to the car to snarf my tacos and feed Max.  Besides from it being 1,000 degrees, things were going well.  Max and I were in the backseat, he was nursing and I was mowing down, when a little VW bug bumped into us as the driver was trying to squeeze into the space in front of us.  I am reading "52 Things Kids Need From Their Mothers" and today's chapter was about how kids need to see their mom have poise in chaotic situations.  What excellent timing!!  I composed myself and got out of the car with Max to talk to the perp.  I'm sure he felt like a huge dong for running into a car with a woman and a baby.  There was no damage, and I was surprisingly calm about the whole thing, so we exchanged info and we went about our lives.  Max and I layed on the grass for a while and watched adults get all riled up about kickball.  I swatted ants and other insects away from us and pondered moving to a place with no insects. The games ended and Mike came back to the car....as I was loading Max up and telling Mike how happy I was that I had had Taco Bell, he started barfing.  Turns out he had accidentally eaten a bean burrito instead of soft taco...and he does not react well to beans.  So after we recovered from that incident and all traces of Taco Bell had been discarded, he went to turn the car on and....the battery was dead.  Oopies....perhaps that was my fault, from turning the key forward to open the windows and leaving it like that for a while.

Surprisingly, we recovered well from this series of annoying events and were able to get home in time to give Maxer a bath, get him snuggled into bed, and then have a couple beers while watching the Broncos game that we had DVR'd.

Whew!

Thanks for the jersey, Charlee!

Maxwell's first Rockies game

Notable moments about Maxwell's first Rockies game:

-->He slept the majority of the game
-->He spit up on the majority of adults
-->We sat in front of a very proud lesbian who loudly talked the whole game about ex-girlfriends, what she is looking for in a woman, first girlfriends, coming out to her family, etc. I am all about loving who you want but I do believe some conversations are meant for more private venues.  At one point Maxwell's grandpa threatened to shoot himself.  This is why I discourage weapons in public places.
-->I dropped the boys off and then parked the car (I parked the car on Harvard Yard).  I found a lovely parking lot that was $4 cheaper than the lot across the street, and had tons of open spots, so I pulled right in!  The sign for their lot said something about "The Church" but I tend to not question anything when I'm in a new situation, so I went with it.  They filled out a little parking slip for my car, asked for my phone number in case they needed to "reach me" (didn't question it, nope) and also gave me a plastic bag full of books.  I made a joke about getting presents for parking in their lot, and they told me how to find my car after the game and also said if we wanted to go out after the game we could leave our car their all night.  I said, no no...we have a baby, we may not even make it through the whole game!  Then, I parked and as I was walking out of the lot, the woman called out to me, "Where is your baby?!"  I explained to her that my husband had him, and she was relieved - she had heard a lot of stories about people leaving babies in the car accidentally. Anywayyyyyyyy, it was the most pleasant parking experience of all time.  When we returned to the car after the game, we realized we were in the parking lot for the Church of Scientology and our bag full of books was literature on the religion.  (Were you wondering what the point of this story is?  Here it is!)  You hear a lot of negative things about Scientologists (and all religions, really!) but these 2 people that I encountered were so helpful, so sweet, so normal (can I say that?) that I was shocked to learn of their religion. Is that weird?  I know I shouldn't make a judgement about an entire religion based on 2 people I meet, but I also shouldn't assume Scientologists are "weird" just because their beliefs are out of line with my own.  Then again, what do I even know about them?  And don't all religions have ideas that are considered a little 'far-fetched' by outsiders?  What am I even saying?!?  Do I want to be a Scientologist??  I hope my grandma doesn't read this. Maybe this is my point: did they have to put the books in a plastic bag so that it isn't obvious right off the bat who they are with?  Would some people not park in the lot because of the association?  Discuss.

And that concludes this message from the Church of Scientology.

Less is more, more, more!!

I often feel a pull to break away from social media and technology in general.  I have started to feel sad for our society when we're all constantly on our phones.  We're at dinner and we're on our phones.  We're in the car and we're on our phones.  It's embarassing!  What are we, robots??

Whenever I get a wave of inspiration to turn it all off, I think to myself...but WAIT!  How would I know who is pregnant/engaged/doing something cool?  And then I tell myself I couldn't survive, and all social media apps avoid being deleted from my phone.

But the more I have those thoughts of "unplugging", the more I start to think...I should.  I can.  I will.  The most recent wave of inspiration came after a lunch conversation with Mike about, big surprise, me having to work.  I am constantly comparing my situation to others, and I think that if I didn't do the constant comparison, I would be pretty content with my situation.  But I always experience a setback when I am working away and then take a quick break to sneak a peek at my Instagram or my blogs, and I see a cute photo of some stay-at-home-mom putting her baby down for a nap, or running to Target really quick.  I get a wave of jealousy, and then mope for the next half-an-hour/2 days about how I don't get to put Max down for naps, and my Target trips are either on Sundays are during lunch.  Booooo hooooo.

Bottom line: I need to stop comparing myself.  Who gives a shit what craft so-and-so just made?  Who cares what so-and-so just made for dinner?  Here is the line I am drawing: Unless it motivates me, I can't be exposed to it.

So, I went through a huge Instagram/blog clean-up.  Photos and recipes on "clean eating"?  You're safe.  Photos of mid-day trips to the park?  You're outta here!!!  Blogs about how to talk to strangers and how to keep a clean house?  You're safe. Photos from a random semi-celebrity of her and her newborn spending the summer in Greece with her billionaire husband?  GET OUTTA HERE!!!!

And in turn, removing tons of these silly blogs/IG photos from my life also helps me to unplug, since there won't always be something new to see every 5 minutes.  This is a start.

Next on the chopping block: Facebook.  I struggle with this.  Facebook used to be MY LIFE.  It consumed me.  Now, as the "older crowd" is turning Facebook into one big game of Farmville, it has lost its novelty.  As more and more ads pop up and "suggested posts" fill my news feed, the information that I actually seek isn't there anymore.  Its cluttered and messy and I find myself being annoyed by the things people post more than I find myself actually interested or inspired.  A while back, I went through a huge unfriending phase where I would ask myself, "If you ran into them in the grocery store, would you talk to them?"  If the answer was no, then what the heck are we doing having an internet friendship?  But now, its evolved into more than that.  The answer is simple.  Facebook - you gots to go.

Now wait, calm down.  I'm not deleting my FB account, people!  That would just be silly!  But I am going to delete the app from my phone.  Do I really need to be sitting on my couch, watching Netflix AND looking at Facebook?  NO!  What I should actually be doing is taking Max on a walk or, I don't know, just letting my brain think??  Maybe go sit on our patio and just breathe??  Yes, yes that sounds very nice.

Less comparison+less social clutter=more satisfaction (I hope).  Here goes nothing.

Panic in Idaho (flashback)

My shower door is one of those sliding doors, and its old, so I struggle on a daily basis to get it to glide smoothly to a close.  This morning, when I was ram-and-jamming it shut, I had a flashback:

The year was 2001 (or 1999?  2002??) and I was on a mission trip with my youth group in Idaho.  I know what you're thinking - what mission is there to serve in Idaho??  And I have to admit...I don't quite remember.  (Were we repairing homes on an Indian reservation in Montana?  No no...that was another mission trip {one where we slept in a school and woke up at 5am every morning to do TaeBo in the gym and I had to get picked up in a small airplane by my uncle to make it to family pictures in Nebraska and the weather was bad so he and I, the quietest people in the family, were forced to spend 2 days together in the same hotel room checking weather reports to see when we could get the heck OUTTA there...} Were we building a house in Mexico?  Nope, that was another very weird mission trip {one where we slept in a compound near the beach and one night some locals scared the shittttt out of us by whispering and tapping on our windows, and we ate fish tacos from a taco truck that had a 3 legged dog}.  I'm really just trying to share with you guys that I used to go on a lot of mission trips.  Ta-da!)

ANYWAY.
\
All I can remember is that this particular mission trip was SO FUN.  We spent the week sleeping on the floor of the church, and hanging out with the pastor's daughter and her BFF, and playing music, and getting ice cream, and swimming, and writing jokes and drawing funny pictures which led us into thinking we were the most hilarious kids alive.  We were pretty funny though.  I was even involved in a fake wedding - I was the bride, of course - and again, we just thought we were so funny.  Listing off all of these activities, I'm questioning if this was a mission trip or just a youth group vacation??  I'm pretty sure we helped with a VBS or something.

ANYWAY.

Our youth pastor was one of the best human beings that I have ever known, and as I remember all these things, I am making a mental note to try to look him up on Facebook.

ANYWAY.

We used the bathroom of a house across the street.  It was weird, looking back.  But, that was where we showered.  This was back in the times of arm-shaving.  That was an interesting phase for me.

ANYWAY.

One day I went to the house to shower.  This shower was a weird shower, with a door that slammed shut - it didn't glide or slide, it was like a vault door.  So, on this particular day, as the shower door vaulted shut, I had a moment of sheer panic that I was trapped in the shower.  I used all of my might and slammed my body into the door to get it to open.  Of course, it popped right open - and, I used so much of my incredible strength, that I knocked the door completely off of the hinges.  So there I am, naked and shower still running, with the shower door leaning against the bathroom counter.  Our youth pastor happened to be in the house too, and when he heard the door slam into the counter, he cautiously approached the bathroom like....uhh, everything okay in there?  This is where it gets weird.  I put on my towel and yelled out to him what had happened, so he came in and helped me put the door back on.  As I'm re-visiting this memory, I am reminding at how inappropriate it was, but I can also recall how we were both laughing at the situation and admitted to each other that it was very strange and uncomfortable but if we could just pop that door back in place, we can move on with our lives and forget it ever happened.

But, I'm not one to let an awkward story go to waste, so of course I ran back over to the church and laughingly recounted the whole experience.  And we cackled the night away.

ANYWAY.

If I was a good blogger, I would dig into my box of old pictures and get out some photographic evidence of this trip to share.  I'm sure I have tons of photos, and I'm sure I'm wearing cargo pants in the majority of them.  Look for Panic in Idaho - Part 2.

The end.

Oh hey Max

My sweet Maxwell.  I'm back at work now.  It hasn't been nearly as bad as I thought it would be.  I guess what makes it not so bad is the idea that someday you will hear about these times and you will be proud of me.  

I try so hard to not think about you during the day, because if even for a second, I let myself stare at your picture, I feel guilty and sad, like I am missing so much of your day and you will feel more of a connection to the nanny than to me.  I am already a jealous person and this isn't helping!!  

Sometimes I play "It Could Be Worse..." like, it could be worse - I could be in prison and never get to see you (obviously I've been watching Orange is the New Black too much).  

Earlier this week, after tuning into the nanny-cam MUCH too often, I was worried and sad.  Every time I tuned in, you were in the mamaroo.  I died inside.  I wanted to be home with you and cuddle you and never put you down.  What in the world were you doing in the mamaroo??  But, just like always, I had prematurely freaked out.  Now, 3 days and a few managerial conversations initiated by your dad, nanny is reading you books, taking you for walks, and being the best nanny to you we could ask for.  What can I say, I'm a freak.  And when it comes to you, I am a freak x 1000. (Crossing my fingers that you get your dad's voice of reason and calm nature.  If you get my brain, you're in for a wild ride of worry!)

You are the cutest. The sweetest.  The silliest, already!  I can't get enough of you. From 5-9pm, you would think its the dead of night...you are so zonked out you don't even know what's happening in the world around you.  Then, just as my body is ready to hit the hay, you perk right up - Heyyyrooooo!!  You're smiley and playful as ever.  How did I get a night owl child??  Give your dad a high-five for taking over around 11pm every night so I can go to bed.  Thank goodness he can survive on less sleep than I can.  What would we do without that daddy of yours.

So now that our hang outs are limited to nights and weekends, just know that I am only away from you because I have to be.  And soon, we will be into a better routine, where we actually do things at night.  Because right now all I want to do when I get home from work is cuddle you and let you sleep on me.  Someday we'll get out and see the world.

In the words of Dionne Warwick, "keep smiling...keep shining..." because your smiles are what make me DRIVE LIKE A MANIAC to get home at night.  

What a blessing you are Mr. Max.

Found this quote last weekend and made it
into a poster for my office.  Sounds like a
pretty good recipe!