I've been reading through my archives and it's been such a trip. I'm so glad to have this record, and so in the spirit of my last post I sit down dutifully to hammer out the recent weeks - and blank. Nothing. Nada.

What do we spend our time doing? What do I spend my time doing?

I walk around and close doors that children leave open - I do that a lot.

I walk around and look for the children that left the doors open - because I lose them a lot. We live on fifty acres and there are so many places to get lost: are they at the treehouse? are they at Jacob's cabin? Are they at the burn pile? The other burn pile? Are they at the fishing shack, the goat garden, or the bamboo forest?

I would save myself a lot of time and anxiety if I could just keep track of them in the first place, but they disappear so quickly. And then I call to see if they're with Jacob.

That conversation might go like this:
ME: Do you have the kids?
JACOB: No, but they're fine.
ME: They can't be far because nobody has on shoes, Lucy June is in an oversized princess dress, and Roman is naked and carrying the cat.

Then I walk to my mom's to see if they're sneaking Lara bars from the pantry. Nope. Maybe they're in the shop playing restaurant and littering the concrete floor with lettuce? Nope. Turns out they rode their plastic toys to the mailbox and are returning empty handed because they already got the mail last time I lost them.

I'm grateful for all the wilderness at our fingertips, but a yard with a fence has its merits.

And tomorrow. We'll do it all again.

We Almost Cut Down the Mulberry Tree

When we bought this house two years ago, the bushes and trees had all but consumed it. No one had touched them for years and they'd freely developed their green kingdoms for feral cats and precocious rats. One bush had been about the size of a dump truck and sprawled across half the front lawn.

My dad came to town and bought my husband a chainsaw. We began clearing. We would cut down one sapling and quickly expose another leggy monstrosity. Years without sufficient light and competing for resources had left the bushes and trees ugly and misshapen.

We didn't want to cut down everything, but for every tree we cut down it was like we were taking the skirts off the rest of the trees and exposing a forest of gimpy legs. Many had grown at strange angles that made sense when they'd been avoiding a gluttonous bush, but now they jutted out with no purpose, Vs and Ps, like letters fallen out of their words, memories of the old lawn, incomprehensible pieces of a forgotten story.

So we kept cutting, and in one weekend the front yard became a forest of spikes and we met all of our neighbors. The men would slap Jacob on the back. We were liberating the street.

We left three small trees at the northwest corner of the house, and they stood there through the winter awaiting the second reaping. But come March we saw the mulberries. Like some offering of gratitude. Laden with the berries in their natural ombre of green to pink to black, the branches bowed to the ground .

The squirrels and the birds mostly had their way with the ripe berries before we could, but we heeded the tree's gesture.

And we didn't cut it down.

We went out last weekend to pick berries. They fall from the tree and hide like jewels in the St. Augustine, so we hunt for them.

We only met one neighbor. She told us to watch for cedar waxwings. They love mulberries, she said.

We love them too.

A Third Baby's First Week of Life

My, if it hasn't been a few months of totally unexplained if entirely explainable absence.

Three kids.

Three kids has me whooped. I'm pretty sure our fourth kid will be an accident.

We're gonna dive right in with a catch up post just in case little Romie ever wanders through the archives and asks if he had an infancy.

You did, Romes, a really jolly one.

Roman is remarkably good-natured. As I'm lugging all 22 pounds of him from room to room while I chastise a four year old and potty-train a two year old (her choice not mine), sometimes I remember to look into his face. He looks at me so adoringly. It kinda floors me. I do my best to stop and love those moments, but I'm not very good at it.

Ok. Here we go. Roman's first week of life.

When his brother and sister came to visit him in the hospital the first time, I was holding him in my lap, and when he heard their voices, he craned his head back and forth and his eyes searched the entire room. Meanwhile they were beelining for him: Lucy June couldn't contain her glee when she first saw him. It was magical.

Magical.

I'd never seen one of my newborns respond to voices so obviously.

He came just a little bit early - earlier than all the other kids. I had scheduled a loan closing on Tuesday, but he was born on Monday. Jacob went to the appointment and while he was signing a million documents I was watching all three kids by myself in the hospital room. With some help from Winnie the Pooh and Netflix Too, it went remarkably well. It was stressful though. I held my breath and waited for everything to devolve for the entire two hours.

Roman's early life has had many of those moments. Darker moments. Moments where his stubborn mother doesn't seek out the help she needs and puts too much on her plate until her stress and anxiety start to leak out all over her house and into her relationships.

I couldn't skip the closing even though I'd had a baby, so I was scheduled to sign my name a million times on Wednesday right before we planned to take two day old Roman to have his bilirubin checked. So I would go sift through papers for twenty minutes and then we'd take the baby to the pediatrician. I was not excited about this, but it would be OK. We could do it. It would be fine.

Then Lucy June fell off the top bunk. Right onto her head. My was it horrible. It started swelling immediately, and we were just a few minutes from leaving for the closing/pediatrician outing, so we figured we'd muscle through the closing and then get some eyes on the little girl's head at the doctor's office.

Jacob dropped me off at the closing, while he drove around the block a few times with the kiddos. Lucy was unhappy, but lucid with a lump. I shuffled into a swanky office and sat down in a leather chair at a conference table and signed and signed. I felt like such a body - a fragile body in a room designed for pantsuits. Then there was a knock on the door. It was Jacob carrying Lucy June, and both of them were covered in vomit.

So we expedited the pediatrician visit. We piled in the car. The newborn was crying, everything reeked of vomit, I was hyperventilating.

At the pediatrician's office I tried to settle the baby down and feed him in the newborn area. The triage nurse who was checking on our probably-concussed daughter came over to ask if a suspicious triangle-shaped indentation on Lucy June's forehead was normal. Through tears I shook my head that I couldn't tell. Had she fallen on a lego? She did have a widow's peak. Maybe that was it? The triage nurse patted my shoulder, told me we would probably need to have some imaging done on her, and left me to my tears and my newborn.

Things quickly got better. By the time we saw the doctor, Lucy June was playing with toys and sporting her black eye like a clumsy champion and was pretty much her normal self. He told us to go home and call if she vomited some more.

Jacob had a huge job starting the next day that he couldn't reschedule. So my mom descended on our house like an angel of mercy and took care of everything. My friends picked up Jake for playdates. Lucy June and her shiner hung out with my mom. I nursed my baby and my very bruised postpartum tailbone.

Then it was Sunday - Jacob's day off - and the toilet backed up into the bathtub, so Jacob got to spend the day digging a hole in the backyard to reveal a broken sewer line.

And that officially rounded out the baby's first week of life.

I don't write these things to complain or to elicit a rush of combox sympathy. I write them because I'll probably want to remember them.

Some of it is funny. Some not so funny. I want to write it down. I need me some catharsis or something.

Or probably should remember them. There's more craziness to add to this. This was just week one.

Life is exhausting right now.

But I'm learning how to settle into good moments.

Also, these are all pics from back in September. Roman now looks like this:

Perpetually flanked by siblings.

And like this when sausaged into a size newborn baptismal gown.

Working Caption: Husband leaves room for the Holy Spirit at Baptism

The Ro Man's Birth Story (Part All of It)

I usually write birth stories in installments. But for this one, I didn't. Which means it's LONG. Be warned. I don't have the mental energy to make it any shorter.

It was Saturday morning. I was 39 weeks along, and I started having contractions. My BH contractions had been strong and getting stronger for weeks, but this particular Saturday morning they started to feel a little different, a little more REAL. But they weren't regular: they would stop altogether for hours at a time.

Both of my previous labors had started in the morning, and from the first faintest contraction I pretty much knew it was real, and then went on to have a baby by supper time. Not this time. This time I had no idea what to think.

I hadn't really expected this baby to come before his due date, and I still didn't think he would, but I decided to fish some onesies from the unpacked boxes and toss them in the washer just in case.

Some of my Houston cronies had organized a pedicure date, so I went to get my toes done and wondered if a little ankle massaging would send me over the edge. It didn't. The contractions just kept on going nowhere for the entire day. I fell asleep that night wondering if they would pick up, but the sun greeted me and my still pregnant belly seven hours later.

All day Sunday I had spotty contractions. We went to Mass. 2 contractions. We got donuts afterwards. 1 contraction. We got some soccer gear for Jake and picked up a Craigslist find. 2 contractions. I got home and took a little nap. 0 contractions. Went to a birthday party. 3 contractions. By this point I was gearing up for a week of this kind of thing.

My brother and his girlfriend were coming over for dinner, and as we made dinner that night the contractions started to get a little stronger, so Jacob made me lie down. And no surprise: they stopped almost completely. I got up to have dinner and had a couple more contractions during the meal. They were stronger, but I could still sit and talk through them with relative ease. Jacob and I had enough sense to put my brother on call in case I actually went into labor that night.

We went to bed at 9:30, and I fully expected to wake up the next morning still pregnant. These fizzly every fifteen minute contractions just didn't have me convinced that I was truly in labor. I fell asleep and fifteen minutes later woke up with a contraction - it's rather jarring to have a contraction while half asleep with drool all over your face. A few minutes after the contraction I convinced myself I was not in labor, and a few minutes after that I fell asleep again, and a few minutes after that I was lurched awake by another contraction. This repeated itself about six times before I couldn't get back to sleep and thought maybe I should call my midwife.

I called in around 11pm, and as warm and maternal as the midwife image is, I could hear over the phone that she was not very excited about her middle of the night patient. I told her that I'd been having contractions for two days and while they were still fifteen minutes apart they were getting stronger and my last labor had escalated rather quickly and I just really really wanted this baby to be born where we'd planned for it to be born: in a hospital and not in Jacob's work truck or the hospital lobby or something. She gave me a very inviting: "Well, it's your third baby, so if you think you're in labor then you should probably come in. How far apart are your contractions again?" "15 minutes" Silence "Well...it's your call." Second guessing second guessing second guessing. RESOLVE "I think I should come in."

So we called my brother and packed up the hospital bag, and by 11:30 we were on our way to the hospital.

I'd never been in labor at night; I'd never wanted to be in labor at night. But the traffic-free, one-contraction drive to the hospital was nice. Jacob and I chatted and I fretted about not really being in labor and making my midwife come in in the middle of the night just to turn me away. The contractions still weren't picking up at all, and I was nervous they would peter out altogether. We self-parked and took the elevator up to the main floor of the hospital. The woman at the welcome desk smiled big and asked us if we were coming in for an induction. At this I almost turned around and went right back down the elevator: one harmless question had convinced me I wasn't in labor. But onward we trudged to triage, and soon I was in a gown waiting for my midwife who showed up about 1 contraction or ~10 minutes later.

Verdict: 4cm, 90% effaced. "Well you're definitely staying."

And so it was. We were actually about to have a baby. These noncommittal contractions seemed to be doing something.  We were here in plenty of time to settle in before labor got too intense. I was very pleased.

And then the poking began. The veins in my left arm weren't cooperating, so they switched to my right. There was a billing issue that I had to sort out. Medical history questions, an interview with anesthesia, and a slow ride up to labor and delivery where I was able to sit on a ball while lucky Strep B me got a round of penicillin and an IV bag until PLEASE GOD CAN I JUST GET IN THE TUB ALREADY.

I've had all three babies in hospitals, but with the first two I was pretty hazy by the time I arrived - Lucy June was practically born in the hallway - so this was the first time I was very aware of just how many annoying little things had to happen before I could just hunker down and labor. FINALLY all the pokes and questions were done, and the midwife had guessed correctly that Jacob and I just wanted to be left alone, and the OB nurse was drawing me a bath, and things were looking up.

Contractions sped up a little during all the checking-in part and were around 45 seconds long and five minutes apart. They were getting more intense, but Jacob was helping me get through them, and things still felt pretty chill.

I'm gonna get a little sidetracked now, but hang in there and I promise I'll get back to the riveting birth story soon or you can just scroll down and pick it up (spoiler: a baby comes out of a mother's bottom area - that's the version Jakeboy heard anyway).

During my first labor, Jacob was not very helpful. Early labor was all nerves and making last minute preparations. I wanted to manage my own contractions while they were still easy with the hope that when they got more intense Mr. Husband Childbirth Coach would swoop in with some sweet relief, but this was stupid. You see, by the time the contractions became more intense there was no teaching people how to help me. I was a mad mess of "STOP TOUCHING ME WHY AREN'T YOU TOUCHING ME!?!?!?"

This blog isn't really into advice giving, but if you're hoping to go natty and you're envisioning some kind of laboring-wife-loving-husband dance through the waves of childbirth, then consider trying this: have your husband help you through contractions in early labor, when they're still easy. Tell him what helps and doesn't help. By the time labor heats up, he'll have a good idea what to do. In my second labor, I had Jacob help me through contractions from the get go. When the contractions were easy, I had the patience to vocalize what was and wasn't helpful. By the time my contractions were intense and rationality was flying out the window, Jacob had kinda figured out how to help and could keep on being helpful. Like super helpful.

In this last labor, Jacob would put a lot of pressure on my lower back and kind of push my hips together, and it made my contractions very manageable. Sometimes his hands would slip a little and I would become a banchie woman and curse at him in my head until he'd repositioned his grip and marital harmony would be restored once again.

By the time the antibiotic was done and the tub was ready, my contractions were still a solid five minutes apart but they were strong and would peak two or three times before fully letting go. The nurse said the bath was ready, so I shuffled to the tub after a contraction, but the contraction wasn't done yet. It was a doozie. And while the nurse tried to cool the bathwater off a little, I stood next to the tub and lifted my belly up with my hands to get a little relief as the contraction peaked two more times.

Finally: the tub.

It was deep, and it was beautiful. I sank into that thing and went contraction-free for a solid twelve minutes. Twelve minutes of watery bliss, my thoughts were a litany of love for everything and everyone in the world.

I finally started into a contraction, and I didn't move. I didn't expect it to be too strong, and I was feeling so zen, I figured I would channel my best Ina Mae and just float right on through it. But it was intense. LOVE. More intense. MORE LOVE. But then my eyes popped open and the love bubble burst abruptly because: PRESSURE.

The contraction let go, and I sunk back into the tub in disbelief.

Pressure?

Really?

Probably not really.

On one hand I didn't even want to hope that we were almost at the end, and on the other I had only JUST gotten into the tub and I was not ready to get out. So I didn't mention it to anyone and settled back into my bath. After a nice watery ten minutes of no contractions I had positively convinced myself that no, that hadn't been pressure.

As the next contraction came along, I pulled myself to sitting in the tub and grabbed the interior rail so Jacob could put some pressure on my lower back. It was long and big and at the peak: more pressure. After the contraction I managed to convince myself again that it wasn't REAL pressure. After two more contractions like that I started to get a little...vocal...and had to admit to the inquiring husband that maybe?? I was feeling?? some pressure?? At which point he stood up, called the nurse, turned to me and ordered me out of the tub immediately.

He handed me a big towel and the nurse instructed me to dry off really well. So while I was dutifully drying off (??? because God forbid some residual tub water get on the bed where we're about to push out a baby???) and fussing with the hospital gown, I started into the MotherContraction.

I basically crawled across the room and onto the bed, the nurse checked me and her eyes widened. She told me I had a tiny bit of cervix and my bag of water was bulging, and then she said something else, but I could hardly understand her because she was frantically trying to get a hold of my midwife. My contractions weren't letting go and I was holding onto the bedrail and all of a sudden my midwife was there and checking me and the contraction let go. She asked if I wanted her to break my water. I said no. Then she said, "Well, you can push if you want."

I can't really describe my reaction to this. I liked how calm she was, but at some point I wanted my baby-catcher to do a little cheerleading, perhaps a resounding "you're complete" or maybe a "let's do this!" but she wasn't giving me that. So I said: "I'm feeling a lot of pressure." And she said "Uhuh" And I said: "So I'm gonna push." And she said: "OK."

And then I did.

That contraction saw the biggest push of my life, complete with the guttural female warrior repertoire. I'd convinced myself that the baby was pretty much out, but at the end of it the midwife chimed in: "He's crowning."

And I thought "CROWNING?!?" My first baby had "crowned" for something like twenty minutes while my second had been out in two pushes, so I was pretty sure I'd graduated out of this "crowning" business, and I was blaming everyone in the room that the baby wasn't out yet. If that push hadn't gotten the baby out, it certainly wasn't my fault.

The next contraction kicked in and after another huge push, the baby's head was out. My contraction let go, and I stopped pushing, and my midwife made her first definitive statement of the evening: "Katie, you've got to get this baby out." So I pushed and pushed, and another contraction kicked in, and the baby was out.

And there he was squirmy and swollen. A boy! One of his ears was folded down. He was very upset. And he was big.

And I was beat. I was meeting my son, and my foggy brain was searching for some kind of euphoria, but I was mostly just aware of how tired I was.

It was three o'clock in the morning. I was hungry. I hadn't eaten anything since six. I was begrudgingly enduring all the post-birth prodding. The baby was wailing, and I wasn't very successfully trying to get him to nurse. My midwife was talking to the nurse about how she'd been asleep and that's why she'd barely made it. Jacob was telling me how proud he was. I was grateful to be done, but I was totally exhausted.

I looked down at this new little stranger and thought: I'm sure I'll love you tomorrow.

And I did, one meal, a few hours of sleep, and 1800 milligrams of ibuprofen later. 

Now my baby and my pedicure are three weeks old. The baby - at a solid 11 pounds - is aging a lot better than the pedicure. Jacob is working a lot, but I'm getting a ton of help from friends and family. And, boy, do I need it. I honestly don't know how we'd function without it because we're barely functioning with it. I feel so humbled and grateful, and I'm really trying to dwell in those emotions because the alternatives (exhaustion, anxiety, sheer terror) are never very far away.

My mother once told me that three kids really killed any illusion she had that she could "handle it." And, mom, if I was under any illusion that I could handle it before, consider me enlightened. And on that note I'm off to buy this because it's on sale today and because YES.

And if you're still there and by some impossibility want to read MORE?!?!

Jake's Birth Story

and

Lucy June's Birth Story

Knock yourself out.

One for the (Big Boy) Books

I almost titled the post: This is Three, but then realized that in the blogospheres I run, that hinted at a pregnancy announcement, so I changed it and went with the library pun. Anywho...

Life in the past few weeks has been unusual - moving, staying with my parents, fatherlessness, daylight savings ending - anyone of which is enough disruption for this one mommy and these two kiddos, but as fate would have it, they have all coincided.

Long story short: the kiddos have been sorely lacking in routine. That oh-so-magical and ever elusive routine. The thing that will solve all your parenting woes and ensure that your children are rested and fed and well-behaved.

Even 11 o'clock yesterday morning was probably too far along for an adventure, I just needed to do something, so I packed the kids up for a visit to the library and my favorite coffee place with an old friend. After maybe six sweet minutes at the library of doing puzzles, I overestimated the Jake's fuse and picked a battle I probably should've let alone.

You know that moment when your wrangling your flailing, wailing child in a public space and wondering just WHY you asked him to put away his puzzles before moving onto the next activity?? And even though you don't like to consider yourself a pushover, you never would've said anything if you'd known it would come to this. But you've done it. You've bombed Pearl Harbor, you've woken the giant, or in this case the three year old, and you will live out the consequences.

So we attempted an exit. I hoisted the screaming Jake under my right arm and the boots he'd kicked off in my right hand. My left hand ushered the barely walking Lucy June. All the little librarians craned their necks and watched me exeunt with the holy terror and his little sister: we were a tantrum train, and we were moving s l o w.

Once outside, I dropped Jake in the landscaping and headed to the car to buckle the baby in the car seat so I could more properly deal with her brother, but by the time she was secured, I turned to see the still crying Jake running to the car with Lucy June's shoes that my friend had saved.

After we both cooled down and got his boots back on, we agreed that we really did still need coffee, got the ever amenable Lucy back out of the car, and started for Ranch Road Roasters. It was, of course, two blocks farther than I remembered and rookie mother over here had neither ergo nor stroller, but the siren latte had me in her aromatic grip and we forged on, hungry and tired and keeping it together only at the promise of more cross walk buttons to push.

Before we got to the coffee place, I decided some real food was in order. We stopped for some grab'n'go lunch at the local health food store, but Jake - even though the last time we went into this place, he was barely two years old - remembered that this! store! has! toys!

(Seriously this child: hears nothing I say, remembers everything I say, and NEVER forgets a toy.)

So I sent him to the toy nook while I got lunch; I dawdled a little and grabbed a coconut macaroon because treat yo self, mama, and because I was bracing myself to coax Jake away from Thomas the Train. When I went back to get him, I saw that he was in the process of affirming his mostly potty-trained status.

That sentence got wordy. I'll trim it down:

He was peeing his pants.

Thankfully the accident was mild, and I was able to haul him to the coffee shop next door which had a bathroom where he could finish. He assured me: "I only need to go pee in about three hours" but I told him to try anyway, and low and behold, Will Power Junior had held a fair amount back. I tried to air out his pants and thanked my lucky stars that we'd avoided what could have been a lake amid the patchouli at the grocery store. Jake just looked up and said "Wow. I guess it's already three hours, huh, mom?"

As I squatted down put his soggy pants back on - commando, his favorite - I remembered when this happened and tried to infuse the episode with a little bit of the parent I really wanted to be.

And at that very second, he wrapped his arms around me and put his head on my shoulder.

"I love you, mama. Dat's why I'm hugging you because I love you."

Microcosm of my microlife, if ever there was one. It's like every day the sun comes up and says: "Good morning, mom, how do you feel about another roller coaster?"

************

To jump to a very different note. . . Only a couple hours after I wrote this yesterday, my maternal grandmother passed away. We've been expecting this for a while and were able to say our goodbyes. She was surrounded by her children when she died. If you think of it, please keep the family - and especially my mother - in your thoughts and prayers this weekend.

You were quite the lady, Nono, and you will be missed.

My Son and His (Ocean) Stories

When Jake was about twenty months old, I was in the throes of morning sickness with baby number two and I was not a very fun mother. By the grace of God, Jake started watching TV right around that time. He went from never caring about TV to begging for Diego in a matter of weeks, and I went from being footloose and baby-free to doubling over the toilet right around the same time.

So we watched a lot of Diego, but in an effort to keep things in check I wouldn't let us turn the TV on until 5 o'clock. In the mornings, I would have to get creative.

So one Tuesday, in an effort not to plug into Diego at 10am, I decided to take him to the beach (we still lived in LA). We drove to Santa Monica and trudged right up to the end of America. It was February, so the weather was cool and grey, but still beach-able.

We went to the beach often enough, but two things happened that day, that made it more memorable.

First, I let Jake wander down the beach, and I didn't go with him. I watched him and started after him when he'd gotten a little too far away. I wanted to see how long he'd walk before turning around and looking for me.

And he didn't turn around. Not once. He walked for like a quarter mile. He was heading for the lifeguard jeep, and thus my experiment was pretty much doomed from the beginning.

At the time I just thought Jake liked his mother with a healthy side of chopped liver, but I've since been trying to rebrand it as "healthy independence" that resulted from my excellent attachment parenting. Yes. That sounds just fine.

Then another thing happened. A little later - after I carried him unhappily away from the lifeguard jeep and back to our beach towel - I was letting him play a few steps away from me in the damp sand near the surf when a slightly larger wave came in. It wasn't dangerous, just enough to knock him over and get him soaked and freak him out a little bit. He looked for me instantly, and I ran to grab him. He clutched at me.

Wrapped in a big towel, he was then content to sit in my lap for five minutes and watch the ocean with me. I kissed his soggy head about two dozen times as I blissed out in one of the most peaceful parenting moments I'd ever had with my toddler.

He talked about it all day - and then all week - in his little halting speech: "I fall down ocean. I fall down ocean." And together we would remember it. "And mama came and picked you up, and wrapped you in a towel, and then we watched pelicans." "Uhuh. I fall down ocean."

He told anyone and everyone his ocean story. It was his first story.

Lately I've been reading The Whole-Brain Child, and I think this would qualify as a classic example of a little brain trying to integrate a pretty terrifying experience - trying to understand what happened, giving words to it.

Still to this day, Jake asks us to tell him "Ocean Stories."
Every night when he goes to sleep: "Tell me an Ocean Story!!! ...Umm...Please you may tell me an ocean story?" I wish he would just let us read books, but instead I have to dream up some kind of story, and I'm really bad at it, but I do it, and Jacob does it. We lie our heads next to his on his "fuzzy blanket" and weave epics involving fish birthday parties, and he listens transfixed.

How Gracefully You Handle the Mess

Last Sunday at Mass was a pretty typical one for our family.

The kids did well for the first fifteen minutes or so, and then began to devolve. Jake started playing "mean monster" with the kid behind us who wasn't playing it back, and Lucy June started in on some lovely back arching because we wouldn't let her loose on a chin-tucked speed crawl to the altar.

It wasn't too bad. Just par.

But we were seated behind some friends* of ours with six kids. Their oldest is about thirteen and their youngest two are the same ages as ours. The older kids - all boys - were sitting quietly and respectfully. The three year old was asleep in the pew and the baby was asleep in her father's arms. At one point the mom stood up with the three year old and whispered something to her husband right before walking out. The father stood up a moment later and handed off the sleeping baby to the 11 year old. He followed after his wife. The baby - still asleep - nestled into her older brother's neck.

The kids sat and listened to the homily. I wrangled my daughter and watched them. I was seriously almost teary at how sweet the scene was. These unsupervised boys being so good in Mass and so gently taking care of their baby sister. The father returned and soon after the mother came back with the three year old son. They both turned their attention back to Mass. I was so impressed by all of them. These kids. The parents who raised them.

Anyhow on our way home later, I was telling Jacob about how sweet I'd found it. Cooing over that sweet big brother holding his little sister and how good the kids had been when their parents stepped out, and Jacob was like,

"Yeah. I was talking to their dad after Mass and apparently Gabriel peed everywhere. He woke up rather disoriented and just peed all over the pew."

"What?!"

"Didn't you see his dad come back in with towels? He said they'd totally lucked out with an extra pair of pants in the diaper bag."

I was so surprised. The narrative I had in my head began to unravel, the narrative of this family who so "totally had it together" - this couple whose children united to function like some well-oiled machine - were really just another family whose three year old pees his pants in Mass. Initially, I was a little devastated because they were a sign that the insanity probably never ends.

But then slowly the narrative began to reweave itself. I saw the father in his coat and tie grabbing wads of paper towels in the bathroom, grasping those towels in his hand as he genuflects and enters the pew. Then I could see the mom in her silk scarf and heels squatting in the bathroom as she worked wet pants off a little boy and then rifled through the diaper bag with her fingers crossed. Meanwhile the other kids were totally unfazed by the pool of urine in the pew.

And then I smiled: I'd been more right about that family than I'd realized. I turned to Jacob and said, "They are so cool."

"I know." Jacob said. "We should invite ourselves over."

>><<

With that little story in mind, I made you a little inspirational poster. Yes you. Just you.

>><<

*(Also, the parents in this story are none other than our couple crush - we're kinda buds with them now. Just kinda. We're playing the long, not too over eager game.)

>><<

And now for some unrelated and potentially overexposed photos because someone's been playing with fire in manual mode.

Mucho mas to learn about this tricky camera. So far I put my progress at an "eh."

Ciao for now :)

On Money and Vacations and Marriage. But Mostly Marriage. And Money.

Jacob and I left on our honeymoon two days after we got married. I had no idea where we were going. (This is not the story I want to tell today, but I will tell enough of it to set the stage for the story that I do want to tell.) We arrived after many hours of travel in the Canary Islands. We got off the plane, chucked our luggage into a rental car, and navigated to where we were staying.

Let me pause here to reiterate that I knew nothing about our honeymoon except that I needed to pack for the beach and that Jacob had gotten "a really good deal." I like beaches almost as much as I like "good deals" so this sounded perfect, and I didn't need to know a single other thing.

As we drove up to this stunning collection of seaside villas, I started to get a little nervous. We were met out front by a manager, and I began anxiously looking around for where the Groupon people stayed. But no. She ushered us to our very own three bedroom two bath villa with a pool looking out over the ocean. I was petrified. I literally wouldn't even step inside. I looked at my new husband, and he seemed like a stranger. I didn't care how "good" of a deal this man had gotten, there was no way we could afford to stay here for ten whole days. Jacob turned to look at me at this precise moment - just as I'd started to get dizzy - and blurted out: "It's free! Katie, we're staying here for free."

The owner of the company Jacob worked for - a Spaniard and real estate guru - had offered that we stay in one of his villas as a wedding present. Eventually my heart rate went down and we proceeded to have a very lovely and very cheap honeymoon.

I feel like that anecdote is a microcosm of our life together: cheap, awesome, with occasionally poor communication and moments of sheer terror. So we'll let it be a precursor to this story. Today's real story:

We returned from our big honeymoon and began our little life in Los Angeles. I started grad school and he started an unpaid internship and we lived very happily in a converted garage apartment with no hot water in the kitchen sink until a newborn moved us into a whopping one bedroom apartment a couple years later.

When the baby was five months old, Jacob and his siblings rigged up a surprise trip to Maui for his mother's sixtieth birthday. They had lived in Hawaii in the 90s, and their mom had always wanted to go back. She'd hinted that she wanted to turn sixty on the beaches where their family had spent many magical years, but she didn't expect that her kids would do anything about it. Her kids are kinda crazy though, so like I said they rigged up this trip.

When his family first started talking about it, I weighed in as a disinterested observer because there was no way our little family would be making this Hawaii trek. Of Jacob's five siblings I thought perhaps the single ones would go, maybe even the married, childless ones, but certainly not us. Certainly certainly not us.

At this point, Jacob had been unemployed for six months. We had a baby. We lived in a one bedroom apartment. I was adjuncting at LMU, and I tutored privately on the weekends; Jacob had found a decent amount of work on commercial sets and even one long gig working on the set of ABC's Scandal; but we were dipping into our savings every month.

When Jacob told me that of course, of COURSE, we were going I was shocked. It was as impossible for him to consider not going as it was for me to consider going. We argued and argued about it and finally came to a miserable compromise: he would go without us. The arguments came to an end, but we were even more unsettled about it.  

One afternoon Jacob was on the phone with a sibling talking about the trip. He glanced at me tentatively, and I retreated to the bedroom in angry tears. It was so absurd. How could he even consider this?! I was struggling as a new mother. I had a high needs baby. We'd been living on the hope of one interview to the next for months. I was stretched so thin by work and mothering, and we still weren't making ends meet. I was the numbers person. I knew this was a stupid stupid financial choice. Why couldn't he see that? Just because we could pay for it didn't mean we could afford it. Not only was he going to Hawaii, he was leaving me alone with our five month old for a week, and it was on my plate to find extra babysitting help, and I didn't know how how I would pay for this extra babysitting because he was taking all our money and flying to Hawaii with it! Oh was I mad and, oh, was I justified. Jacob was so so gloriously in the wrong and I was so perfectly in the right that I marched over to the computer and chose the only option I had left.

I bought a plane ticket to Maui.

Because somewhere through the dark cloud of my anger I knew that "being right" was making me a horrible person. And the only hope that I had was for me to be wrong.

I could either be right and alone and miserable and chanting my angry justifications over and over in my head until he went on the trip, and after he got back from the trip, and for the rest of our marriage.

Or I could be wrong and spend a week on Maui with my husband and our beautiful baby.

I also realized that this impulse in Jacob was one of the precise reasons I'd married him. This desire - the desire to sweep his mother up on the surprise trip of a lifetime no matter the cost - was exactly what I loved about him in theory and consistently what I tried to squash in practice. 

That was several years ago back before Jacob moved us to Houston so he could make better money and we could be closer to family, back before I stayed home full time with the kids, back before I stopped being such a machine when it comes to finances. . . or maybe that hasn't changed.

But I'm learning to embrace life's little "fly to Maui" moments when they arise and let us go out to Chick-fil-a for dinner.

And Jacob has learned to keep a little stash of cash in the house that Mint.com knows nothing about. It's something he sets aside not for poker night, but for date night. 

Spotted: Empathetic Toddler

Over the weekend my parents were in town and life was full of people and energy. My dad and I went on a long jog. It was a relaxed run for Mr. Boston since he's nursing a bursitis, but it was still about twice as far as I've run in a year. He pushed the double stroller, otherwise I would've been toast. I cooked in the kitchen with my mother. My folks brought us German Pretzels from my hometown bakery. Jacob and my brother had a little breather from work, and my other brother spent most of the weekend at our place too. At one point in the weekend's energy somebody broke something, one of the sweet little Anthropologie bowls Jacob bought me on my birthday. I don't really know how it happened, but it accidentally got knocked off the counter. The sound of breaking glass silenced the room, and little Jake peered over the counter onto the floor at the mess of porcelain shards.

Jake (alarmed): Oh, no! Can you fix it?
I shook my head.
Jake (deeply concerned): Was it one of your birthday bowls?
I nodded.
Jake (lip quivering): Was it special?

So much of my life is spent running interference, steering Jake in better directions, getting him involved in good things, scheduling our lives around meltdown o'clock. He's started hitting me. If he's mad when I'm putting him into his car seat, I have to watch out not to get kicked in the face. You know: life with a willful, demanding almost three year old. But peppered into the hard parts of parenting are these kinds of moments, the kind of moments that make you willing to break all your birthday bowls.

It Begins with A Clunky Old Washing Machine

Once upon a time two weeks ago, I bought a super cheap and clunky and old washing machine with load settings of Small, Large, Extra Large, and Super (because this is America) and after about a dozen YouTube videos and even more appliance repair forums, I diagnosed it as needing a new lid switch and a sagging apron repair.

Why don't we just buy new appliances like normal people? Ugh, I don't know. Actually I do. It all has to do with an adjective that starts with an S and ends with a TINGY and describes one 5'7'' homemaker with an oft forgotten blog. Jacob puts up with it because he finds it rather humorous.

So the other day, with the resolve only a mother can have when both her children are sleeping peacefully at the same time, I waltzed into the garage to service the beast with the new lid switch that had come in the mail the day before. I got as far as taking the front panel off before I realized that for all my good intentions, sleeping babes, and newfound washer knowhow, there was just no way a wrench, a measuring stick, and a saw - the only tools not on the job with the husband - were gonna make this job happen.

Soon enough I was back at the computer. Jacob's merciless schedule open on one tab. Washing machine repair video on another. Pinterest on another. And you, Blogger, making me feel guilty for all my postless days, on another.

And while no post happened that day, today is Groundhog Day which I guess makes it my blogoversary. Happy anniversary, little blog. In your honor, I will ramble a post away as usual, saying the same old things while taking furtive glances at the dishes in my sink and trying to ignore the twitching that always comes when my kitchen is dirty and the little voice whispering in my head on a merciless repeat: "The roaches are coming..."

We've been having ourselves some LONG days in our new little house. Jacob is working every day, and it's rare for him to be home before 7:30. We're looking at another month before things slow down. Sunday mornings are the brightest of the week because he doesn't start jobs until noon.

The house is coming together in little bursts. We finally got our bookshelves up. We mounted the TV. We hung some pictures. We still need some furniture for our bedroom - one being a chest of drawers so I have a place to put clothes, but we won't be making that happen probably until March, since I can hardly buy groceries by myself much less furniture. Right now all my clothes are in several heaps on the shelves in Jake's closet and I'm thinking about just tossing the whole lot. My wardrobe and I aren't on good terms. Nor will we be any time soon. I don't know how to shop for this postpartum body. I don't like shopping online because I won't know how things will fit, and I experience enough stress shopping alone that I don't dare adding two littles and a leaky bra area to the mix. I'm sorry. I don't know why I'm talking about this. Stopping stopping stopping.

The other night I was making dinner that involved a very hot pan on the stove, a very hot oven, and the willing if hazardous helper that is the two year old. I had stupidly decided to make bread earlier in the afternoon (I'm such a bad bread baker but I just can't quit you) because I thought it would be an enriching activity for Jake, when it ended up just being stressful, and my artisan loaf just flattened and flattened. Long story short, I overreached. And before I knew it, the house was a war zone, dinner wasn't ready, and the napless stuffy-nosed boy was throwing a fit on the floor.

So I whipped up a blueberry/spinach smoothie with some hemp and flax seeds (some standards die hard apparently) and set him up in the high chair with it and some canned salmon slathered with ketchup - all one handed because my generally sweet Lucy June was crying crying crying. Still trying to juggle the craziness, I was kicking swaddling blankets to a corner and shuffling soiled dishes into the dishwasher and tending to my stir fry. Then the toddler inhaled a seed or something and started hacking and hacking and couldn't stop and the baby was crying crying and dinner was burning and I was tripping over a jumbled mess of toy cars and screws and blocks.

My phone started buzzing on the counter. Jacob. He was on his way but was starving and thinking about just stopping and eating something. (And, man, if I could've scratched his eyeballs out through the phone...#notmybestself) I could hardly string a sentence together, but through my growling he deduced he should perhaps just hurry home. So I grabbed the hacking boy some water and then I picked up a rag to sop up a runny mess somewhere and a ROACH. ran up. my arm. Not kidding. Give me spiders. Give me scorpions. Give me stinging insects galore. But, no, I live in muggyville with the roaches. And on this particular night one of those roaches was running up my arm.

In that moment, I decided, I had arrived.

If you are currently in that moment, oh kindred young mother reader, let me extend: May the quiet low light of evening and glass of wine soon be yours. May your chocolate squares be copious and rich with the seasoning only sleeping babes can bring.

Sigh.

Anyhow. To round out a good ramble: my husband and my brother eventually fixed the washing machine to the tune of me saying "But the YouTube guy said..." while bouncing a three month old and distracting a two year old and feeling generally helpless...and grateful.

Grateful for the goodness of these days.

Grateful for days spent watching the sweetest wide-eyed baby in the world and gearing a toddler toward good things and making dinner for two hardworking men. And still somehow grateful for those other days when Lucy June won't stop fussing and Jake watches Dolphin Tale on repeat (en espanol...helps with the mommy guilt) and end with nuggets dipped alternately in honey mustard and ranch at Chick-fil-a.

It can be so hard parenting little people. So hard. Gosh it makes me crazy, but gosh it if ain't marvelous too. I can't believe the goodness. I can't believe the goodness all around me.

The Time We Got Engaged (pt. 3)

If you're catching up: read part one here and part two here.

We drove home from the creek house on Saturday night. I spent the entire ride tucked in the back seat of my father's truck next to my grandmother. I had a notepad out and I was asking her questions and taking notes about her childhood. (The child of Icelandic immigrants with seventeen siblings has plenty of them.)

We neared Fredericksburg, and my dad said he needed to stop by the clinic. After we dropped him off and headed home, my mother started talking about how he was going to the hospital to do some inductions:

"You know how he does that sometimes, right? I mean, gets some pregnant women started on inductions on Sunday night so he can go in and deliver a couple of babies on Monday morning? You know? Get the week started off right?"

"Sure, mom." I remember thinking how strange it was that my mother was all of a sudden talking about this. (Certainly, labor-talk is all the rage at this point in my life, but as a single 23 year old, I didn't just start up conversations about Pitocin and ripening cervixes.) The fact that my father, who has doctored for 60+ hours a week in this small town for the last thirty years, needed to stop by the clinic had not struck me as strange at all. But this nervous chatty mother of mine...that was unusual.

But again. I was oblivious to the import of the day and to the fact that my dad had actually stopped in town to have a chat with my husband to be. Everyone in that truck knew exactly what was going on, but not me.

As we made our way back to the house, I made some hyperbolic remark about how I hadn't showered all weekend on the river. My grandmother was appalled. I grinned and pushed the scandal - I admitted that I had gone swimming and slept in the t-shirt and gym shorts I was still wearing.

"Well, I hope you don't smell." She said, and my mother quickly changed the subject.

After we got home we began unloading the truck, and I helped with the general bustle of returning from a trip. Soon my grandmother came and got me, and she seemed legitimately concerned about something. She brought me to her house and said there was something strange in the master bedroom (Her master bedroom is like a museum because she's never slept in it and prefers her couch in the den.) She walked me back to the bedroom, pointed to a black suitcase on the floor on the far side of the bed, and asked if I knew who's it was. I told her I'd check, and as soon as I opened the suitcase my eyes settled on a very familiar khaki t-shirt sporting a plaid number 7, and I stopped breathing.

[ASIDE - Now before we go ragging on my grandmother for "ruining" one of the biggest surprises of my life. I will come to her aid and say that even though she knew THAT Jacob was coming and she'd figured out WHY he was coming, the fact that he might have left his stuff at her house to be a little stealthy never occurred to her and in her 88 years was simply confused and concerned. And besides. This is how stories are made.]

So there I was staring at Jacob's clothes and was in complete shock. I stood up and walked out of her house as she repeatedly asked about the suitcase. I couldn't even respond. I didn't understand what was happening. I felt like a wave was engulfing me in slow motion as I walked out onto her porch and across the driveway. Some family friends were there retrieving their daughter who'd come on the creek trip with us. The mom flagged me over to say that she'd just found a picture of me in her Bible from the time we went out on their boat. I smiled, said a few words, and walked away. I headed into the house and wandered through it to the back door and saw my brother who asked if I wanted to go on a run with him. I said sure. I then saw my mother and somehow managed to communicate that I'd just seen Jacob's suitcase at Nan's house. She was quiet for a minute and then said, "I was just about to go out to the garden. Would you like to come with me?" I nodded. We walked out to the garden and looked at the bolting romaine and the tomato plants

I'm giving you all these details because they're all very huge in my memory of this event. You see, I believe this experience has given me a unique insight about insanity. I think - speaking without any authority whatsoever - that an element of going crazy is not being able to put details of experience into a hierarchy. Imagine if you were here with me as I type and everything you saw mattered the same amount and it mattered a lot. The fact that there is taco seasoning and flour residue on the counter and that the muffins are about to burn in the oven and that I am a mother, would all have about the same significance. But they don't, and they shouldn't, and if they did the world would be a very confusing place indeed. You might be suspicious of everything. That's how I experienced the ten minutes between seeing Jacob's suitcase and the moment he drove up.

When Jacob got out of the car with my dad, I ran out of the garden and into his arms. He was surprised to see me galloping toward him since he'd hoped to sneak into my grandmother's. He handled the thwarted surprise pretty well, especially considering I was spewing words at him and making absolutely no sense:

"Robert wants me to go running and he's never asked me to go running ever. And the pepper plants aren't doing well at all. WHY is your suitcase at my grandmother's? And Mrs. Taylor has a picture of me WATER-SKIING in her Bible!!?!"

He looked down at me and brushed the matted creek hair from my forehead and told me to go inside and that he'd come get me in a few minutes.

I went inside and started to collect myself. My head was beginning to clear, and I began to embrace what was happening. I sat in the living room with my mother for awhile before going into my bedroom to be alone and to pray.

Jacob was back in about fifteen minutes dressed to the nines. He took my hand and walked me away from the house. We walked around back, out of the yard, and along the stretch of land along the creek. We went through a cluster of bushes and turned a corner, and I could see a circle of torches Jacob had lit underneath an old oak tree. The tree sits high on the banks of where the two creeks on the property meet. To get there we had to hike through some tall cactus ridden grass. Jacob picked me up and carried me.

And so we walked through the evening. Jacob in a shirt and tie and me in his arms in my creek attire. He set me down in the middle of all the torches and got down on one knee. He held up the loveliest of rings and said a couple things that I forgot almost immediately before he said:

"Katherine Suzanne Ramsay, will you marry me?"

I remember breathing in this moment. I loved how he'd said my whole name, how he'd summoned every syllable of me. How perfect this moment. The cicadas and the warm August night, the glow of the torches and the small bouquets of white daisies and baby's breath secured to each one. I couldn't believe this was happening. One of the biggest moments of my -

"So?" said the man still kneeling down.

And my eyes widened in embarrassment. I had one line in this whole charade, and I'd missed my cue. I blurted out "Oh! Um. Yes. YES!"

He stood up and put a ring on my finger - the same ring his grandfather had given his grandmother years and years ago.

Thanks for reading! Happy weekend!

The Time We Got Engaged (pt. 2)

Catch up with part one here, and I promise to be done with this whole charade by tomorrow!

So I flew home after my work in Princeton finished that summer and took a trip with my family to our creek house in south Texas. It's a standard late August trip for us that we take with a group of family friends. The day my mother and I would move me to Los Angeles was only a week away, and I was apprehensive about getting the details straightened out, but I was enjoying some much needed time to relax on the river under the pecan trees.

One night on the trip I was playing Cribbage with my grandmother Nana June and she told me there was a surprise back home and she wasn't going to tell me what it was. She didn't say that the surprise was for me, and I assumed it was something involving her dog Duchess because well...most of her news involved Duchess.

She teased me for the rest of the weekend about this surprise, and I made a few guesses to humor her, but I didn't have an inkling of what the surprise was, and honestly didn't think I would care about it as much as she seemed to think I would. My brain was mostly preoccupied by this HUGE move to Los Angeles I was about to make and the fact that I would soon be reuniting with my boyfriend and all those good things.

One of the family friends on the trip was a girl we shall call Elizabeth. Elizabeth and I grew up together but we hadn't connected in a while, so she and I spent most of the trip chatting and watching our brothers cliff jump, shoot gar, and throw poison ivy at each other.

Elizabeth actually wasn't supposed to come on this trip. She was supposed to have moved six weeks before to South Carolina where her boyfriend lived. But, no, they had broken up...I got the story in detail.

She and her mother had packed up her whole life and shuttled her half way across the country so she could live closer to her serious boyfriend. Long drives with mothers apparently make for lots of good soul-searching or something because when she arrived she told her mother to go sit in the moving van while she went in and broke up with Mr. Not Right. They then turned the van around and drove right back to Texas.

She was still a little emotional about it, but she was certain she'd done the right thing. It had been hard, and she found out afterwards that he'd been planning on proposing, like had a diamond in his pocket when she waltzed in and ended things.

As you can imagine, the timing of this made it the scariest story I'd ever heard.

My mother and I were T-5 days from taking basically the exact same trip except we would be heading west on I-10 while they had headed east. I was a total deer in headlights. Complete inner turmoil. I mean, did I need a bigger sign? What did it mean?? Why would God let me encounter this most awful of stories right before I embarked on one that was so similar??

Eventually I stopped freaking out for long enough to answer Elizabeth's queries about me and Jacob. I told her about how awful long distance dating had been, about my plan to move to LA, and about how we wanted to discern the next step in our relationship.

And she interrupted, "Wait, you're not sure you want to marry this guy?"

I immediately felt very awkward and stumbled through some explanation about how we were still figuring things out and how our need to answer that question was precisely why I was moving to LA. Blah blah blah. I fed her all the things I'd been feeding myself over the past months about our situation.

As I listened to myself I began to understand the truth: I just didn't think Jacob was there yet.

Jacob never brought up matrimony except to tease. No questions about my ring size or strange contact with my father. No engaged in the fall married in the spring conversations. If anything, in recent months we'd spoken about it less than previously. I just plumb didn't think he was ready to marry me, and I really wanted us to be on the same page, therefore I wasn't ready to marry him either. So I routinely, methodically, and even therapeutically had been pushing that question out of my mind.

Because of course I wanted to marry him. I was just trying to be chill and go with the flow. It was a strange and even brave realization for me, and I blurted out. "Well, I mean, if he were to show up on my doorstep tomorrow with a ring I'd say yes."

I don't remember where the conversation went after that but I was simply making a point.

And THAT is another set-up.

Pay off tomorrow friends, because this mama is supposed to be sleeping.

(Part three here)

That Time We Got Engaged (pt. 1)

There's no reason I'm posting this now other than that it's the holidays and I'm sentimental. If you haven't read our love story you can read part one here and part two here.

If you're hankering for a honey rush you can score some of ours in the giveaway that ends tonight.

>><<

Our engagement story of course begins long before the day we got engaged. So this whole installment has ended up as one big prologue. Apologies.

Jacob and I spent the year after college long distance. I headed off to sew my semi-wild oats abroad, and he to make a way for himself stateside.

My year in Italy was half-amazing, half-horrible.

I was training to run the Rome marathon, a race that my dear friend, two brothers, and dad were all running with me. I taught at an English language school in a job that still ranks as my favorite ever. I ate pizza every day for lunch and got paid every Friday with an envelope full of cash. I lived in a converted garden shed in a seaside town and rode a train every day along the Mediterranean.

And I missed Jacob.

All the time.

He, meanwhile, was in Portland at his mom’s house. He painted houses and interned at a local TV station. By March he landed a six-week gig that took him to Hollywood. By the end of that gig he’d scored a full time job and looked to be staying in sunny Southern California.

By April, we were at a crossroads. I was about to move back to the US for a summer job in Princeton, and after that I didn't know where I was going. But I knew one thing: I couldn't handle long distance dating anymore. We needed to live closer together or break up. So we talked about it long and hard and decided that I should move to LA. He’d landed there at least for a while, and even though I’d never even been to California and I didn’t have a job or a place to live, I was planning on packing up all my belongings and heading West in August as soon as my summer job in New Jersey wrapped up.

In Princeton that summer, I worked for a seminar program and basically spent the whole summer drinking Sam Adams and white wine out of plastic cups while solving the world’s problems with this (courageous) lady and another of my good friends from college. 

One morning the three of us were on campus, and I don’t remember who brought the magazine or what it was or any of it except that we all ended up taking a “What Type of Engagement Ring Are You?” Quiz – I’m fuzzy on the details honestly, but that doesn’t usually stop storytellers, so I won’t let it stop me.

Taking such a quiz was tempting fate, and I certainly wasn’t inclined to do so. My friends prodded me about how close Jacob and I were to getting engaged, and I back-pedaled big time. I was moving to Los Angeles IN ORDER to see if MAYBE PERHAPS we were supposed to POTENTIALLY get engaged. Jacob and I didn’t talk about marriage. I mean, we’d tease each other about it mercilessly. We both were very clear about each other’s habits that would have to go if/when we tied the knot and we'd started naming our future children, but we never talked about it FOR REAL.

Of course, we were in a relationship and were “serious” or whatever, but Jacob had never brought up a marriage or engagement timeline, and so I never did either.

Anyway, I took the stupid quiz, and I was like 100% an heirloom ring.

This was no surprise. No surprise at all. I’m a tightwad who reuses the mesh bags her garlic comes in, so you can imagine how much my stomach lurched at the idea of someone spending actual $$$$ on a diamond. And heirloom rings are vintage and full of sentimental value and all those wonderful things…

But what if Jacob didn’t have an heirloom ring? And he almost certainly didn't. My life would of course be ruined without a true heirloom ring. After all, the magazine had merely confirmed the murky things that were already written on my schoolgirlish heart and poor Jacob couldn’t do a thing about it.

He also was just starting a new job and was paying off loans and certainly had no money for a ring, so NO and NO we wouldn't be getting engaged anytime soon, and did I mention he NEVER breathed a hint of a word about it? So after the stupid quiz I stopped thinking about it. I was moving to LA and that was big enough for now.

I continued my job in Princeton with my buddies; Jacob and I had our weekly phone and beer dates with occasional stolen conversations and texts on the off days; and the summer ended. 

That's where I'm leaving you with this installment, but I will say that the heirloom ring detail - I know this from all the screenwriting talk I’ve been subjected to over the years - is what you call a set-up.

Read part two here.