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.

On Fear, Failure, and Self-Care

My thoughts on this are pretty muddled, but if I wait for them to clarify I won't hit publish on this post until 2017, and in the interest of not going even longer without a blog post here goes nothing.

I've always equated self-care with treating myself.

Perhaps I'm the only person in the world with this misconception and thus this little piece of writing is pointless, but maybe some of you are like me.

Maybe some of you say the words self-care and you conjure up images of tea lights illuminating a bathtub full of rose petals. Maybe you think a book in a comfy chair. Maybe wine and chocolate or my newest weakness Glutino Yogurt Pretzels. 

I had a really hard time after my third baby was born. Really hard. He's ten months old now, and I'm mostly out of the proverbial woods, but I can still see them in my rearview, and sometimes they're closer than they appear. (#pun #set #spike) 

I've learned that self-care is much better understood as: doing the hard but necessary things for myself. I'm talking things like going to the dentist or the dermatologist. Making my bed. Exercising. And on particularly hard days: eating.

Self-care is tricky for me because I'm largely externally motivated (Thank You, Gretchen) - I do great when someone dangles the proverbial carrot, but not so great when I need to make a change for myself.

This is too bad. Really really too bad. I've thought a lot about what it means to be externally motivated, and I've found that at least for me it's closely linked to my fear of failure.

FAILURE is my self-elected word for 2016.

Halfway through the year and I'm no more comfortable with failure, but I'm committed to thinking about my failures as learning opportunities. (Thank you, Carol.)

For me, failure has a lot to do with how people perceive me. I HATE letting people down. This fear of letting people down has driven so many of my childhood and adult decisions. Only now am I beginning to let go of my people-pleasing obsession, because mama just can't anymore.

Here's the kicker: the only place that I've been OK with failure is when I let myself down. If I'm the only person affected by my failure, if I'm the only person I'm letting down, then nobody sees the failure and the failure doesn't count.

Because I don't count.

I tend to live a narrative that is simultaneously self-obsessed (what must they think of me??) and self-neglectful (you're only letting yourself down and that's ok).

People talk about self-worth, and I always thought I had plenty of it, but the honest truth is that I don't always live like it. I thought I could confidently say the words "I am enough," (Thank you, Brene), but I don't live like I am enough.

So I've turned myself into a third person, and for the time being it seems to be working. I'm constantly repeating mantras. Things like:

You're a person too.

Someone needs to take care of your children's mother.

Don't confuse self-sacrifice with self-neglect.

I've been working on this. I've been taking time for myself: I'm making sure I get myself fed and showered. I'm making it a priority to exercise and hydrate. I'm getting up early. I'm even taking time to pursue meaningful hobbies - even when that means I have to pay or obligate someone to watch my kids.

I'm realizing just how hard self-care is.

I'm seeing the effects of taking better care of myself. It's not all roses, but I'm having glimpses. I'm having moments when I'm with my kids and I'm simply with them. I see how beautiful they are, and I just sit with that reality: I'm not itching to tackle eight things on my to do list or counting down the seconds till naps.

It feels good.

Scattered Thoughts on Mothering These Little People

Sometime in the last year Jake has grown up into like a real KID.

I'm not used to mothering a real KID. For a long time motherhood was very toddler-y. I could engage him in activities, plop his sister down to watch him, and go along my merry way of interrupted semi-productivity.

Then I got sick with baby 3, and when I came out of the haze, Jake was a kid. A kid who plays with real legos and goes to swim lessons.

This makes me a mom who steps on legos and drives her son to activities.

I was pretty suited to toddler motherhood. I don't really like going places, and so for those couple of summers when all my child needed was a bucket of water and a porch, and I could prop up my feet with some enriching chick lit, I was in a pretty good spot. That just can't happen everyday, now that Jake knows the word "boring."

He's found out so much about the world that I successfully obscured for a very long time. He knows about candy and toys and where to buy them and who has money to buy them. He knows that certain restaurants have playplaces and others don't.

Lucy June has settled into a phase of lovely high pitched screams when she doesn't get her way and wants to do everything herself. Buckling the car seat: "MINE DO IT!" Spreading butter on her toast: "MINE DO IT!" Putting on her pants: "MINE DO IT!" It's as...endearing as it sounds.

And I'm learning. I'm learning how to understand what our family rhythms will look like. I'm slow to adapt and little people change quickly. I mostly recognize "phases" only in the rearview mirror.

Jake will always be the one to break me in.

This hurts me for him. I've needed a lot of breaking in. And the more I tread down the path of parenthood, the more breaking in I need.

Motherhood seems like such a paradox: Enjoy the little things without being overwhelmed by all the little things. Slow down and embrace today, but be ready to change tomorrow because your kids are growing so fast.

There's a necessary fluidity to mothering littles, and that fluidity can drown you or it can buoy you up.

For the past six months, I've been drowning. We've overcommitted ourselves in a variety of ways. This whole pregnancy feels kinda like an overcommitment.

Honestly it only takes about one kid to feel overcommitted to this whole mothering gig.

I know from talking to many many mothers that preserving time for yourself and a sense of yourself is a constant struggle. But if I'm learning something in this 33+ week of pregnancy in Houston's summer glory: sometimes struggling isn't the answer.

I want to learn the strokes of motherhood. It's easy enough for me to swim when the time is right, but in the difficult seasons I'm still learning how to float.

We have a lot going on in these last six weeks of pregnancy: there are some pretty big waves on the horizon. But the thing about this pregnant body: it floats. It floats pretty darn well, if I let it.

Many thanks to this lovely little friend who let me use the images she took when her family came with us to our creek house in South Texas a couple weekends ago.

Crunch Time Remodeling

Move date is in LESS than two weeks.

Where did the time go?! I thought children grew up fast, but no, move-dates approach fast. When we started this whole gig a few months ago, our move date felt like a lifetime away. And here it comes and there is so much to do, and I can do. . . almost none of it.

Like I seriously would be more helpful gone. So I might skip town and visit my folks so Jacob can work all hours without fielding my frantic family-update texts.

Up for some honesty? Well if you'll excuse, I'm gonna change gears here and spew some words at you. My FEELINGS. I need to VENT them.

This remodel has been really hard for me emotionally.

Initially I was struggling because I wasn't getting to help. This was a dream of ours, and I was barely getting to be part of it. And I was a little heartbroken.

I eventually decided to distance myself from the project entirely. I kinda acted like it wasn't going on and started treating it a little like Jacob's job. He was at work. He and my brother would talk about it at night, and I would just check out. It was easier for a little while until he started working on it a lot, till all hours of the night, and it seemed like he'd abandoned us for his pet project.

He'd come home utterly exhausted and see me on the couch also exhausted. My natural response was usually one of: "Hello, man who got me pregnant and then left me alone with his banshee offspring, your day was hard?? Did your hammer skip his nap and then insist on being held all morning? Did your jigsaw completely refuse to eat lunch because you couldn't find his ducky plate and throw himself on the floor? No, they just...behaved exactly as you would expect? Hmm. Sounds terrible."

And he'd be like: "I'm building our house."

And I'd be like: "Blah blah blah."

(I am typically better at empathy than this. Just not with my husband.)

Yeah so... the whole turn myself off wasn't working well. It was easier in some ways. Easier to be angry than...sad.

What I had to realize is that it was OK that I was sad. Of course I had to be sad. I have these kiddos, and I love them, and they are my biggest dream come true, and I get to stay home and draw blimps and fire hydrants for them all day, and I think that's what's best for my family right now...but it still means I'm missing out on something, something I would've loved to be more involved in, and it was OK to be sad about that.

For the last week I've been turning myself back on again, opening myself back up to this sadness. I channeled a little Rudy and decided to give it my best from the sidelines. And it's been good. It feels good. I even had a friend watch the kids for a few hours the other day so I could help seal tile, and I suffered the kids through trips to the hardware store and the countertop supply with the guys, instead of staying home and moping.

It's still frustrating. I don't get to help hardly ever, and I'm putting the kids to bed by myself basically every night. I still get a little jealous. But things are much better this way.

Take yesterday.

Yesterday evening, even though I wasn't expecting them for hours, my little brother and Jacob came home at six, and my little brother promptly started feeding the baby. He paused and couldn't hide the excitement in his voice when he said: "Katie, it's looking so good over there. So good."

Jacob nodded in agreement.

And I felt my heart swell.

There I was. In the kitchen. Sauteing cabbage and scrubbing crusted oatmeal off the counter, just like usual. And my heart was swelling.

>><<

So now for pics of some groutless terra cotta tiles and raw trim.

The boys both agreed that the (18 hour) days they spent tiling were pretty much the hardest they'd ever worked in their lives. So. Props to the tilers of the world. 

Last weekend was trim. And now they can get to grouting and finally finally finishing the kitchen cabinets. 

(And - despite what this picture may suggest - we didn't paint our walls honey brown.)

For the countertops, we've decided on a Lyra Silestone.

So they will hopefully go in next week, and if they don't the boys assure me we can throw down some plywood as a stop gap. *fingers crossed*

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 :)

How to Let Go of Your Standards and Feel Right Good About It

Did you read Blythe's post about simplifying her life?? It rang so true for me. Between that and The Nesting Place tucked in my carry on, I'm spending a lot of our current vacation mentally at home: ordering and redecorating our house, painting the gross highchair, actually printing some pictures.

In my home, I've struggled both to create workable systems and maintain the systems I create. Surprisingly, however, this has gotten a little better since I've become a mother. I'm better at it because I have more to keep track of, so I don't have the option to let everything slide. But, mostly, I'm better at it because being a mother has taught me that it's okay to be deliberate about systems that aren't perfect...that sometimes the only real problem with my system is that I just haven't embraced it as a system.

For example:

When Jake was a baby, we had a few bibs that we got here and there that didn't work very well. So when Lucy June started solids, I thought we needed a better system. Some people have those bibs that are bulky and plastic and basically end in a bowl, and those seem like they'd work. Or Zulilly had some bibs that I'd seen them on Shark Tank and thought they looked handy. After researching all the bibs and all the options and the mom blogs and the amazon customer reviews and feeling just overwhelmed at all the ways of managing this issue, I began to wonder just how we'd done this with Jake. I had already done this once without any of those fancy bibs, and somehow my baby grew up into a three year old. I thought back and remembered that I'd done it by feeding him shirtless. Strip baby. Watch baby "eat." And then tackle the whole kit and kaboodle with a washcloth. Or plunk the baby in the tub and call it a "bedtime routine." Point being: it had worked. So there I was staring at all the tabs in my browser with all these great bib options, and I slowly began closing them and deciding that I was ok with doing it that way again. 

Now I'm at peace with my bibless baby feeding. We are as messy as ever, but I'm no longer anxious about it.

I often hear new mothers lament about how they've let go of their standards. It makes me sad when I hear it. This post is a gesture to rebrand the flexing and stretching of motherhood that looks and feels a little like lowered standards. Of course, maybe your standards are lowering and you need to fight the good fight and turn yourself around. But maybe you're just learning how to be more at peace with chaos.

The End.

Cue image of my nephew's enormous mouth. This child is awesome. And his mouth is awesomer.

Staying Interesting and Interested

At a bridal shower a few years ago (Hi, Meg!) I played a game where everyone wrote down encouraging words about marriage on slips of paper and the bride chose her favorite. She chose:

"Stay Interesting and Interested"

Right now, I'm trying to stay interested in Jacob's enthusiasm for tiny houses. He was on a kick about a year ago and recently got back onto it. I can't say I encourage him very much because how do you encourage something like this? I'm pretty sure we graduated from tiny house potential as soon as we started having kids. I mean, currently, we have five people living in an 1100 sq. ft house. Per person, we're basically on par with the tiny housers. 

source

He really just wants to build a house on a trailer and drive it around and park it overnight in any spot where he wants to watch the sunrise. So basically what he wants is a "tiny vacation home" which I argue misses the entire point of the tiny house movement. 

For all I tease him about it, I find them pretty interesting, these quirky little buildings with all their nooks and hooks and crannies. 

But were he ever to drive home with a double axle trailer and tell me he was going to build a house, scratch that OUR house, on it...well...I mean for him to do that I would not only have to be on board, I would have to be on duty. 

Especially now that we have kids, staying interested in each others' hobbies is a lot more effortful than just an occasional "how nice" - being interested often means enabling the other person, we have to help each other stay interesting.

I'm the type that is a huge cheerleader for Jacob to follow some passion, but when he actually starts in on it I feel abandoned and overwhelmed, and bitterness mounts because I can't beLIEVE he's out there PLAYing when there are bedtimes to routine and diapers to change! 

Interested is when I let him pursue a passion even when it feels inconvenient to me.

Interested is when my husband is outside with his tools finishing what I'm sure is a very pressing project, while I scramble through the end of dinner prep with two hungry people clutching at my calves. 

Interested is when he comes in for dinner and proudly presents me with...a cherrywood muddler, and I suppress the lip-pursing, eyebrow-raising "THIS is how you've spent your last half hour?" face. Or half-suppress it...or perhaps I just own the snark completely while taking the muddler from him and making cocktails.

Sometimes I have to be more of a mom so he can be something other than a dad for a little while.

Sometimes I have to be more of a mom so our children can watch their dad be a carpenter. So I can watch him too.

I have my interests too. Things I pursue, that make me a happier and hopefully better person. He's interested in those things with me.

And often his interest surfaces around seven in the morning, when I'm nursing my sacred morning coffee as he takes the toddler to the bathroom and tends to the baby who's started to squawk, and he says too loudly: "I'm coming, Lucy June. Papa loves you MORE than his computer." And then to me "I'm just gonna change a diaper here, honey, if that's OK with you."

"Go for it!" I say. He would welcome help, but he mostly just wants me to remember all that he is juggling so I can play like I'm a blogger for a few more minutes. 

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. 

Answer Me This

Linking up with Kendra today at Catholic All Year because she's my old buddy from LA and because I like her blog and because I like blog posts that write themselves especially when I've been in a bit of a blogging dessert, so here we go.

1. What time do you prefer to go to Mass?

In Lent we tend to find ourselves at Saturday vigil Masses. Jacob ALWAYS gives up alcohol and sweets for Lent which basically means I do too, and since Jacob is a Letter of the Law type, we go to Mass on Saturdays so we can start our feasting early. Because Saturdays without beer are kind of more like Sadurdays (Get it? Get it? 100% for you, honey)



But my preferred Mass is the 11am. An 11am Mass means that we don't have to rush breakfast and we can maybe even be on time. Also, our couple crush goes to the 11am, so that's another reason.

2. Would you rather be too hot or too cold?

I would have to say hot, so long as I am somewhere like Houston with really great A/C. 

My dear friend from college has a very smart grandmother (who with her husband basically started the Core at University of Dallas, so Smart Smart) said that the hottest she ever was was in Boston in the summer and the coldest she ever was was Florida in the winter. Tell me that doesn't blow your mind.

3. How many brothers and/or sisters do you have?

Four. Three brothers and a sister. They're awesome and I could talk about them all day.

My dad's mother had sixteen brothers and sisters though, which is a lot more than four. 



I snapped that picture of a picture at her house last week. This is sixteen of my great grandparents' eighteen children. One died when he was two before my grandmother - middle row, second from the right - was even born. She was number 13. She was named June because she was born in June and didn't get a middle name. Number 12 - Ralph - is not in the picture up there because he was the one boy who died in the war. My great-grandmother had seven sons in the war. Seven. Legend has it she got a medal from the president. My Nana June and her brother Ralph were super close. She still has the last letter he ever wrote. He wrote it in a foxhole. He wrote it to her.  

Uncle Otto - top row, third from the left - didn't make the photo so they left a hole for him and drew him in. Clever clever pre-Picasa.

4. If you were faced with a boggart, what would it turn into?

This isn't a very fun question. Probably a judge. Judges are very scary. The whole legal authority to require things of me or take things away from me. Or maybe I just can't stand getting in trouble.  

5. Barbie: thumbs up or thumbs down?

I played with Barbies a lot as a little girl - by myself in my room and sometimes at a specific friend's house - but I was embarrassed about it, and I still kind of am. I think that answers the question. 

6. If someone asked you to give them a random piece of advice, what would you say?

Learn to be wrong at least sometimes because chances are you're wrong a lot. (Said me to myself.)