An anniversary of sorts

Eighteen years ago, I was in Atlanta for a business trip. Kent and I worked for the same large company then, and had met in another meeting for the same gigantic project a couple of months earlier. I knew him only slightly, and we had not (by anyone’s standards) been on a date nor did I really know he was interested in me. All of those details matter for this story.

Anyway—there were about 80 of us on that trip and the days were incredibly long, with contentious meetings scheduled for about 10 hours a day. As it happened. St. Patrick’s Day fell on a Wednesday and by then, a group of us were desperate for a bit of a break, so we all went out for dinner and then looked for someplace to go dancing.

By the time we found a place, it was pretty late. But the music was good, the beer wasn’t horribly expensive and we needed a way to blow off some steam.

On the dance floor, I noticed a man doing a very athletic version of the Electric Slide. He had clearly had a lot of dance training, and was really quite good. I’ve always like to dance, and I was intrigued. I started trying to add in the steps he was doing, and pretty soon he and I were dancing away as he taught me his version. But this version was truly very athletic: think squats and then leaps. You can imagine how tiring it was! I finally had to stop and I thanked him for working with me and told him I was going to go get a beer.

And here’s where it gets kind of sweet. The dancer said OK, and then he pointed at Kent. “I’ll go teach your husband how to do this dance.” If I remember correctly, I sort of sputtered something about not being married and then got a beer.

I told Kent, of course, and over the three years when I wouldn’t date him we would sometimes get together on our “anniversary” and have a laugh. OK I had a laugh. I don’t know what that man in the bar saw, but he clearly saw something in the way Kent watched me. And here we are, married for nearly 14 years.

Here's a video of that dance (obviously not me hahaha!):

Another birthday

This time, it's my younger son. I don't have a lot of baby pictures of him, partly because he was the second and fell victim of the behavior of most parents with baby number two: far fewer pictures. But I will also say we had an entire roll of pictures from his first week that were completely lost by the photo developing place.

Here are two from the same day shortly before his first birthday.

Been dabbling

In paint. I’ve read some blog posts that describe painting fabric (often silk) for clothing, not décor, and I’ve been interested in trying that myself. But I sure didn’t want to spend the cash on silk only to have my efforts look like total amateur hour. So I got some cheap cotton cloth at IKEA, bought some paints with a bit of metallic in them that were billed as being suitable for fabric painting, and gathered up some other paints I had on hand for painting cards (you know, like Christmas cards). I had a set of cheap brushes and figured for this attempt, they would have to do.

I will say that if I go any further with painting on fabric, I’ll need better brushes. These were horrible—the bristles wanted to splay out and shed, which created texture I didn’t want. The paints for cards were OK, nothing you’d want to use on clothing fabric, but for this experiment they were adequate.

I penciled in a grid on the fabric, and then over the course of several weekends (and until today, only when it was sunny outside in hopes of better light), started painting random squares, rectangles and lines. I was going for a randomized stained-glass effect, so if you are trying to identify a pattern, you can stop. There isn’t one!

Today, I outlined each grid with black, and this is where better brushes would have helped. As it is, I console myself with thinking that it looks like the hand soldering you’d see in stained glass made by someone who is not an expert.

How is it March already?

Don't you hate it when the blog posts you've got in your head don't quite make it to the blog itself? I keep starting posts, and then can't quite finish them up. And now it’s March 5. And today's my older son’s birthday.

I was talking with him on Friday and said something about well I knew I what I was doing the day he was born. He told me I say that every year, and he’s right. I do. But it was a big deal to me, having my first baby and my second major surgery—plus my OB/GYN was kind of nutty, and I was so scared about having a spinal that I didn’t give a rip about labor. Like I didn't even feel it. That's a needle phobia for you.

Anyway. Here’s one of my favorite baby pictures of him. He’s always been photogenic; what I love most about this photo is you can see his face and how we’re interacting. He was about 2 or 3 months old here.

Voting with my wallet

Last week, the CEO of Under Armour said "To have such a pro-business president is something that is a real asset for the country." You can read the Reuter article covering this here.

I disagree with both the premise that 45 is pro-business and that he’s an asset for our country. So I’m voting with my wallet.

I got a gift card to a local specialty running store for my birthday and made sure I didn’t get anything from Under Armour. Instead, I got the Nike top I'm wearing here.

I realize I am one person and almost certainly will not change Kevin Plank’s mind about anything. But I am going to do what I can where I am, and that means I will no longer purchase anything from his company.

A (belated) birthday round up

On my dessert plate

My birthday this year was a little weird—I’d scheduled a day off, and Kent and I had planned on using a gift certificate from my folks to Story. But he had to leave very unexpectedly for Tulsa that afternoon to help his mother, so we postponed everything.

After a week--still gorgeous!

My friend Kerry sent me some gorgeous roses (she knows that pink is my favorite color), and my mother sent me a book she found both enjoyable and thought-provoking (The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson). And oddly, I got a free meal from Ikea (guess that family rewards card pays off?).

This last Saturday, Kent was able to be home for about 36 hours (he is in Tulsa again) and we enjoyed our belated birthday dinner.

There’s a story behind the dress I’m wearing. My friend Jeanne who is both an imaginary and real friend (since we went to the same high school, she’s definitely real but she lives in Ohio so we don’t see each other all that often) has a daughter who is now in graduate school, so in her early to mid-20s. Jeanne had a dress that her daughter had worn in eight grade and was asking some of our mutual friends if their daughters would be interested. I hesitantly said that if none of them wanted it, I would be interested. Long story not so long, she sent it to me.

You can see the details
a little better here

I layered a lace bodysuit under the dress—it’s winter, after all, and the dress has spaghetti straps plus I don’t like wearing strapless bras. The bodysuit has a very deep-cut back and the sleeves are ¾. I also wore a raspberry pashmina with the dress since we had unseasonably warm temps on Saturday (70° in February?) and I didn’t need a coat.



All in all, we had a great time. I’m hopeful that my mother-in-law’s health will continue to improve and we won’t need to make emergency trips to see her and help her with things.

Catching up

Let’s see, where was I?

Oh right, I was going to attend a protest against the travel ban on January 29 at our airport, but my mother in law’s health took a real nose dive and she was admitted that day to the hospital. She was released Wednesday, February 1, then was taken by ambulance Thursday, February 2, released back to her home and then taken away again on February 3. This time she was admitted and is still there.

So I didn’t go to that protest. The next week, I did go to an interfaith vigil against the ban on February 5. As with the Women’s March, I had no idea what to expect, and as with the Women’s March, I found the event very moving and uplifting.

There were about 1300 people at the vigil. As with the Women’s March, the KC area will never pull the kinds of numbers that cities like Boston or LA do, but I thought that was impressive since the area is pretty red. In fact there were so many of us that we filled the sanctuary, the equally large fellowship hall and then a couple hundred of us stood outside in the large courtyard (the building is shaped like a hollow square and this courtyard is the center. Fortunately, the weather was mild but I’ll admit I got pretty cold by the end.

The vigil was definitely multi-faith. To the best of my recollection, the speakers included two rabbis, three Muslim leaders (maybe four?), a couple of Catholic relief charities folks, a leader from a local Buddhist group, the host church (which was Disciples of Christ), and a speaker from an atheist group. And a man who’d only been in the country for about six months spoke about why he needed refuge from Syria, and the threats against him and his family. He lost so many relatives and was being actively hunted himself—it was chilling to hear this story.

I found it reassuring to see that I was not alone in my opposition to this ban (and I was so glad to see the recent ruling on the ban). And I’m still figuring out how to act on my beliefs. Attending protests is a start, but it’s not enough.