Ok, just to contrast with the cuteness going on at AnneMariePace‘s house, our brand of cute is just a little on the crude side:

My daughter, Meg (7 years old), just walked into the room to tell me that she had changed my 1 year old’s (Kate) diaper for the first time ever. Surprised, I asked her if it went okay. She said, “Yeah. It was kind of like diarrhea, sort of a mix between number 1 and number 2… I guess you’d call that number 3.”

Sadly, I can’t even bring myself to put a smiley next to that statement.

Your #1 Match: ENTP

The Visionary You are charming, outgoing, friendly. You make a good first impression. You possess good negotiating skills and can convince anyone of anything. Happy to be the center of attention, you love to tell stories and show off. You’re very clever, but not disciplined enough to do well in structured environments. You would make a great entrpreneur, marketing executive, or actor.

Your #2 Match: ENFP

The Inspirer You love being around people, and you are deeply committed to your friends. You are also unconventional, irreverant, and unimpressed by authority and rules. Incredibly perceptive, you can usually sense if someone has hidden motives. You use lots of colorful language and expressions. You’re quite the storyteller! You would make an excellent entrepreneur, politician, or journalist.

The second of these is probably more true than the first, but not by much.

I’m about to walk out the door to Pilates class. Pilates is this stretching/strength-building exercise performed on what looks like a roomfull of torture devices. I like the discipline of it, how it forces me to push past my weaknesses and finish all the repetitions.

Now if I could just apply that part about pushing past my weaknesses to the rest of my life…

On Friday, my husband whisked me away for a weekend to ourselves. What a treat! I actually slept until 10 am on Saturday AND Sunday. I exercised twice. I watched 3 movies. I finished Stargirl and started reading Inkheart. And for the very best part…CABLE INTERNET! I checked my e-mail a bajillion times and leisurely surfed all the boards. It was great! Those aren’t all the fun things we did but some things I’ll just keep to myself. 🙂

Came home on Sunday to lovely hugs and kisses from our kids AND (insert trumpets here) Dah-dah-daaaaaaah! A HIGHLIGHTS CONTRACT! Yes, it’s true. I have to keep reminding myself. I sold two poems to Highlights. It’s nice to finally break in there.

And to end, in a day-late homenagem to my mom:

Thanks for putting up with me when I was a snotty, disrespectful wretch of a teenager.

Thanks for not saying “payback is rough” (well, not too often) when I whine about my own little messy Marvins.

Thanks for dreaming bigger dreams for me than I dreamed for myself.

Thanks for sending out all my subs (with your own stamps!) to cut down on the response time since I’m in Brazil.

Thanks…just thanks for all the things too numerous to name…for all the ways I don’t even know you’ve loved me.

I love you, Mom.

You Are 35 Years Old

35 Under 12: You are a kid at heart. You still have an optimistic life view – and you look at the world with awe. 13-19: You are a teenager at heart. You question authority and are still trying to find your place in this world. 20-29: You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel excited about what’s to come… love, work, and new experiences. 30-39: You are a thirtysomething at heart. You’ve had a taste of success and true love, but you want more! 40+: You are a mature adult. You’ve been through most of the ups and downs of life already. Now you get to sit back and relax.

Well, lol, I am 35. Apparently I act my age.

What is worth writing about? Sometimes I get stuck in the thought that if I don’t have something significant to say and if it doesn’t flow from my fingertips onto the keyboard in a significant way, that I must have nothing to say at all. I mean, if I did say it and then it didn’t affect anyone in any significant way then doesn’t that mean it’s not important and I wasted my time? I don’t want to waste my time. So then I end up not writing at all out of fear that it won’t be significant or that I’m not gifted enough to make it significant. Sounds pretty depressing, doesn’t it?

I know that I’ve done my best work when I’ve written something that I consider to be significant. When it is something I feel deeply, even if it is something humorous, I can make it real. The trick is figuring out what aspect of it feels significant to me. I’ll work on that later. But right now, I just feel like a boring, insignificant typist.

I used to think that I couldn’t write while listening to music. Then I had kids. I think I need to get some headphones. My mc is beginning to resemble Steve from Blues Clues.

So you’d think that by deciding to blog, I’d at least have a fraction of cool in me. I mean after all, everyone I know that blogs is cool or has some sort of interesting audience they want to reach. It would help me be a really interesting, cool blogger if there were the least bit of controversy in me, one would think. You know, something that would draw attention. But alas, I’m sort of dull.

My husband and I have this ongoing joke that he did all his cool stuff before we married and that I spent my teen years listening to contemporary Christian music and shunning anything from popular culture while he was out partying and going to Rolling Stones concerts. The part about me is only partially true. Okay, well, probably mostly true. I mean, years later when I was about to marry my husband, one of the guys I graduated with ran into my sister-in-law (to be). In asking what was up with her brother, she said that he was about to marry me. His jaw dropped and he stiffened his back and straightened his arms by his side as if to say “he’s marrying straight as an arrow Kristy”?

In all honesty, he had a bit of a skewed view of me. I was rebellious too, but I don’t think very many people saw my rebellion. And even in my rebellion, I was never one of the coolest kids on the block. I consider it a coup these days when I can even name the group playing that popular song from the 80’s on my husbands ipod. (And yes, he has an ipod. I don’t. I want one but it’s just an example of how I’m always cool two steps behind everyone else.)

Except now. I’m jumping on the blog bandwagon. It’s the cool thing to do. And I even made it here before my husband. 🙂