Rachel Callahan

The Artistic Train Wreck.

April 17, 2012April 21, 2012 Rachel Callahan I embarrass myself just for your amusement., I'm a Glutton for Adventure, Just My Luck

My Dad is an artist.

Well, he’s kinda everything. He’s an artist, writer, antique car restorer, race car builder, car mechanic, race-around-the-world navigator, ex-cop, chicken coop designer, beekeeper, home builder, Le Mans Series Race Tech Inspector, woodworker, ADA Surveyor Consultant, and inventor.

(What he is not, for the record, is an Excel Pro. At least I have something to offer him.)

(“Just hit Delete, Dad! DELETE!!”)

(“By right clicking. Then choose the “delete” option.”)

And although he didn’t attempt to teach me all of his talents (I’m so not fond of chickens while they’re still alive and pecking), he did make some valiant efforts to teach me how to draw.

“You have to look at the world with different eyes – you have to see the lines and shapes with which things are comprised, and then draw those.”

I squinted as if I were looking at a Magic Eye poster.

I turned my head upside down to see if that helped.

But alas – I did not inherit his second set of eyes.

Yet, despite my complete artistic blindness, I have allowed myself to get sucked into the iPhone sensation, Draw Something.

Enter an avalanche of shame and embarrassment into my life.

And, since my heinous crimes against art have been laid bare for all to see on other blogs, I suppose I might as well own my shame here, as well.

If my Dad played Draw Something, even his most simple doodle would have merit enough to be placed in the Art of Draw Something Masterpiece Collection.

Mine, however, deserve an entirely different type of internet fascination.

For instance. I learned from other Draw Somethingers that when you need to draw something white, it’s good to use a different colored background.

However, a red background might not quite catch the aura of joy that goes with a wedding celebration.

Especially when you leave the bride’s face all bloody.

Speaking of red, when drawing the world’s most tragic sinking, perhaps you shouldn’t draw the characters in that color?

Fortunately, every now and then I get assigned a word that’s not too difficult for me to translate into art, despite my Paleolithic abilities.

Then again, my opponents may not appreciate the unannounced queasy effect that my drawings can have on them.

I’ve also found that Spinach is extraordinarily hard to draw. And when you try to draw a cartoon character to explain your drawing of said vegetable, it only gets worse.

And that’s the thing with Draw Something – once you’ve started a nightmarishly awful drawing, you might as well commit to it.

For instance, when I tried to draw Heidi Klum. And her ex-husband, Seal.

I was nearly crying with shame, on so many levels, by the time I finished it.

The more I drew, the more I fought the urge to gouge my own eyes out with my drawing finger.

Humiliating.

Horrific.

Deserving of punishment.

Right before I forced myself to give up due to my crimes against drawmanity, I realized that using Ali’s iPad was a much easier way to play, and I began to show slight improvements. For instance, this homage to C.S. Lewis:

Okay, “slight” was the key word there.

But I did learn some tricks.

I learned how to draw compound words,

meat in tube form shoved on a stick,

obsolete video games,

and I discovered that my true forte – where I could really shine – was the violent and morbid.

So now that you’ve adjusted your expectations to my skill level, I feel that it is only fair to show you how normal people play this game.

My friend Cara, for instance. She could have just drawn a stick figure with a dress on, but NO. She drew this.

Her sole purpose, most likely, was to open my eyes to my own unworthiness to play with her.

Lianne did a convincing portrait of Trump, mastering his hair in a very special way,

and then there’s Jamie. Even though she ridiculed me (albeit an honestly earned shaming), I will be the bigger person and share some of the masterpieces that she so graciously bestowed upon me.

All of those drawings occurred before she fully realized how shockingly horrible I was, at which time she deemed me only worthy of stick figures thereafter.

But it’s okay, because I acknowledge my deserving of such treatment.

Just call me the Oozing Scabies of The Art World.

A Serendipitous Friendship.

April 16, 2012April 16, 2012 Rachel Callahan A Day in the Life, Weird Strange and True

We live in a metropolitan area with over one million other people.

And yet, somehow, Ali and her inseparably best-friend-since-birth, AJ, have always looked oddly similar.

;

Bizarre, no?

Over the past couple of years, I thought that they had grown out of their identical phase – Ashley (AJ’s Mom) and I get significantly less “Are they twins?” questions when we’re out together, and their hair and height became very different.

Even when they match, they were still different.

Even when they’re both princesses, still different.

But yet, still oddly similar, especially after Ali’s hair cut and straightening.

Ali and AJ in the middle, their friends Averi and Joshua on each side.

A lot of the kids (and even adults) at church regularly get them mixed up, but I always assumed that it was because they were both there, all the time, for side-by-side comparison.

However.

Apparently they’re still more similar than I thought.

Chris and I took Ali and Noah to a local public park last Friday night. Chris was chasing Noah around and I was helping Ali climb up a tower.

A little girl at the top of the tower looked down at Ali and said,

“Hey. Do I know you?”

Ali looked up at her puzzled, and said, “No?”

Then she said, “Oh. For a minute, I thought you were my friend AJ.”

Whoa.

I asked, “Wait a minute. How do you know AJ?”

“I go to (such and such) with her.”

Sure enough, we were talking about the same AJ.

Did I mention that we live in a city with over one million people?

And yet, a complete stranger in completely unconnected surroundings can mistake Ali … for her best friend??

My head is still spinning.

And I’m thinking that Ashley and I need to do a genealogical study together.

Text Marriaging.

April 13, 2012April 12, 2012 Rachel Callahan "Deep" Thoughts by Rachel, A Day in the Life, Actually Possibly Informational, I'm a Blog Geek

If I were the Al Gore type, I would definitely proclaim that Chris and I discovered text messaging. Because I kinda feel like we did.

It all started in 1999.

We were dating, I had just started college, and Chris was in college and working full-time. We didn’t have a lot of extra time for chatting sweet nothings, but we both had pagers.

(I think they had just gone from being referred to as “beepers” to “pagers”, if that helps with understanding the times any better.)

(And we did also have cell phones, but I had the 100 minutes a month plan, so I knew that I could talk 3.33 minutes per day to avoid having to pay my college tuition over again in overage charges.)

So we used our pagers to their fullest potential. We would send each other a bunch of numbers, like this set…

96876256996753

…and then would spend the time we should have been listening to our college professors consulting our cell phone keypads to decode each other’s super cheez-fest sappy-sweet messages.

Behold. The dawn of the text.

A couple of years later, now newlyweds, we had new-fangled Nokias (with the super-granulated black and white screens), and we found a weird little feature hidden deep in the voicemail section of said phones.

Text Messaging.

“Hey babe – what do you think this does?”

“I don’t know – I’ve never seen it before.”

“Well, let’s try it.”

I painstakingly typed out a message, hitting each number button multiple times to choose my letters…

4..4..4 – I

5..5..5 – L

6..6..6 – O

8..8..8 – V

3..3 – E

3..3..3 – Y

6..6..6 – O

8..8 – U

A second later, Chris’ phone chirped with a sound we’d never had before.

We looked at each other in awe and wonder.

“Whoa…”

“I know…”

“This is so much easier than using our pagers!!!”

“Totally.”

And we were hooked.

Our friends made fun of our geeky form of communication.

“That is the stupidest feature I’ve ever seen on a phone.”

Our family wondered what we were doing, incessantly punching our number pads like idiots.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to just call him?”

And I remember one pivotal moment in the history of texting when we taught my boss, the owner of a telephone company, how to text.

At least he appreciated the potential.

Of course, you know the rest of the story. Chris and I singlehandedly taught the world how to text, and now every car accident is blamed on them and all of the tweens of the world don’t know how to communicate face-to-face because all they ever do is text, blah blah blah.

But texting has always been, and continues to be, a very valuable part of our marriage.

Not only has it allowed us to stay in cheezaliciously romantic contact throughout the day, but it has created the opportunity for a very important marital tool:

Emotion-Free Communication.

There have been so many times that we’ve had the opportunity to be irritated with each other, creating a downhill emotional spiral. But because we were texting instead of talking, the emotions could be separated.

(Sure, I can text emotions, but by the time I’ve typed “WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!?!?!”, I realize how harsh I’m being and erase it all. Unfortunately, my verbal filter doesn’t work this efficiently, hence my love of text.)

Last Friday morning was a perfect example of such an event.

The kids and I were planning on going to an Easter Egg Hunt and Picnic at the park with some friends. I started getting everyone ready 30 minutes earlier than I needed to, but yet, the chaos devoured those thirty minutes and made every step of preparation intensely difficult.

…Ali wanted to ask me 813 questions about my favorite color and second favorite color today, and what my fourth favorite color would be tomorrow.

…Noah was angry and teething and wanted to be held the entire time.

…And if I wasn’t holding him, then he was punishing me by getting into cabinets and throwing everything out.

…And when he finished getting into the cabinets that weren’t child-proofed, he began prying at the ones that were and getting his arm stuck, then angrily complaining about the state of his life.

…Ali wanted to ask 568 questions about the Easter Egg Hunt.

…Ali wanted me to watch her do this trick. Then that trick. Then this trick.

It was just one of those mornings. And all I could think about all morning was that there was no way I could ever handle this Mommy thing with more than two kids. How do people do it? They must be superheroes in disguise. Yes, that’s it.

After an hour of bodyslamming wrestling us all into our clothes, I began our picnic preparations.

(Have I ever mentioned that I hate picnics? I’ve decided that I don’t believe in them. Packing for them is too impossibly complicated.)

The child-created chaos only heightened.

I’m. Losing. My. Mind. There’s no way I could ever handle this with more than two kids. How does anyone do it? Oh yeah – they’re superheroes in disguise.

Finally, I finished our picnic preparations and we headed downstairs.

At which point I discovered that Ali’s booster seat was not in my car.

Chris had taken the kids out the night before while I was gone to a baby shower, and I couldn’t find where he’d left her seat anywhere.

So I texted Chris again.

What you can’t see in that message is that my head was exploding.

(Okay, you might can sense it a little bit but it would have been EXTREEEEMELY apparent if this conversation had been verbal.)

If we weren’t texters and I’d had to call Chris in attempts to locate Ali’s chair, there is absolutely no way that I could have not let my temporary feelings show through my tone.

And then he would have gotten defensive. Or more likely (and worse), overly angry at himself and then insistent that he fix the situation.

Then I would have gotten angry because we were already running late and I didn’t have time for him to fix it.

Then he would have gotten angry and….you see where this is going.

Emotional meltdown for all involved.

But instead, I breathed deeply. I remembered that there are much worse things in life than a chaotic morning and missing booster seat. I took a minute to be grateful that Chris had taken the kids out to dinner the night before by himself so that I could go to a baby shower. I solved my problem, we moved on, the picnic was lovely, and I got over it. Without ever having to transfer any of my unnecessary emotions to my husband.

A bit later, I was able to text him (quite genuinely) this reassurance:

And all was okay, thanks to texting, and it’s ability to separate emotions from communication.

Text Marriaging: we invented that, too.

Disclaimer: I am aware that Alabama law states the use of a booster seat until the age of six. However, Ali is 5 1/2 and taller than most six year olds, my CD case was nearly the same height as her booster seat, and I was desperate. Don’t hate. Or call CrimeStoppers.

iSchool, Volume Two.

April 12, 2012June 18, 2012 Rachel Callahan Actually Possibly Informational, Anal Retentivity to a Fault, Homeschooling: Not just for the socially awkward anymore., Stuff I like

Since my original iSchool post, we have found many more great learning apps on the iPad/iPhone. Whether you’re homeschooling or not, if you have an iDevice of some sort and you allow your kids to play on it, you won’t ever regret downloading good edutainment – the games are just as fun as Angry Birds, but can teach your kids crazy-quicker than any textbook ever will.

With that in mind, here are the latest apps that we’ve been loving on. The following are my own opinions and my discoveries – no one is paying me to review any of these apps.

General Learning:

TeachMe: Second Grade – the TeachMe series is still by far my favorite all-time app collection. They are fabulous. The Kindergarten app quickly prepared Ali for the first grade app, and the first grade app quickly prepared Ali for the second grade app. Second Grade has all of the great rewards, parental reports, customization, and entertainment that the previous apps do, but it’s added more sections of learning. It rotates between spelling, sight words, long addition, long subtraction, fast addition, and fast subtraction. It has a great method for making the long addition and long subtraction easy to understand, and the timer and extra coin incentive on the fast addition and subtraction are great – it has really brought out Ali’s competitive side, and has significantly increased the speed of her math skills.

Reading / Spelling / Writing:

Tab Tales – Last time I wrote about apps, I was very sad that I hadn’t been able to find any good reading apps. I’ve recently discovered Tab Tales, and am on a geekish high of grand proportions. They’re classic stories in poem form, written in mostly simple, readable words. There’s a “read to me” and a “read by myself” option. We choose “read by myself”, and I have Ali read it, then at the end of the page I press the Play button and have it read aloud, further cementing the storyline into Ali’s head. But what I really love about these apps are the interactive pages. The pictures all move and do cute things, and many of them have puzzles, as well. This is just the type of reward I need to get Ali excited about reading – because she knows that once she’s read the page, she gets to play on the page. These books have been the first reading exercise that Ali has ever done where when I ask “do you want to quit now?”, she actually says no. The books are free, but they do have ads on them, but you can pay .99 per book to get rid of the ads, which I think is well worth it for these wonderfully designed books.

Word Wizard – This app has spelling quizzes, but our favorite feature is it’s movable alphabet, where you can drag the letters to create words and sentences, and it will repeat them back aloud. Ali finds it to be great fun to teach the app to say things and surprise people when her iPad reads it aloud, such as the day we took Noah to the doctor, and when the Doctor walked in, Ali had her iPad say, “Noah is sick. Can you help him?” It’s a great way for kids to practice spelling and sentence structure composition in a fun setting.

Montessori Crosswords – Made by the same company as the prior app, this one has spelling practice disguised as crossword fun. It’s cute and entertaining, but Ali prefers Word Wizard most of the time.

Zaner-Bloser Handwriting – This is a simple app to practice writing letters and numbers. You can get manuscript or cursive, and it allows you to practice capital or lowercase letters. It either guides you or allows freeform writing. It’s perfect to work on the coordination of writing, but doesn’t have much edutainment value.

Grammar Jammers – This is a fairly silly app that sings songs about grammar. But Ali loves it, and it makes us giggle, so perhaps she’s learning something?

Math:

$iPad Math Ninja$

Math Ninja – I think this game could be THE hit game for a boy who needs math practice. It’s got a delightfully fun dialogue, adventure setting, and the ability to earn more weapons and buy things. It feels very original-Nintendo-RPG-Style, so it brought back fond memories of Dragon Warrior and the like. In the game, you’re a Math Ninja fighting off RobotDogs and RobotCats. You solve a few math problems, then you shoot ‘em up with the various weapons you’ve bought with your winnings. Very well done, very game-like interaction, but still getting significant learning in there. It has addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division levels. Ali loves it even though she doesn’t totally “get” the shoot ‘em up part, but if you have boys, I would recommend downloading this one immediately.

$iPad Motion Math Hungry Fish$

Motion Math: Hungry Fish – This is a cute, simple app for solidifying addition configurations. You choose the “level” you want to play – say, “8”, and then you combine bubbles of numbers to add up to 8 to feed your fish. It’s been good to help speed up the idea that 1 + 7 = 8, 2 = 6 = 8, or 3 + 5 = 8. It has in-app purchase options to get subtraction, multiplication, or division.

Art:

Kiddy Art – This is a wonderful free app that gives simple step by step visual instructions on how to draw animals and scenes. It’s exactly what I was looking for to help Ali develop her artistic skills. You can also color the pictures as well.

DoodleCast – This is a cute art program that gives the kids a scene and a concept – “What do you do at the playground?” It then records the drawing AND the audio while drawing, and they can play it back and watch. This can be humorous when a parent doesn’t know they’re playing this app, then then they hear their side of a phone conversation played back over the iPad. Use caution.

Miscellaneous Learning:

Presidents Vs. Aliens – This app is made by the same developer that made Stack the States and Stack the Countries (of which I reviewed last post.) It’s a great game to familiarize your kids with the presidents, and definitely has difficulty levels beyond what we’re ready to do. It has a cute interface where you shoot aliens with the president’s heads, which is entertaining on many levels. This isn’t one a non or slow-reader can play alone, as you have to read the questions, such as “Which one of these presidents is George Washington?”, but it’s fun to play together.

Analogies 4 Kids – I got this app for Ali because my ACT weakness was always the analogies section (ironic, since I ended up marrying the King of Analogies). It’s a simple app, but definitely conveys the idea without using too many words.

Here’s my updated app summary in order of my rankings, with the ones reviewed in this post highlighted.

Printable Version Available Here.

Apps I’m Still Looking for:

I would LOVE to see someone create a Phonics Rules app – especially if they incorporated it into a game. How awesome would that be?
I want to find more reading apps. I’m thrilled about discovering Tab Tales, but we’re going to run out of books pretty quickly. The more, the better.
I have yet to discover any good early-grade science or history apps.

Do you know of any apps that fit into the above criteria?

What great apps have you discovered lately, kid or non-kid related?
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Lessons Learned on Easter, Volume Two.

April 10, 2012April 11, 2012 Rachel Callahan A Day in the Life, Delicious Greekness, I would NEVER take too many pictures. . ., Kids: The Experience., The Blissfulness of Life, Toddlers: The Experience

(Last year’s lessons can be found here.)

1. One Year Old Boys have no appreciation for being dragged into the living room by their sister first thing in the morning.

… Until they see that there’s something in it for them.

They they’re completely on board.

…Until they realize they can’t open it on their own.

Then they go back to having no appreciation.

2. Easter morning photos are all about the girls.

Because the girls get to wear the glamorous dresses and the fancy jewelry.

…and when you try to add in the boys,

it just frustrates the ones for whom Easter morning photos are all about.

So I’m sorry, Noah, but you are never going to have a montage of all of your Easter outfits.

But your sister is.

I know, it totally reeks of sibling inequality.

3. Photoshop is a powerful tool. Sure, magazine covers use it to give us all an unrealistic view of perfection and beauty, but giving one’s husband a little help on the issue of forehead sheen is an exciting improvement.

With sheen,

and without sheen.

Okay, I might have given my stark white legs just a tiny touch of help in the color department, too.

But that’s only because Photoshop is such a powerful tool.

4. Photographing all of the cousins made it quite apparent how sore-thumbishly Noah fits in with the rest of the family.

A bunch of Greeks and … a blond.

Speaking of Greeks, Chris was feeling especially Clarkish this Easter and wanted to contribute something new and grandiose to our traditional Greek Easter Lunch.

So he decided to attempt his own personal favorite Greek dish, Saganaki.

5. Flaming cheese is a shockingly frightening concept to a five year old.

6. But a delectably amazing dish for less-jumpy adults.

Want to know how to make it?

Slice Kefalograviera cheese into 1/2” slices, then dip it in cold water and then flour. Fry the cheese until it gets a nice brown crust, then lay in a bowl.

Pour Brandy over the cheese,

then immediately light it.

Have the entire household yell “OPA!!”, while simultaneously throwing napkins into the air and smashing plates against the walls.

(Make sure that the napkins aren’t thrown near the open flame, and feel free to skip the dish smashing unless you’re really itching for a new set anyway.)

Allow the cheese and brandy to burn for a bit, then squeeze lemons over it to give it the final flavor and extinguish the flames.

Serve immediately. Except to five year olds who are terrified that it might spontaneously erupt into flames again.

7. A great way to give your wedding-present towels a last hurrah before replacing them is to take them outside and set a clean, naked baby with a chocolate bunny on them.

(the following is a completely unnecessary amount of photos of a Baby and His Bunny.)

8. Eventually, chocolate babies will get lonely, and attempt to crawl into their mother’s lap.

9. When rebuffed, their chocolate high will be blown as they languish in their deluge of grief.

10. But babies bounce back quickly.

11. Five year old OCD girls are much neater with their bunnies, and therefore less fun to photograph.

But that’s okay, because Easter morning photos are all about them.

Unlabeled.

April 9, 2012April 8, 2012 Rachel Callahan A Bit More Vulnerable Than I Usually Am, It's Tough Being a Girl, Lose It Diet, On a more serious note. . .

“Rachel, you’re getting too skinny!”

“Um…what?”

“Look at your arms!! You look anorexic!”

Surely they weren’t talking to me, and clearly this wasn’t someone who knew me very well – that observation was seriously ridiculous. I’ve never been anything within ten miles of too skinny in my entire life. Had they not noticed my thighs? And the rolls in my belly? Come ON, people.

Then I remembered the weird effect of losing weight – it makes other people see you as skinnier than you are, all while you see yourself as weighing the same as you always have.

I awkwardly answered a stumbled “Um, thanks?”, or something.

But what I wish I had said was this…

When I was in high school, I wore a sleeveless dress to an event. An adult told me that I really shouldn’t have worn that, because “You’re just not built for it – you have too fat of arms to wear sleeveless dresses.”

Although they were trying to be constructively “helpful”, I was seventeen years old and, albeit a bit later than most, just starting to form my own body image.

I carried that statement with me for an entire decade. I had sleeves on my wedding dress because of it, and I had a wardrobe full of sleeved shirts and dresses – until just a couple of years ago, when I finally let it go and accepted my arms as they were.

At the age of seventeen, I weighed 138 pounds. Today, I weigh 128 pounds. There were a lot of ups and downs (mostly ups) in my weight between then and now, but I still can’t imagine how 13 years and 10 pounds could swing one from having too fat of arms to wear a sleeveless dress to looking anorexic.

And that’s just the point.

There’s something I’ve learned in those 13 years – everyone has an opinion, and most of them are vastly different. And my body should not, will not, and cannot be defined by other people’s opinions.

Okay – this is not true.

I have learned that this is how it should be, but putting it into practice is another battle entirely. I thrive on words of affirmation, which also explains why I am motivated to blog my soul’s contents for the world to see. I live and die by other people’s words. They lift me up and they destroy me.

But that should not be so. Opinions always have and always will be as unique and wide-ranging as the people that are creating them. If I allow myself to internalize each and every one of the words spoken to me and about me, I will become a scarred reflection of everyone else.

The bottom line is this: I was healthy when I was seventeen and I’m healthy at thirty. There were times in between then and now that I probably wasn’t so healthy, but the important part is, I adjusted.

But even at my healthiest and certainly at my unhealthiest, I have enough of my own tendencies and self-consciousnesses to fight without owning other people’s ideas and perceptions as well.

My goal is this: to become unlabeled.

And even more importantly, to teach Ali how to stay unlabeled.

I sincerely hope that it doesn’t take my daughter thirteen years to figure out this crucial concept for herself. I want for her to be able to keep the complete unawareness of body image that she has now, at five years old, until she is thirty and beyond.

Impossible, probably. But it’s most certainly worth the effort.

A Public Smock Announcement.

April 6, 2012April 5, 2012 Rachel Callahan "Deep" Thoughts by Rachel, Don't Listen to my Fashion Advice, Smocktastic, This is TONGUE IN CHEEK People - Don't take me Seriously.

(With many thanks to DirecTV, for their magnificent and inspirational commercials, and my Mother, who allowed me to borrow a few choice articles of clothing.)

If you dress your son in smock for Easter,

He may feel dejected, embarrassed, and angry.

If he feels dejected, embarrassed and angry, he will get in a fight on the playground at Church on Easter Sunday.

If he gets in a fight on the playground at Church on Easter Sunday, he will get labeled as The Bad Kid.

If he gets labeled as The Bad Kid, he will feel the need to live up to his reputation.

If he feels the need to live up to his reputation, he will spend many years becoming adept at the craft of fighting.

If he becomes adept at the craft of fighting, a girl with a stud in her tongue and an eyelid tattoo will convince him to try out for professional wrestling.

If a studded-tongued eyelid-tattooed girl convinces him to try out for professional wrestling, he will begin to answer to the name Uncle Meathead, The Alchemist Of Bloody Disco Death.

If he begins to answer to the name Uncle Meathead, The Alchemist of Bloody Disco Death, he will garner the attention of Madame Nicolette the Vixen, the 2026 Miss Texas Jell-O Wrestling Queen.

If he garners the attention of Madame Nicolette the Vixen, the 2026 Miss Texas Jell-O Wrestling Queen, he will tie the knot with Madame Nicolette the Vixen, the 2026 Miss Texas Jell-O Wrestling Queen.

If he ties the knot with Madame Nicolette the Vixen, the 2026 Miss Texas Jell-O Wrestling Queen, you will end up with a grandson with a dog collar.

Don’t end up with a Grandson with a Dog Collar.

Instead, perhaps try full-leather Lederhosen.

Then again, the results could be just as poor.

This public service message is brought to you by The Council on the Eradication of Male Smock. And full-leather Lederhosen.

To Skirt or Not To Skirt.

April 5, 2012April 4, 2012 Rachel Callahan Denim Drama, Don't Listen to my Fashion Advice, Homeschooling: Not just for the socially awkward anymore., I'm a Blog Geek, Shopping: A Girl's Best Friend

That is the question.

But first, a bit of back story…

Last week, Chris and I took a few days to ourselves in Jacksonville, Florida to celebrate our anniversary.

Aside from spending hours on our balcony drinking this,

While watching this,

we rode bikes, sat in coffee shops and laughed endlessly while playing one-rule Scrabble,

(The one rule being that you have to explain your “word” .. bonus points if you make the other person sob with laughter,)

(Words with Friends would be so much more fun if they’d adopt this version,)

and we gloriously shopped.

Because, when we arrived at the Jacksonville airport, Chris surprised me with some delightful news: he had been so busy at work that he had not gotten me anything for our anniversary.

No card,

No present.

I immediately gasped and squealed with delight.

Because,

a) Every year without fail he makes me feel like a gift-and-cards-underachieving-failure with his perfect and overflowing accolades of thoughtfulness,

and,

b) because I knew what he was going to say next.

“So, while we’re here, I’m going to take you shopping, and you can pick out whatever you want for our anniversary.”

Oh, shopping.

Shopping without having to run out of a dressing room to chase a crawling escapee baby,

Shopping without having to answer the “When are we going to Chick-Fil-A???” question 576 times,

Shopping without feeling the unappreciative glares from the employees for destroying their hip young atmosphere with my hyper five year old and baby-actively-pooping-in-a-stroller,

Shopping – just shopping.

As we were on this delightful excursion where I bought many pretty things, I ran across a skirt in the Lucky store.

A Duggar Skirt.

A Lucky Brand Duggar Skirt.

A Lucky Brand Duggar Skirt that was originally $187.

A Lucky Brand Duggar Skirt that was originally $187, but was now marked down to $69.

I grabbed it to try on – more for the humor than anything.

But as I felt it’s amazingly soft denim hugging my legs ever so affectionately, my heart softened toward it.

And I started to fall just a little bit in love.

Then smacked myself upside the head for liking a homeschool skirt.

Then told myself that it couldn’t be a homeschool skirt – it was originally $187, and no homeschooler pays $187 for a skirt.

I got Chris to take a picture of it with my iPhone so that I could see what it looked like.

…and I still kinda loved it. And kinda hated myself for loving it.

I’ve always been drawn to the leg elongating magic of a full-length skirt, and this one was unbelievably luxurious.

But on the other hand, I’m a homeschool mom. I’m also a 12 year veteran of being homeschooled. I can’t go around getting all denim skirty for fear of confirming all the stereotypes.

And, hello – denim choices are kinda important to me.

I was profoundly conflicted.

So, for the first time in my life, I decided to try crowdsourcing my shopping decision.

I tweeted the above photo and asked,

I just found a Duggar Skirt in Lucky. I tried it on as a joke, but I kinda love AND hate it! Duggar or cute? Help!

We then left the Lucky Store and headed onward in our shopping journey.

In the next ten minutes, I got eleven replies. Most were pro-skirt, but a couple were decisively ruling the skirt as severely Duggar.

Now don’t get me wrong, I adore the Duggars and find all of them quite beautiful (my favorite being Jessa). However, I’ve been bucking the homeschool norm all my life and I’m not about to start looking the part now.

(Chris’ favorite is Jill, in case you cared. Nice to know he has a backup plan.)

But I couldn’t stop thinking about The Skirt.

I had a vision for The Skirt – a Sheryl Crow look with a long tank top, a wide belt, lots of jewelry, and some funky shoes.

In my head, this was no homeschool skirt.

So I decided to go back to the store and “stage” it properly, hoping to win over the anti-skirt voters.

The Lucky employees were amused at my efforts, and were quite amicable in helping me construct my outfit.

As we chose all of the pieces, they explained the sale price: “We don’t sell this skirt in-store – someone returned it today from an online purchase. It’s still $187 on the website, but we marked it down to $69 since we don’t have any more of them.”

They also told me that it was a final sale item – absolutely no returns or exchanges.

Which greatly intensified my decision-making angst.

Then I tweeted Take Two.

And as I felt it flow around me yet again, my love only blossomed for this denim find.

However, the staging made the anti-skirt votes actually go up, with several tweeters citing that the color of the shirt just wasn’t right.

I was in a quandary. I loved the skirt, Chris loved the skirt, I had a vision for it, and I acknowledged that cream was a bad choice – I look awful in cream.

Surely they’d like it if I had been able to translate my True Vision.

So I decided to buy it, despite the rising votes against it.

As I checked out, my soul was quivering with anxiety, knowing that this was perhaps even more unreturnable than a $150 bottle of shampoo. It took all of my willpower to not check twitter one last time, hoping to find a shred of reassurance that my vision was on trend and I wasn’t stepping into The Pitfall of Homeschool Fashion Abyss.

The next day, I was still feeling the anxiety over my potentially homeschoolcentric wardrobe addition, so I wore my most ridiculously anti-Duggar outfit – you know, to remind myself that I could still pull it off.

Just call me Cousin Amy.

And as soon as we got home from the beach and I had my entire wardrobe and accessories with which to play, I tried several iterations to achieve my Vision.

With a wide belt and flats,

Or a skinny belt and flats…

Or heels, perhaps?

(At this point my camera was saying *cough* narcissist *cough*)

Maybe a darker shirt and heels…

Or back to flats.

So did I achieve Sheryl Crow, or step into DuggarChic?

And will I be paranoid of being identified as a homeschool Mom every time I wear my precious skirt?

I’m not sure yet, but I learned one thing from the experience: if you really want people to be honest about your fashion choices, ask them what they think before you buy.

So yes, I know which ones of you think I look like a Duggar.

And I’m okay with that.

After all, I do adore the Duggars.

Noah, in Memes.

April 3, 2012July 3, 2013 Rachel Callahan I'm a Meme You're a Meme, Mystery Solved, Newbornities, NoahBlogs, Toddlers: The Experience, Utter Silliness

The sequel can be found here.

Marital Relics.

April 2, 2012March 29, 2014 Rachel Callahan I embarrass myself just for your amusement., Photographical Oddities, The Blissfulness of Life

Eleven Years.

Eleven years* seems so much more than ten years – ten years is a nice, neat, clean decade. But eleven years – that’s, like, more.

So it got me thinking: what is left from our wedding?

We’ve moved twice, and bought four vehicles, and created two humans from scratch in those eleven years – surely not much has outlasted all of those Severe Life Upheavals.

And anything that did make it through two rounds of dejunking, packing, not getting stowed in a forgotten box in the basement, unpacking, and keeping was clearly quite crucially important to our daily lives.

For instance, this bag of microwavable popcorn:

I’m thinking that we need to have a special movie date on May 16th to celebrate it’s tenth anniversary of expiration.

Because powdered fake off-brand butter totally gets better with age, right?

But there are a few other things that have remained, aside from our undying passion for each other and nasty popcorn.

There are the typical appliances, like the sad, lonely coffeepot, replaced by the Keurig and therefore relegated to iced tea making duties,

the Waffle Maker that we’ve used twice (or maybe only once), that has been collecting voluminous amounts of dust since 2001,

And of course the family can opener, yellowed with age and botulizing our canned goods with it’s rusty pieces.

(I could have been nice enough to at least wipe it down for you. But I wasn’t.)

Of the Charter Members of the Appliances Clique, the KitchenAid mixer is in the best health, as one would expect.

…although I’m still bitter that they came out with colored Kitchenaids the year after we got married.

The year after!!!

When you move beyond The Appliancehood, there are the towels.

Poor towels.

Although they made beautiful wedding presents and were, in their prime, the most luxurious of creatures, they are now awkwardly bunched, noticeably bleached, and chafe one’s backside like a piece of Oak Bark.

I haven’t looked it up yet, but I’m hoping that year eleven is the year of terrycloth gifts.

Also, our dinnerware has survived, if you can call it that.

Chipped, scratched, and hopelessly dull.

Fortunately, I’ve been slowly collecting my Aunt’s Pottery to replace it,

but seeing as how I don’t have enough to feed my entire family yet, the original plates live on.

One of the more despised pieces of marital antiquity is the paper towel holder.

Stupid paper towel holder.

Or stupid us, for registering for it.

Instead of one of those nice bendy rods that you can push your towel roll over, you have to unscrew it’s large, bulbous end with extraordinarily microscopically ridiculously thin screw threads for at least 90 seconds to be able to replace to roll.

And then screw it back on for another 90 seconds.

Hence, it’s endlessly empty-rolled state.

We’ve wished that paper towel holder dead countless times.

And then there’s the Purple Pumice Foot Scrub.

Chris bought it for our honeymoon, thinking that he could give me a romantic foot massage.

Unfortunately, he didn’t factor in my prohibitively ticklish feet.

Although I’m sure it’s contents are now coagulated enough to re-mortar our kitchen tiles, it still resides hopefully under Chris’ bathroom sink, and as he is packing each year for our anniversary trip, he wistfully asks if “perhaps this year we should bring the Purple Pumice Foot Scrub along?”

(I have hot feet – what can I say?)

But perhaps the most notable relic is the top of our wedding cake.

Lovingly wrapped in Ziploc and hanging out with the frozen peas in our basement freezer.

This may seem a bit on the Hoarders side, but we have a vision.

Nay, even a purpose.

One day, our fossilized freezer is going to be a crucial piece of the puzzle to help archeologists as they study the importance of buttercream in the 21st century society.

…unless temptation overcomes us, and we just can’t help but eat it with our popcorn next month.

* Despite the photographical evidence and the fact that I was still a teenager eleven years ago, I did not grow three inches between then and now. I was just barefoot at our wedding. So, who knows? Maybe I still have some traces of wedding toe jam left over as well.