Rachel Callahan

The Death of a Grasshopper.

September 25, 2017September 24, 2017 Rachel Callahan A Day in the Life, Fun With Roadkill, Utter Silliness

“Hey Mom! There’s a hurt Grasshopper out here!”

Noah had gone to the front porch to feed the neighborhood cat that is known at our address as Thomas.

(Thomas has many names – many more than we probably even know. He works the feline benefits system well, just as his predecessor Fred, ingratiating himself to (or guilting handily) all of the neighborhood in order to eat as many meals as possible.)

“Is he dead?”, I asked Noah.

(Back to the grasshopper here – not Thomas. Follow my train of thought, people!)

“No – he’s just hurt. He’s still wiggling.”

Based on where Noah was standing – right in front of the door – I knew the grasshopper had to have been a special delivery from Thomas himself. A thoughtful gift for us in exchange for our feeding efforts.

But we were doing school and I had no time to inspect my gift at that moment.

We found ourselves on the porch later in the day, doing our read-aloud and other subjects that we do as a group. Somehow I’d missed, yet again, properly appreciating this gift, so Noah picked him up on a leaf and brought him to me to inspect.

It was pitiful.

The lovely Grasshopper was confined to his side, clearly having lost one of his jumping legs and bleeding a brownish liquid from his Thorax.

He looked at me imploringly, while focusing on his labored, slow breaths. It was almost as if I could hear his thoughts.

My dear lady, I apologize for the predicament in which I find myself. It appears your cat has made the attempt to make a gift of me. I hope you find me a worthy gift, but it is rather inconvenient that I am mortally wounded.

It was just terrible. I didn’t have the heart to tell him it’s not even my cat.

I am personally not nearly offended enough by Thomas’ outright-dead gifts – in fact, I have memorialized more than one:

But there was something about this nearly dead gift that broke my heart. I just wasn’t sure what to do. Maybe he would recover somewhat, and slink away to heal – or maybe not.

Ah, my lady, I would love nothing more than to ease your discomfort by dragging my damaged exoskeleton into the bushes and die in peace, but alas, my limbs do not appear to be useful at the present time. Perhaps you could –

But we had school to do.

I do hope that Mr. Grassy enjoyed the reading of a chapter of “The Incorrigibles of Ashton Place”, and then a chapter in our Chemistry and Physics textbook. I ruminated over the possibility that at least, in his last moments of life, he could increase his knowledge and understanding of the cruel world that had murdered him.

Fascinating, So the electrons revolve around the nucleus? Who knew?

But…he didn’t die.

By the end of the reading, his breathing was even more painful to watch. More labored, more heaving. You could nearly hear him gasping and groaning. And he now lay in a small pool of his own bodily fluids.

It is most unfortunate, madam, that due to the physics of your cat, my personal chemistry is leaking onto your porch. I am most embarrassed. Perhaps now might be a good time to –

So I texted Chris for moral guidance.

Chris has always been a freeze-er. Anytime he finds large spiders, he captures them carefully in my Tupperware and puts them in my freezer. Something about the violent crunching of stepping on a living being is more than he can handle.

(Obviously I draw the line at cockroaches entering my freezer. So he’s a flush-er of those.)

I am not a freeze-er. I find this somehow more cruel. Or at least me thinking about that gasping Grasshopper becoming colder and colder in his last moments was too much for me.

I wanted him to go out with his new education, not wishing he had a scarf.

Oh, thank you. I do hate to impose, but it would be most helpful if you could end this unfortunate situation.

So I folded him up in a piece of paper, added two leaves in for a further wall between him and my foot, took him out to the sidewalk (as Noah tailed me, asking if Grasshoppers go to heaven and how do I KNOW they don’t have souls?!?), and I stepped on him.

I picked up the paper and peeked in.

HE WAS STILL MOVING.

MADAM, this is most unhelpful. I am trying to maintain my dignity and composure, but this is quite unpleasant. Could you PLEASE try again?

This was the worst execution I’d ever been a part of. I felt sick, evil, and an all around persecutor of grasshoppers.

I quickly sat down the paper and thoroughly ensured his death.

The next time I fed Thomas I made sure to tell him to please be sure and leave only completely dead things in the future.

Well, if I was really your cat, you might get better gifts. Kiss my tail.

On Discovering That I’m a Prodigy.

September 19, 2017September 18, 2017 Rachel Callahan "Deep" Thoughts by Rachel

The year of 2017 will be forever remembered as the era where I made a monumental breakthrough on my journey of self-realization. If I were given one of those standard employee reviews where they asked me what my strengths and weaknesses were, before 2017 would be lacking a vital component of who I am.

Because 2017 was the year my husband acquired an NES Classic. Just before they were discontinued forever, might I add. It was for sure fate guiding my husband’s obsessive impulses so that I could discover my greatest ability.

I am a Dr. Mario genius.

I had played it as a kid and remember being fairly good at the game, but we didn’t own it so I was not aware of my remarkable savant tendencies in the particular skill set that this game requires. Both playing on my own and in a two player game, I am STUNNING. My mind works in just the right way so that I can dominate, knowing instantaneously where the ideal place to land each dual-colored pill is. I can plan ahead, making sure that each killing of a virus is actually a double or triple virus kill, therefore sending extraneous and devastating blocks into my opponent’s pill bottle.

Lest you’ve forgotten your own childhood Dr. Mario experiences, the game works somewhat similarly to Tetris, in that you’re trying to clear stacks of similar colors. Except in this game, the plot is a bit thicker – you’re trying to cure viruses* with pills – three same-colored pill halves stacked on top of a virus clears it. Or if you’re just making a stack of pills, four same colored pills clears out.

When playing one player, I can continue the game indefinitely, despite the growing number of viruses at every level. The only thing that stops me is my eyes – they start to water and see double after a while – just like our mothers warned us, Nintendo will destroy your eyes.

When playing two player, each player selects their own level of difficulty, thereby leveling the playing field with a Dr. Mario handicap. When Chris and I play against each other, I choose level 11 or 12, and he chooses level 5. I have over double the number of viruses he has and that nearly makes it fair – but not quite, to be honest. I still savagely beat him 99% of the time.

Thankfully, Chris enjoys his regular beat down.

Every time I play, I am re-amazed at myself. It’s as if I suddenly realized that I’ve always known how to fluently speak Russian but had just never encountered a Russian speaker to reveal my talent.

I have since been trying to analyze these previously untapped skill sets and figure out how to apply them in real life, becoming a multi-billionaire by my ability to sort the stock market, or analyze computer code to find (computer) viruses, or something. But I have yet to identify a profitable application of my genius. Perhaps I need to visit my old college advisor. But for now, I guess I’m just going to have to go on the video-game-entertainment circuit, wowing intent crowds with my ability to eradicate viruses in a stunningly efficient manner.

* Despite my love for this game (due mostly to my own mastery of it), the premise does slightly annoy me, as all us mothers know that “It’s just a virus” means “There is no pill in the world that can cure your kid right now so you just go on home and enjoy the misery of your sick kid until that virus runs its course over the next 7-10 days and also enjoy the fact that you just wasted a $35 co-pay.” So either Dr. Mario has made a breakthrough and found a pill that cures viruses, or this game is a complete lie to humanity. I’m putting my money on Dr. Mario being a pill-slinging savant. Just like me.

On Needing More Chill.

September 15, 2017September 14, 2017 Rachel Callahan A Day in the Life

If we were playing the “I Have Never” game, until last week I could easily say “I have never bought a refrigerator.”

I am nearly 36 years old. Chris and I have been married for 16.5 years and have lived in three different dwellings. And we have never bought a refrigerator. Each house came with a fridge, and each fridge was old and “fine.”

We’re not the type of people to replace things that are “fine”, even if we don’t like them. We nearly vomit at people on House Hunters who flippantly say “I don’t like that shade of marble countertops but we can always rip them out and get a shade darker.”

So, in our minds, just because we never had a fridge that we felt any fondness toward did not mean that we should go out and buy a new one.

But we’ve now been in this house for over a decade, using a fridge that someone else bought. Somewhere in that fridge, there are decade-old germs that don’t belong to us. And, the fridge is pitiful. The veggie drawers are broken and melded shut, the light bulb, if barely shaken, decides not to work, and anything left in the freezer for longer than a fortnight can be guaranteed to have freezer burn. Oh and when you close the fridge door, be sure to pull the door in an upwards fashion or it will not seal.

So I wasn’t exactly sad when our fridge got continence issues and began peeing water on the shelves. I’m sure it could be fixed with a new dehumidifier core or some-odd piece like that, but DANGIT I am nearly middle-aged and I deserve my first new fridge.

Chris came home from work one day and I confronted him in front of the naughty fridge itself.

“I’m putting my foot down. I don’t care what your reservations or worries or logical reasons are. This is a ten to me*. WE NEED A NEW FRIDGE.”

He said, “Ummm…”

…then he decided to play with me.

“I don’t know…But getting a new fridge leads to…”

“NO IT WON’T. I know that’s what you said that one other time. We will not get new cabinets or new appliances or new countertops or an all new kitchen. I JUST WANT A FRIDGE.”

“Okay then.”

I said, “Thank you. I’ve already been shopping. I’ve picked out three options depending on how far you’re willing to let me change the status quo.”

He kindly obliged my most severely changed choice, wondering I’m sure why I felt the need to be so forceful in my fridge militiawoman presentation.

(I mean that fridge had been urinating on my blueberries – you’d have anger issues too.)

But then came measuring of the fridge hole. And depth and width, all of which I tackled all by myself. Like the adult I was convinced I was.

I measured and re-measured and re-measured again. I panicked in the middle of the night about whether a fridge would fit in that hole or if it was just all wrong for modern-day fridges. I picked a fridge and re-picked a fridge and re-picked again. The kids discovered that they loved fridge shopping and were amazed at the ones with double-tap glass doors and apps and background music and internal cameras so that you could look at the contents while you were at the grocery store.

I begged Chris to help me quadruple check my hole measurements before I had a nervous breakdown.

He again happily obliged, perhaps wondering why his wife was so frantically taken by this issue.

Finally, we bought a dang fridge.

Sight unseen, even, because that fridge did not have a display model.

It would not be delivered for a week, so I endured another seven days of fridge urination while waiting for it, becoming more and more hateful toward the current chiller of my fruits and vegetables.

But then it arrived.

And it was beautiful.

And I had no idea how very intense fridge delivery is. It’s the best “free delivery and installation” deal in the country, y’all.

After over TWO HOURS of getting it through the front door, removing the doors and hinges to get it through the kitchen door, getting the old fridge out, and peeling away those glorious sheaths of new appliance plastic, they finally were ready to slide it into the fridge hole.

(Note: all this time all of my fridge and freezer contents were sitting on my countertops. Nothing causes anxiety like all the slowly warming food.)

Which was the moment when Fridge Delivery Man #1 turned to me and said “I don’t think it’s going to fit.”

“What? No. It will fit. I measured five times.”

“It’s gonna be tight…I’m not so sure.”

“I will ax down that cabinet if we need to. IT WILL FIT.”

They looked at me with a measure of healthy fear, then positioned the fridge and began sliding. It banged the side of the cabinet. They repositioned, straightening it perfectly. This thing couldn’t go in a degree off-kilter or it wasn’t going to work.

They began sliding again, and this time it was going. Just barely. SO JUST BARELY.

They stopped and looked at me. #1 said “So do you want us to keep going?”

I scowled up my entire 36-year-old face. “This thing is not coming back out of my kitchen. OF COURSE I WANT YOU TO KEEP GOING.”

And they did.

And it fit.

The children are so taken by the cleanliness and organization and hugeness and brightness of it all. Ali said that getting a new fridge is the most exciting purchase ever and way better than a new car.

Even if I didn’t get the one with the apps and cameras.

And best of all? This fridge doesn’t need adult diapers.

* “It’s a ten to me” is fantastic marital communication advice that we got from good friends many years ago. You can only use it every now and then, but it’s an easy way to communicate “This is actually really really really seriously the most very importantest thing to me and I’m not being dramatic AT ALL.” This helps your spouse realize the gravity of the issue being discussed. I highly recommend it. And new fridges.

On Finding Swagger.

September 12, 2017September 11, 2017 Rachel Callahan A Day in the Life, Boy Child = Bizarre.

I cannot communicate in barber language.

I’ve been trying to figure out a way to style Noah’s hair differently for pretty much his whole life. His hair refuses to do anything except exactly what it does. Which is to hang. In a straight line. No part. No body. No nothing. I’ve felt as if he was years too old for his haircut for quite a while now.

I’ve begged the barber to “give” him a part, or cut it closer, or anything. So the barber would cut his hair as if it’s going to part, and he’d part it for me while it was wet, and Noah will look like the perfect 1950’s gentleman. But then as soon as it dries, it hangs straight again – except with newly unimproved crookedly cut bangs.

I’ve fought with his hair. I’ve bargained with his hair. I’ve tried everything.

Finally I decided to browse the internet until I found a totally new ‘do. Something leaving no amount of bangs to fall straight. I pulled up the Google. And the Pinterest. And made the mistake of browsing with Noah.

Naturally, he liked none of them. None were good enough for him.

After my eyes blurred together from all the kid pictures, I found one that I liked. I begged him to like it.

“It’s too messy.”

“Okay well how about this cut but fixed less messy.”

“Okay we can try it. BUT NO MOHAWKS.”

I wasn’t sure why this qualification had to be made, but whatev. No Mohawks it is.

I really didn’t want to pull up Pinterest for our male barber who still doesn’t take credit cards and has an old fashioned glass bottle coca-cola machine in his shop. He even has a shoe stand with what seems to be a full-time shoe shiner (who is usually taking a nap when we’re in there.) These people do not know about Pinterest. And I didn’t want to be laughed at.

But I took Noah in anyway, rather pensively. And the stars shone upon me. There was a woman working that morning that I’d never seen before, and we were assigned to her. Surely she’d heard of the internet.

Before

I told her it was time to try something completely different. I pulled up the picture and told her “this – but less messy. And a little tighter on the sides.”

She worked on him for a good 45 minutes – this was significantly longer than a usual snappy trim. I listened nearby as they discussed the weather and school and summer vacation and what was on the news. It was perfectly perfect.

Finally, she finished.

I’ve never told a barber or a hair person of any variety that I didn’t like a cut, so even though I wasn’t feeling like it was exactly what I was after, I took the blame upon myself instead (maybe Noah doesn’t have the right kind of hair) and thanked her profusely.

We took an after picture in the blaring sunlight, then went to Target to finish our errands. I thought that maybe the haircut just needed a little help to be what I had envisioned.

Noah was indifferent, as he has always been about his hair. But I explained my plan to him anyway.

“I’m going to buy you some gel. I think we can make your hair do the right thing with it.”

“I don’t want gel!”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t know what gel is.”

“Well that’s a terrible reason not to want it.”

“Does it look like Jell-o?”

“Definitely not.”

“Okay well we can try it.”

At Target…

“OOOOH here’s some ‘Swagger Gel.’ Do you want some swagger?”

“I don’t even know what Swagger is.”

“Well it’s time you learned.”

Clearly my kid needs to study up on vocabulary in first grade.

We decided on Aussie Hair Gel (because it was half the price of the Old Spice Swagger Gel – which Chris later said was no reason not to buy our kid some swagger) and tried it out when we got home.

By the stolen looks in the mirror and the impish grins I caught when he thought I wasn’t looking, I knew he loved it.

And so did I. It was exactly as I had hoped. Even thought it instantaneously aged him by at least three years.

That night, after his bath, he asked for gel.

“Well, we’ll probably have to do it again in the morning, but I can put some in if you want.”

“Actually, I want to learn how…”

We stood in front of the mirror, me standing behind him, giving him lessons on how to properly gel his hair.

“See, run your fingers through it. Then pull the bangs straight out, then give them a little flip upwards.”

He grinned and giggled at his newly unearthed forehead, jumped around with excitement, and made my day.

The next day after church, he found me and said “I’m ready for a mohawk.”

“Really?!? I thought that was the one line you wouldn’t cross.”

He shrugged.

I gave him what he asked for. He disappeared into his room to change his outfit to match – or at least his idea of matching. Then he swaggered outside where Chris was washing the car, leaned up against Chris’ Mustang, and asked me to take his picture.

Vocabulary: Achieved.

When We Get Around To It…

September 7, 2017 Rachel Callahan A Day in the Life, Homeschooling: Not just for the socially awkward anymore.

…That’s when we’ll start school.

(I answer that question a lot.)

We do enough educational tasks during the summer (all of which I track on my templates, which you can download here) that we can afford to start school when God intended: In the glorious month of September. But this year, we actually started on August 29, which was, I decided, close enough.

I printed the kids off some signs as I always do,

But when we woke up that morning, we found that Chris had hand-drawn them some notes before he left for work that were way better than my lazy-download-off-of-Pinterest signs.

From now on, signage will fall under the Principal’s duties.

I’ve found that hype is important in the homeschool classroom, so anything I can save for building and creating hype, I do. This year might have been my biggest hype success yet – I surprised the kids with a “classroom computer.” It’s a super cheap laptop so that they can learn how to use a real computer (i.e. kids these days don’t know how to use anything that doesn’t have a touch screen and does have an actual keyboard) and so that we could enhance and expand our learning. They were pretty much ecstatic.

We’re currently using it for typing, Spanish, and quiz websites like iXL. And it’s quite the treat that I save for the end of the school day.

Our ticket program worked so well over the summer (until I started forgetting to enforce it) that I decided to re-launch it and expand it greatly for the school year, attempting to solve every single one of my parenting problems with one simple system. And so far, it’s one step above miraculous.

In the past, I have tried everything short of exiling Noah to Vanuatu in the attempt to get him not to throw his dirty clothes on the floor and to clean up his plate after a meal, and he has never done either of these things voluntarily. A week and a half into the new ticket plan, and he has not missed a single plate or sock.

Replacing allowance with this system was a huge motivational factor, along with the newness of it and a BRAND NEW COLOR of ticket.

When I ordered my ticket stash at the beginning of the summer, they came in a pack of four rolls, and we used red throughout the summer. Something about me announcing regally that red tickets no longer had value and, furthermore, keeping the new color a secret for TWO WHOLE DAYS built a hysteria in Noah somewhat akin to when Apple announces a new iPhone. Hype. Is miraculous. And the “I can add or take away tickets at any time” feels like Hogwarts House Points to Ali, so therefore even more magical.

The success of this program rises and falls with my ability to continue to hype and enforce it, so y’all pray for me, okay? I think I may have discovered the key to life and happiness if only I can keep it rolling.

Speaking of life and happiness, while I was at Target buying the kids pencil cases in which to store their tickets, I came across this guy.

Never have I ever unzipped a pencil case and burst out laughing, loudly, in the middle of Target, but he made me do it. The way his mouth waggled back and forth as I unzipped him…I knew he wasn’t for the children. He was for me.

I’m keeping all my random supplies in him that usually get misplaced and turn into tiny messes – glue sticks, post-it flags, glue dots, etc. I found all his siblings on Amazon and depending on how my self-control is, I may have an entire family of Zipit monsters by the end of the school year.

(I might already have two more in my cart.)

(What all can I use these guys for? Help me out to justify my monster NEEDS.)

(By the way, the GENIUS case is all one zipper – you can unzip the entire case into one long string. Can I start a ZipIt fan club?)

As far as curriculum, for those of you who care, Ali’s subjects include:

– American History 6 – A Beka
– Reading 6 – BJU
– English 5 – BJU
– Exploring Creation with Chemistry and Physics – Apologia
– Bible: Who Am I? – Apologia
– Math: Saxon 6/5 – Saxon
– Writing: Ali is writing in her diary, plus we will write various papers throughout the year.
– For Read-Aloud, we’re very nearly done with The Wingfeather Saga by Andrew Peterson (HIGHLY recommended), then plan on trying out The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place.
– Spelling: We’re studying the Scripps Spelling Bee lists as always.

And Noah’s are:

– American History 1: A Beka
– Health: A Beka
– Reading: BJU 1
– Bible: I love the My ABC Bible Verses book – they’re great verses to learn at this age.
– Science: Noah is learning Chemistry and Physics along with us, and picking up surprisingly a good deal. We’re also participating in a Science Club where they’re able to do experiments, which they both adore.
– English: BJU 1. This is his first ever English book, which is very confusing to him. On the second day he told me accusatorily, “This isn’t helping me at all with learning how to speak a different kind of English.”

I guess he thought he was learning ESL. Or some secret new segment of English he’d never heard before. Poor kid.
– Math: BJU 2. I ordered him BJU 1, but when I got it, it was endlessly simple for first grade. We turned to the back of the book and Noah did all the problems in his head. Thankfully they have a good return policy and I swapped it out for 2nd grade.
– Spelling: Noah is joining us in our spelling bee pursuits this year.
– Writing: This is Noah’s first year to keep a diary, and he’s extremely proud of it. Ali’s five-year-running daily diary has always impressed him, so he feels quite included to be writing in his own.

Despite how it might read, he got a BATMAN widget spinner on 8/30.

Together, we’re studying Spanish and typing. After a good bit of research, I decided on Living Language Spanish instead of Rosetta Stone – it is significantly cheaper and has way better user reviews. For typing, I bought this kid’s typing bundle and they are LOVING it. I have also taken the program to set up my own profile to show off for them.

So far, everyone is enjoying their curriculum and paying attention fairly well – even Noah, who sometimes needs a couple hundred cups to help him listen.

But listening is listening. I’ll take it.

Congratulations on Your Simple Existence.

September 5, 2017September 4, 2017 Rachel Callahan "Deep" Thoughts by Rachel, This is TONGUE IN CHEEK People - Don't take me Seriously.

Last week, I had a male nurse tell me all about how he has no health problems and takes no medications. He told me a hilarious story about him going to the doctor for the first time in years just so that he had a primary doctor if he ever needed one, but he probably wouldn’t. He told me the side-splitting tale about the nurse asking him about his health and his medications and then looking at him full of perplex and asking him “Then why are you here?”

He told me all of this directly after I had to tell him about my own complicated medical issues.

This is not the first time this has happened to me. In fact, it seems like “perfect health” is a man’s favorite bragging right. Although this is an especially odious habit for a male nurse, it comes with males everywhere. Especially after a woman has described symptoms and issues that, to them, sound like they must be exaggeration or hysteria since they’ve never experienced any similar thing.

So, healthy men of the world, it’s time we had a talk.

You need to shut the health up.

You’re so stinking proud of your easy existence. As if your body is equal to ours. In complexity, your body is a cheesy laxative commercial, while our body is the lovechild of The Matrix and Inception.

Your systems are early model typewriters – the ones without the self-correcting tape – compared to our super-computer operating systems. We run such high-level programs on our OS that you cannot even comprehend the bodily equations we do on a daily basis. So OF COURSE more things can go wrong and more code can get screwed up.

Most importantly, we are capable of CREATING additional humans. We have an entire system dedicated to that superpower. You think that’s not going to break more often compared to your Neanderthal abilities? So – yay for you. Your abacus hasn’t broken yet. Why don’t you use it to count how many humans you’ve grown.

What’s that you say? You make babies too? Oh yeah – that’s right. It takes you like twenty-two trabillion sperm swarming up a one-way street just to find one of our eggs. That’s some really efficient work you’ve got going on there. Perhaps if your software was detailed enough to program them to ask for directions, you’d be more helpful in the baby-making arena.

Meanwhile, after that “WE ARE MAN SEE US SWIM” ridiculously overpopulated army invasion of yours, we have to do the rest of the nine month process. Then when that new human finally emerges, our entire framework is reprogrammed within 24 hours to go from growing a baby inside to feeding a baby from the outside, which creates the side effect of complete nuclear emotional meltdown. Because duh.

Besides those times when we’re actually growing humans, our baby-making software requires an update every freaking month of nearly our entire life. Those updates take an entire week and while they’re running, every other program is trashed and slowed to 10% of its normal speed and efficiency. You know how on your actual computer you always click “ignore” on that update for Adobe Acrobat? Yeah. We can’t exactly ignore our updates without finding ourselves in one bloody hell of a mess.

And I’m not even going to get into the many studies on how much more complex and inter-wired our brains are than yours, because I don’t want to hurt the few connections you do have. And because I don’t dislike you, dear men – men are important. Men are great! Everyone needs a vintage box fan to help out their central air conditioning unit. But no one needs that box fan bragging incessantly about their perfectly functioning plastic blades.

So for all the women out there who have ever been told by a man that surely they don’t feel as bad as they actually do and by-the-way-have-I-told-you-about-my-own-perfect-health, just remember: you can’t expect Fred Flintstone to know how to drive a Tesla.

The Time Has Come.

September 2, 2017September 4, 2017 Rachel Callahan Picture Birmingham

It will be here in just a few days…

To be quite honest, after every single ArtWalk, I tell myself “I am NOT doing this again.”

It is most likely the most exhausting thing an introvert can do to herself.

But I always do it again anyway. Because I have a year to recover. Because I am a person of habit. Because I do enjoy it. And because it’s the biggest platform I have each year to help The WellHouse. This year will be my fourth Birmingham ArtWalk, and I am nervously anticipating the fun/exuberance/conversation/heat and sweat/weariness/delight that it will be.

And I desperately need YOU to come – so that the only people I’m talking to aren’t strangers. (And yes, if you read this blog, you’re not a stranger – even if we haven’t met yet. So let’s fix that.)

Because y’all – strangers are weird.

I’ve focused my ordering this year on specific customer-favorite prints, and have recreated them in many different forms – metal prints, pillows, note cards, bookmarks, coasters, postcards, notebooks, and more.

I have redesigned my note cards and love the new look. I have a brand new 2017 set,

And will also be selling my Alabama Wonders note cards,

The floral set,

And what I have left of the 2016 set.

Oh – and somewhere safely hidden, I’ll have my extra-special roadkill note cards, as well.

You know – for my truest kindred spirits.

Here are the details:

Friday, September 8th – 5pm-10pm
Saturday, September 9th – 10am-6pm
The show is free, and will cover many blocks of downtown. I will be in the Rogue Tavern parking lot next to 2312 2nd Avenue North – right down the block from Urban Standard, so you can get some fantastic coffee and come visit me.

So you know what to look for, here’s what my booth looked like last year:

All of my products will be on sale, and 100% of the profits are donated to The WellHouse to help rescue victims of human trafficking. So come by and pick up some fun Birmingham (or roadkill) products, and help save some women who very much need your help.

If you just can’t make it or you’re out of town and you don’t want to drive 12 hours to see me (how dare you!), here’s a coupon code for you – the coupon code VIRTUALARTWALK will get you 20% off everything in my shop online. If you can’t find what you want, let me know – I’ve been so busy getting ready for ArtWalk that I haven’t had time to fully update the shop – but I can create custom sales for you if needed.

Thank you all! I can’t wait to see/meet/talk to you/sweat with you.

The Weird and The Wonderful.

August 30, 2017August 29, 2017 Rachel Callahan Photographical Oddities, Weird Strange and True

If you’re ever bored waiting for your kids to pick out books at the library (or play endless games on the library computers), here’s my library entertainment secret.

Go to the children’s biography section and imagine it as a dinner party. Each book is a person sitting around the table, making small talk with those sitting nearby.

Pioneer Girl gets sat next to Snoop Dogg. While Snoop is asking her what kind of weeds they found on the Oregon Trail, whoever that fashion designer is and the composer John Philip Sousa have the job of preventing Hernando de Soto from murdering Squanto.

Meanwhile, across the table, Taylor Swift and President Taft commiserate on how hard it is when your squad turns against you, while Dr. Suzuki plays the world’s tiniest violin for them.

I guarantee your visits to the library will never be the same.

We ran across this house not long ago and gaped at its modern wonders.

…And its ability to be a mass human female milking stall.

Apparently this hotel feels that balloon animals make their patrons feel most at home. Which makes me fear the clowns that are nearly certainly staying next door.

Someone posted this with an “awwww!” in my feed.

So naturally my next goal in life is to pose roadkill in such a way to get animal lovers to believe they’re asleep and say “awwwww!”

This was the end of a story in one of Noah’s library books. I feel like we might need an epilogue…

…But maybe Nell had asked her mother too many questions that day. In which case it totally makes sense.

I never believed in the Elvis is Alive conspiracy theories. UNTIL I passed this church in the middle of nowhere Alabama. At least we now know where he’s been hiding.

A friend snapped this one for me and sent it. Never have I ever seen such fantasticness displayed on the back of a car.

In case you need me to translate:

Peace ● Love ● Breastfeed ● Cloth Diaper ● Babywear ● Leave your male child’s penis in tact.

(If you ever need some delightful reading on that last point, check out this post and the comments on it. I don’t mean to make you jealous since I’m positive it is all of your life dreams to be attacked by an angry mob of intactivists.)

And speaking of breastfeeding, how long did it take to squeeze these nuts hard enough to get that milk out?

Was this eye meant to have pink eye? Lesson: when adding stickers to your car, always consider where the brake light will be.

These were a set of floats for sale at Target. I understand the giant Unicorn floats that are in style right now. They’re so instagrammable. But is it Instragram worthy to be hugging a five foot long pickle? Don’t answer that. But nobody likes a brown gummy bear.

And….WHO DID THIS TO THIS AVOCADO? You cut out only the MIDDLE OF THE PIT?? This is just heinous.

Also if this is movie night in a can, you might need to plan a bit ahead for movie night.

This was in a gas station bathroom I frequent regularly (it’s the closest bathroom to a nature preserve that only has port-a-potties – don’t judge.)

The next time I visited, the sign simply had the bottom half torn off – problem solved. They don’t appreciate criticism. Or apparently paper towels.

I saw these poor gummies in the grocery store and felt compelled to buy them and set them free in the parking lot. Nobody puts Freedom Bears in a box.

WALL-E is real. And it’s coming to a Sam’s Club near you.

There have been so many delightful news stories about Uranus lately. Are you aware at the fact that Uranus is ALL OVER the internet? You should be.

This is my favorite. I will never think of Uranus again without thinking of diamonds raining on it. (Or is it from it? Hard to tell.)

This is in the window of my local Starbucks. I don’t feel like I have quite enough information to choose the center option. Is that a police sketch? Did the Pirate do a crime, or is he a missing pop?

When this showed up in my Facebook feed a few months ago, I knew I had finally found the gold at the end of the internet rainbow. NEVER HAVE I EVER been so happy about a cat photo in my feed. From the picture being screen shot from a Google search to the comments, I was in love.

Oh and also, their hashtag is right. You should absolutely spay and neuter any leprechaun cats you see running around out there. They’re a spunky bunch.

On Keeping A Relationship Fresh.

August 25, 2017 Rachel Callahan A Day in the Life, Deception: A Parent's Best Friend, Kids: The Experience.

Sometimes you can live with someone your whole life and still not really know them. You might think you have them pegged – especially if they share DNA – and know exactly what decisions they’ll make in each scenario. But then some random recessive gene will pop up and shock your socks off.

Such has been mine and Noah’s relationship of late.

I have logical children. Degreed as an Engineer and an Accountant, Chris and I have a significant amount of organized, calm, orderly genes in our pool. No, we don’t allow belly flops or dunking.

So when I was changing light bulbs and asked Noah to come take the old one out of my hand, it didn’t occur to me to say “CAREFULLY throw this away.” I mean sure he’s a six year old boy but he’s my six year old boy. And even more extreme, he’s Chris’ six year old boy.

So I just said “Take this and throw it away.”

After which I heard the crash and shatter and skittering pieces of glass in the kitchen.

“What happened??”

“You SAID to throw it!!”

“What?!? You know what ‘throw it away’ means – why would you THROW a lightbulb?”

I shooed both the children out of the kitchen and began angry sweeping.

(Thankfully these were old-fashioned bulbs – no immediately-life-ending poison in these babies.)

After carefully sweeping and then linting my floor (y’all keep dryer lint around to pick up tiny glass fragments too, right?), I followed up with Noah, who was feeling the weight of his sins in the living room. I think my angry sweeping was rightfully emanating throughout the house.

“Why did you throw it?”

“Well, actually I didn’t throw it. I slammed it against the counter to break it before I threw it away.”

“Wait. WHAT?!”

I angry-ran back in the kitchen, Noah leading the way then pointing out shiny objects. Sure enough, the counter was also covered in glass shards.

I spent the day marveling at his ability to surprise me. But then I remembered a couple of weeks ago when I did the same to him…

He and Ali were playing Hide and Seek. He ran into my room, quietly shutting the door behind him. Breathlessly, he said “Don’t tell Ali I’m in here.”

I was busy at work on my computer and nodded busily.

Ali finished counting and eventually popped her head in my door.

“Is Noah in here?”

I didn’t look up and answered as if I was giving her 1% of my attention. “Nope.”

“Okay, thanks.”

She ran downstairs.

Noah slowly rose up from the other side of my bed, starry eyed. With a lot of awe and a tiny bit of fear in his voice, he said,

“Well that…..is amazing. You can lie to kids.”

And he’ll never, ever know how good I am at it.

The Last (Beach) Stand.

August 22, 2017August 21, 2017 Rachel Callahan Free Family Vacations, I'm a Glutton for Adventure, Weird Strange and True, Yes I'm a beach bum. What of it?

It was our last trip of the summer, and our twelfth(ish) annual family vacation – the one we take with my family instead of buying each other presents. Not having to buy presents AND a “free” vacation? It’s such a win.

We started this tradition when there were no kids, then eventually began adding one kid per year for a half-decade.

The first year that we had all five cousins on the trip, they looked like this:

And now they look like this.

I’ll let you guess which of those years was easier.

This year, did all the Florida things.

We beached (count five kids – they’re all there. Did you find them? That’s what we do on the beach – count to five over and over),

We rainbowed,

We ran to and from the beach in our pajamas to get a better view,

We learned what was REALLY at the end of the rainbow,

(Is she taking a picture of her dog pooping at the end of the rainbow? I did, so I guess I can’t judge.)

We ran into random men with parrots,

We complained about our hands being covered in parrot germs,

We sand castled,

We sunsetted,

We crab hunted at least three different species (and/or goaded the bravest children into doing it for us),

(Cape San Blas is apparently the most popular Crab Hangout Spot in the world. See all those dots? Crabs. All crabs.)

We corralled everyone for family photos, which first requires one tribute for a lighting check, and MY GOODNESS did my tribute offer some flair with his role.

He’s for sure going to get picked up by a modeling agency solely because of this blog post.

Okay on to those family photos…

(Nope, not that one.)

(Nope again.)

(Definitely not.)

(Okay that one will work.)

(Since we’re on a roll, we should try a different location.)

(Nope, there’s always that one kid.)

Oh and every now and then we relaxed.

We also taught all the kids how to play Mafia, which they then became OBSESSED with, and I realized how remarkably good I was at swaying their collective opinions. I could make them turn on someone with just five words. I felt the addictive rush of power after being on the winning side for 8 out of 8 of our games, and realized that I really should consider a career change to either detective or member of the actual mafia. I’ll let you know what I decide.

And finally, we all studied intensely a pair of giant Walkingstick bugs. When Chris brought them up “as a large gift” for me (then lifted the lid and they jumped toward me and I screamed), he told the kids, “Look! It’s a baby riding on a Mommy’s back!”

We all oohed and aahed at how adorable this was, and I fussed at the children for trying to detach the precious family.

“Don’t do that to the baby!! He could DIE!!!”

After asking my resident Twitter Scientist, I discovered that actually, the males of this species are a lot smaller than the females, and the actual connection of the creatures at the rear as opposed to what I suppose I imagined – at the mother’s tiny teat – began to make so much more sense.

That poor female. She thought she had a chance of escape with our kid’s help. And then I stepped in and made them end their detaching process.

I went and found Chris. “THAT WAS NO BABY RIDING ON ITS MOTHER’S BACK!!”

He laughed at me. “I know that! I just made that story up for the kids.”

Five hours later, they were still on the porch. And still very much attached.

That night as I was lying in bed thinking about that exhausted female Walkingstick, I googled and discovered that this particular variety have an extremely unique “odiferous secretion” that they can shoot, with surprising accuracy, up to 15 inches. And furthermore, if this secretion is shot into one’s eye, which is a usual target, it can cause pain as severe as if you’d had molten lead poured in your eye socket. The pain fades in a few hours. The next morning, you wake up with a completely scarlet eye that makes light and pressure so unbearable that you are incapacitated for 48 hours. Your vision continues to be impaired for five days.

Hey, y’all – Alabama isn’t the only Hunger Games stadium.

After sharing these findings with the family, along with my relief that the children were not attacked by that feisty little male, my mom had an aha moment. She said that as we were all crowded around observing our new friends, she suddenly felt like she had something in her eye. It got worse, so she ran inside before we’d realized she was hurting. She couldn’t get it to quit, and finally threw her contacts away, and the pain subsided.

We can clearly conclude that the joy of our vacation was saved solely by a contact lens. We should all be so lucky as to have horrible vision.

So, thanks to Gramamma for taking it in the eye from a pair of amorous sticks for the rest of us, we can safely call this vacation a Thumbs-Up success.