Rachel Callahan

Pour Some Sugar on Me! No Wait – Don’t.

April 28, 2017April 27, 2017 Rachel Callahan A Day in the Life, Dysautonomia, Lose It Diet

As mentioned previously, I’m doing monthly goals and challenges this year. On my list of potential experiments, I’ve had two in particular that I simultaneously dreaded and really wanted to try.

Giving up sugar, and giving up gluten.

It took 90 days to work up the courage to try one or the other, and I chose sugar, even though I usually think very snobbish thoughts about people who would be so moronic as to give up The Ultimate Fruit of Life. Daily chocolate is often what keeps me from losing my Ever Lovin’ Mommy Mind, and I have at least a little bit of it on a daily basis.

I wanted to experiment with this both for weight and health – Dysautonomia is a very annoying disease that loves to make you give up everything you love (carbonation, caffeine, chocolate) and force you to take on all sorts of unsavory behaviors* (running, drinking insane amounts of water, lots of sleep) to keep it in line. So OF COURSE, a low-or-no sugar diet is highly recommended.

*The only benefit Dysautonomia offers is the edict of a very high sodium intake – it helps keep you from blacking out as much.

Additionally, I’ve been trying to lose weight this year (using Lose It! again) and stalled out in January after losing an impressive four whole pounds, despite counting calories and exercising every day. So what could it hurt to see what a month without sugar would do.

WHAT COULD IT HURT? EVERYTHING.

That was week one. I hated myself. I hated everyone. I hated life. I wanted sugar. I needed sugar. And I couldn’t eat literally anything because literally everything contains added sugar.

Ketchup.
Crackers.
Chocolate.
Pasta.
Cadbury Mini Eggs.
Salad Dressing.
Candied Pecans.
Chick Fil A Chicken Strips.
Cream Cheese Icing.

It was enraging.

The first week consisted of me picking up something to eat, reading the label, then yelling and throwing it down. In order to not feel like a failure, I allowed myself half a box on my tracking sheet for “no sweets” and a whole box for “zero sugar.” I got a few half boxes that first week as I learned to snack on nothing but peanut butter and eat nothing but nothing.

It didn’t help that the children kept offering me parts of their food and snacks as they always do, only for me to have to answer every time, “I’m not eating sugar, remember?”

“Oh yeah…why.”

Chris can testify to my anger issues that week – they were intense. He encouraged me to maybe just cut back on sugar – surely zero grams was an impossible goal. (I think he just wanted his state of familial happiness back.)

The vortex of that hellish time in my life happened on the first Saturday morning of April. I was prepping Noah’s breakfast that I daily make lovingly by hand (frozen Eggo pancakes) and took my usual Mommy tax of two pieces of the most buttered bits of pancake, as I do every morning.

As I put the bite in my mouth, it occurred to me.

Holy crap.

These pancakes probably have…sugar.

I pulled out the box and indeed. They had the worst offender. High Fructose Corn Syrup.

I looked skyward and yelled out “I CAN’T EVEN HAVE MOMMY TAX!??!?!?!?!”

I was tormented. Angry. Feeling as if this assignment was ridiculous and idiotic and a fool’s errand and here I was finding out at the end of the week that I’d accidentally been poisoning my body with the exact thing I’d been fighting and hadn’t even APPRECIATED that I was eating The Nectar of Life.

But the cliché is true. Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom to start to make your way back up.

Slowly, I began to crawl myself out of my angry, unsweetened hole.

I developed routines of things I could eat – and enjoy – that did not have added sugar. My tastes began to change, and things that used to not taste sweet at all now tasted delectable.

And I began to feel better, lose inches, and finally even lose a couple pounds.

I had told myself at the beginning of the month that I’d have blackout dates during this process – Easter weekend (who can pack two kid’s Easter baskets and have zero grams of sugar? That’s unnecessary cruelty) and our beach trip. But when Easter weekend arrived, I experienced the oddest feeling of great trepidation at the thought of allowing sugar re-entry.

We were invited to an Easter party Saturday morning, where there were my favorite type of dessert – Oreo truffles. With white chocolate on the outside, even. For the first hour, I just thought about the fact that I WOULD have one before I left. I finally picked one up and stared at it. I literally felt scared. What would my body do with this foreign object? Did I really want to open this door back up? Would all my feelings come flooding back at me?

Finally, I bit.

The sugar flowed over my tongue like a drop of water in the desert. It nearly tingled. I savored the moment, only daring to have one. It was delicious, it gave me a total headache and made me feel dizzy, but it did not send me into a sugaraholic bender. I could do this.

That night, as Chris and I packed Easter baskets, I allowed myself just a couple pieces of candy. I couldn’t believe I was more afraid of overdoing it than I was eager to allow myself to binge during a pre-planned blackout date. But here I was. I, Rachel Callahan, artisan chocolate connoisseur and rewarder-of-self-with-sugary-treats, was SCARED OF SUGAR.

As the weeks went on, I became less and less interested in sugar. I didn’t lust after it, think about it, or even want it.

And I noticed something else, too: I didn’t particularly care about any food.

I ate when I needed to eat, I didn’t eat as much, and I didn’t spend time thinking about food and obsessing over my next meal.

Once, I was even irritated when Chris wanted to go out to lunch – why waste all that time on something as inconsequential as food? I could just eat a little cheese here…

And so, it seems, at least for me, that sugar was THE addicting quality of food. It was the thing I craved, the thing that drove me back to eating more, and the thing that kept me from losing weight. And, for what it’s worth, one of the things that made me feel bad. The lack of sugar has certainly not cured my daily battle with Dysautonomia, but I have had more good days this month.

It’s that last column there…the yellow-out dates are Easter and the Beach. Even though they were pre-planned days, I couldn’t bring myself to eat ACTUAL sweets while we were at the beach. I am abhorrent.

I haven’t decided what is to be the permanent status of my relationship with sugar. It’s complicated. I cannot possibly imagine parting ways forever, but I do want to have some space from it for longer than a month, so I have semi-committed to continuing our trial separation for 90 days. I still get half boxes some days, and that’s okay. It’s not like I’m truly living the Zero Gram Life – I’m pretty sure that is unattainable unless you never go out to eat and never eat anything that wasn’t made from scratch. But the sheer amount of sugar I’ve not eaten in April – especially from the kid’s Easter baskets which are mysteriously way more full than they would usually be at this point – is pretty substantial.

And I don’t hate it. Not anymore.

Even when, just this morning, Noah offered me a Fruit Loop.

“I don’t eat sugar right now, remember?”

“Oh yeah…” (he put the Fruit Loop back and picked up another color) “But surely you can have this one.”

“Nope.”

“You’re not even eating green sugar???”

I know, son. It makes no sense.

Just The Four Of Us.

April 25, 2017 Rachel Callahan A Day in the Life, Yes I'm a beach bum. What of it?

This past weekend we tried something new.

We prefer doing what we know works – we’re not the type to be like “hey let’s try this new big thing with our kids! I bet they’re old enough to not make it miserable!” No. We wait until we are solidly sure that they are absolutely more than old enough to do whatever new thing is out there.

And that’s how we found ourselves, for the first time, at the beach – just the four of us.

We prefer traveling in a herd. With family or friends…more adults staying in our vacation abode than just us. When toddlers need naps and babies scream and everybody needs food all the time, the more adults the better. But now we have a 6 and 10 year old. They fix their own food. They entertain themselves on car trips. Life is easy. Clearly we waited too long for this step.

Chris’ Aunt and Uncle (who live at the beach) have a new rental condo in Gulf Shores that we were excited to visit. It’s a one bedroom, but had bunks in the hallway for the kids. All of our beach trips the last few years have been off-beach to save on money (traveling in herds = more bedrooms = more money), but since this is a one bedroom, it was totally affordable and made us realize how much we missed being RIGHT THERE. The walk was easy (no football-field-sized boardwalk or blocks of neighborhood), we sat on the balcony and listened to the waves at night, and everything was just lovely.

We like lovely.

We tromped out to the beach the first day, and Ali immediately ran to the water to enjoy the waves. Noah, on the other hand, was perfectly content to dig holes and bury his father.

In fact, it became clear fairly quickly that he had decided he disliked the ocean.

Scared, he said.

This was as close as he’d get.

And this was not okay.

No, no, no.

We have two more beach trips this summer with other people and the kid MUST like the ocean. It’s a Callahan rule.

Chris and I agreed that Immersion Therapy was in order. Which was correct because we both received honorary Psychiatry degrees upon procreation.

So we told both kids we were going out past the waves as a family. We were ALL going, EVERYONE would be safe, and there would be NO complaining.

We were ankle deep when Noah started panicking.

Chris picked him up and carried him, assuring him it was FINE, we were completely in CONTROL of the situation. The waves were perfectly tame.

God chose this moment to teach the lesson that parents are not always correct, and sent The Mother Wave at us. I mean seriously – we did not see another wave like it all weekend but it just HAD TO COME at that exact moment.

It knocked Ali off her feet. It knocked me off my feet. It knocked Chris-holding-Noah off his feet – partially because a thrashing panicking child is quite a bit unhelpful for balance. Furthermore, it immediately stripped Chris and I both of our sunglasses, and we all came up gargling and screaming.

But The Mother Wave showed no mercy. She decisively carried both pairs of sunglasses to Ariel, where she is thrilled with our tandem fish hula hoops, or whatever she’s using them for.

After a good bit of walking up and down the beach hopefully staring at the waves (while Noah quickly retreated to his sand holes), Chris walked across the street to buy us both new, much cheaper sunglasses (the general store across the street became an instantly important perk to our vacation.)

While he was gone, I talked Noah up.

“We’re going to try again. You must not be afraid of the ocean. We won’t make you go far. But we’re all going out.”

He continued to be an Ocean Denier.

I pulled out my phone. I googled up four years of my own blog posts.

“Look. Here you are enjoying the ocean when you were 5. And look at you under the water and laughing when you were 4! And when you were 3, you were happy to fall into the waves!!”

“Oh…wow…”

I felt my words had finally had impact. A near-adult six year old could not be more of a wuss than his 3 year old self. Right?

Chris returned with a pair of glasses and a strap for each of us – we would not be losing our sun protection during anymore forays into Forced Child Fun.

And we set out again. Not far – but far enough. And I am here to testify: it might cost a false start and the loss of two pairs of sunglasses, but Immersion Therapy works.

For the rest of the day, Noah jumped waves and squealed with glee, getting deeper and deeper into the ocean after each jump.

He told everyone that it was the most fun he’d ever had. And even gave it a rousing “Best Day Ever!!” by the end.

That night, after dinner with Uncle Leo and Aunt Kitty (okay we totally hung out with them a lot so I guess we still prefer being with other people on vacation after all),

we stepped out onto the beach for a beautiful sunset walk, again remembering how nice it is to be RIGHT THERE on the beach.

After the initial “What?? A Walk??”, the kids became quick fans.

Noah even rewarded me with a surprised “Wow mom! This walk is a lot more un-boring than I thought it would be!!”

It’s amazing how right parents can be. About all the things.

…Maybe one day he’ll just believe me the first time I say something.

Highly doubtful, though.

After a good long walk,

We ran back to our room and settled everyone down.

And then started all over the next day.

Sand holes and all.

Except this time, Noah remembered how fun the ocean was and didn’t bury his head in the sand.

Can’t say the same for the rest of his body, though.

Shameless plug: Kitty and Leo’s condo truly is delightful and low-maintenance and an inexpensive family beach weekend and right across the street from a restaurant, an ice cream parlor, and an emergency grocery store that sells surprisingly nice sunglasses. I get absolutely nothing for plugging it, but I do recommend it if you’re looking for that kind of thing. You can see it here.

An Alabama Fairytale.

April 20, 2017April 19, 2017 Rachel Callahan Actually Possibly Informational, Storytime

For those of you who live in Alabama, you may have had enough already of this story. Or maybe you’ve been avoiding it and waiting for the overview. But I’ve had a lot of people – locally and not – ask me “what exactly happened down there?”, so I felt it my duty, since I have read pretty much every article about it and a good chunk of the impeachment report, depositions, and exhibits, to write it out as a happy little story for all of you.

~~~~~~~~~

Once upon a time in a State far, far, away, the people elected a Grandpa for Governor.

The State had been plagued by scandal and corruption and sending Governors to jail, and they wanted to try something different. So Grandpa Gov – a Deacon, Sunday School Teacher, Dermatologist who had clearly never once been so vain as to use any youth-renewing items on his own skin, and doting husband of 45 years to the Sweetest Southern Lady You Ever Did See, became the supreme ruler of The State.

Everything was fine and dandy. Grandpa Gov was kindly and wore his ill-fitting khakis, scoffing at those who suggested he dress like the Governor. He interacted with his staff as if they were his equals and his dearest acquaintances. He continued to teach Sunday School at his home church and would often discuss his Sunday School lessons with his staff. Sure, he looked ever-so-slightly like Mr. Burns from The Simpsons, but he was so down-home and innocent that you hardly noticed. Yes, 2010 Grandpa Gov was the heart-warming trustworthy man that The State needed.

A few years went by, and Grandpa had a couple Grandpa goofs as non-career politicians often do. But overall, he was forgiven by his state because hey – at least he wasn’t getting thrown into the slammer. I mean – he wasn’t even taking a salary as Governor – so clearly, Grandpa Gov was delightfully incorruptible.

Then along came New Girl. No one knows exactly how or why or who was behind her appearance into the fairytale land of state government, but oh, are there theories. Theories that, if printed, would be considered libelous. So use your own imaginations. But what we do know is that he met New Girl and her husband at Church. And gave them both jobs at The Capitol.

New Girl competed in Miss State many years prior, and now had three kids. But New Girl was still young. New Girl was pretty. New Girl was good with the flattery.

Before long, Grandpa Gov started dressing differently. All of a sudden, he had suits that fit. He walked with more authority and more than a little bit of pride. He demanded deference to his position and quit chit-chatting with the staff. And, perhaps most odd, he became the flippinest-floppinest Governor ever on his reelection campaign positions – right after being soundly reelected.

NO NEW TAXES.
(How about a few hundred million of new taxes?)

NO LOTTERY.
(How about a state lottery?)

Yes, it seemed that Grandpa Gov had been replaced by Slick Gov. Or someone had attached some puppet strings to Granpa Gov’s old shoulders.

And then the rumors started.

Nasty rumors.

Open rumors.

Seems like the entire capitol city knew about it.

And apparently Grandpa Gov / New Girl’s Church knew, as they both got their memberships revoked.

Surely not! Not Grandpa. He was such a good husband! Loving and kind and doting and all that. And have you seen his wife? She’s the most delightful, joyful looking little southern lady you ever did see.

She’s basically Tweety Bird’s Granny but with better hair.

But as more rumors flew about Grandpa Gov’s misdeeds, all of a sudden the likeness to Mr. Burns became more obvious. And the possibility that New Girl was actually into Grandpa Gov just seemed nonexistent. Clearly she had some devious motivations.

And then, less than a year after his reelection and soon after their 50th wedding anniversary, The Sweetest First Lady You Ever Did See….

Filed for divorce.

What. The. What. Governors don’t get divorced while in office.

Rumors started becoming very thick. Now the entire state knew what was up.

But it wasn’t until six months later that the people of The State got to hear the truth.

And I do literally mean HEAR.

Right after a previous employee came out and said that indeed, Grandpa Gov and New Girl had been getting it on, a CD of Grandpa Gov’s disgusting phone calls were dropped, behind a gas station, for the press to blare loudly.

No one in The State will ever be able to scrub this from their ears, no matter how hard they try.

Because no one wants to hear Grandpa say…

When I stand behind you, and I put my arms around you, and I put my hands on your breasts, and I put my hands (unintelligible) and just pull you real close. I love that, too.

It was The Lord Above that blurred that unintelligible bit. He knew The State could only take so much.

It didn’t take long for it to come out that it was actually The Sweetest Ex-First Lady You Ever Did See who had made the recordings, simply by “going on a walk,” but leaving her phone behind and recording – it took less than a minute for Grandpa Gov to ring New Girl.

Nor, once the tapes leaked, did it take long for Grandpa Gov to finish completely trashing his kindly reputation by denying the relationship – saying it was just dirty talk – nothing actually happened.

Uh, yeah. Because Governors call me all the time and say things like that just for fun – and I let them – politics and usual here.

New Girl resigned to “spend more time with her family” (although her husband kept his $90K government job and she seemed to still have credentials to come and go as she pleased – for “consulting”, which is apparently what the Grandpas are calling it these days), and there were many more details over the months, but let’s bullet point a bit for sake of time.

The State Attorney General promised an Impeachment investigation, because it seemed that Grandpa and New Girl used state resources to aid and protect their dalliances. (They especially seemed to like state plane rides…ew.)
But then, A State Senator got put on the short list to be the National Attorney General…
And The State Attorney General suspended the Impeachment Investigation in high hopes…
And The State Senator did get the National Attorney General Gig…
And Grandpa Gov promoted that State Attorney General to Senator. A gift, if you will. No strings attached, obviously.
Magically, for just a second, everyone said “What Impeachment? Nobody said anything about an impeachment. Nothing to see here.”
But I guess the rest of the AG office was jealous that they didn’t get rewarded so they picked back up the investigation.

And things got boiling.

A little after a year after the trauma of The Tapes, Impeachment rumblings started happening. And furthermore, the State Ethics Commission found probably cause that Grandpa Gov violated the state ethics law and the campaign finance law, and would probably be in super big jailtime trouble.

Grandpa, meanwhile, continued to say “Nope – didn’t do nothin’ – won’t resign. I won’t I won’t I won’t!”

He fought hard to keep all the proof from coming out into the public’s view, but he lost.

And two weeks ago, an entire website dropped – with a thick report and some serious exhibits of Grandpa’s misdeeds.

As it turns out, Grandpa didn’t understand The Cloud. And he didn’t at all realize that his texts on his Government-issued iPhone were duplicated on the Government-issued iPad that he’d handed down to The Sweetest Wife (now Ex-Wife) You Ever Did See.

And she, again, kept the receipts.

We got to read along as New Girl tried to hide her frustration at Grandpa Gov not knowing how to use his burner phone…

We got to see when Grandpa Gov first learned how to use the Emoji Keyboard…

And a combination of the both.

And most traumatically, we got to see New Girl pen The New State greeting.

Move over, “Roll Tide.” Move over, “Hey y’all! How you doing?”

From now on, expect residents of The State to yell out that greeting. And you better believe there’s already a cross-stitch pattern.

Somebody please put this on a throw pillow for me.

And I made this for you, so that you can always remember Grandpa Gov as he wanted to be remembered…

But by far the most gaggable moments were when New Girl had to bring God into it – presumably when they started getting caught and were just sooo sad about being mistreated.

(Based on that last text, New Girl missed out on reading huge swaths of the bible (like, say, The Ten Commandments) where God highly recommends not messing around with other people’s spouses.)

All of the above conversations were interspersed with vomits like this…

So much ew.

Sadly, we also got the text message to The Sweetest Wife You Ever Did See where Grandpa Gov accidentally called her by New Girl’s Name. Then tried to just move on.

…And then deny that anything at all was going on when trying to convince The Sweetest Wife You Ever Did See to come to his second inauguration.

I cannot imagine how The Sweetest Wife must have felt dealing with all this. But kudos to her for keeping her head and the proof, therefore being completely responsible for the undoing of her husband’s grotesque misdeeds. As it should be.

But Grandpa Gov didn’t think The Sweetest Wife was “smart enough” to have compiled information on him, and so he assumed that her Chief of Staff was actually behind it all. And so, after a few nasty threat-laced conversations with Sweetest Wife’s Chief of Staff (including telling her that he was Governor and everyone “bowed down to his throne”), she found a rock through her house window and her car vandalized, incidentally right around the time she was giving a deposition to the Ethics Commission.

Yeah. Um. That escalated quickly, Grandpa.

Other “gems” from the impeachment documents included this description of New Girl’s office rearranging…

And what New Girl had the nerve to tell the Sweetest Lady’s Chief of Staff…

Why is there a Mr. Burns screenshot for every Grandpa Gov move. It’s as if it was sent to us as a prophecy.

And this, which was submitted as a typical day on Grandpa Gov’s calendar – the one he quit letting The Sweetest Wife You Ever Did See have access to – and the one for which everyone in his office knew exactly what “Hold Time” was –

Let me do the math for you. That’s one hour and forty five minutes of actually being the Governor and four hours of Hold Time. What do you do for Four and a Half Hours?

Mayberry and Chill, one can only assume.

There’s so much more to this story, such as

The Sweetest Wife coming to the Capitol to take a picture of “The Love Bench” in the courtyard,
While trying to justify moving Wanda’s Desk (which happened to be too close to Grandpa Gov’s office for comfort,) Grandpa Gov explained that he was pretty sure Wanda had “a thing” for him. Pretty sure Wanda threw up in her mouth a little.
When confronted by a dear friend and State Trooper about “the situation”, Grandpa Gov asked him to go break up with New Girl for him. Which he did. But then Grandpa Gov walked in the room and told her “it’s gonna be okay – nevermind.”
Grandpa Gov’s sons attempted to trick him into getting on a plane so that they could have him tested for dementia, due to the extreme nature of his personality change. Let’s hope it can all be blamed on dementia, but more likely it’s blamed on Viagra: the tool that lets men be tools for decades past their ability to run fast enough to flee temptation. (Drug companies should really hire me to write slogans for them.)

But we don’t have time for every detail here.

So let’s jump to the happy part of this Fairytale.

On one fateful Monday, the Impeachment hearing began. And Grandpa finally saw that he could deny no longer. So by the end of the day, Grandpa Gov had negotiated a resignation, which included this mugshot and a booking into the county jail.

Just as was prophesied.

You win some (not being put in jail on much worse charges), you lose some (your wife, your house, your beach house, your state retirement, your security detail, your job, your dignity, your kid’s respect, your….oh that’s long enough.)

There was an hour between the resignation of Grandpa Gov and the swearing in of his replacement. And that one, glorious hour was The Fairytale for The State.

For one, amazing, delightful, fantastic, dreamy, carefree hour, The State was ungoverned.

And that was the best governing they’d ever had.

And for that one hour, everyone lived Happily Ever After.

The End.

It’s Hard Work Being His Favorite.

April 17, 2017April 17, 2017 Rachel Callahan A Day in the Life, Boy Child = Bizarre., Just My Luck, Kids: The Experience.

“Mommy, You’re the Best.”

“Hey Mommy………..I love you.”

I hear each of those phrases at least forty-eight times a day.

Noah likes me. A lot.

And by a lot I mean he really prefers to be with me at all moments.

It’s utterly precious until it’s not.

All the honest Moms out there say “here, here.”

“Not” starts somewhere around 10am in the morning when I need just a second or two by myself.

But that is an unreasonable request, he quickly lets me know.

And I have to ask…

So to have a tiny second to myself, I try gifting him with the lovely bonus of a break from school. And I steal away to my room for just a second of silence from his incessant talking and questions and talking and questions.

But he comes and finds me.

During break time.

It’s as if he doesn’t understand that break times are for Mommies.

So I do what any normal mom would do.

I take a shower.

Thinking that this is the one place I can have a moment alone.

Until I start to get out of said shower.

And notice a tiny set of blue eyes peeking from the other side of the cracked door.

I scream.

Naturally.

Because my brain doesn’t immediately compute that it’s the stalker I birthed from my own body and not some other more nefarious stalker.

Which makes my tiny stalker cry.

“Mommy! You scared me!”

Yeah. Because I wasn’t scared at all.

So we get in the car to do errands.

Where it becomes most apparent that he can only process thought if and only if he thinks out loud with the preface of “Hey Mommy….?”

After which he’ll wait 3 seconds for an interested answer.

I don’t give it. Because I only have so many interested answers a day and he’s already used them up before I get out of bed.

So he continues without feedback.

“Hey Mommy….did you know I once forgot to put my goggles on when I went down the slide at the pool?”

“Hey Mommy…I really like Pokemon.”

“Hey Mommy…you should really see mine and Ali’s city on Minecraft.”

After the first few Hey Mommys my brain feels like Louis C.K.

After ten more Hey Mommys (and we haven’t even gotten out of the neighborhood yet) I feel like Klum.

At Hey Mommy number 25 (we might have made it to the interstate by now) my insides are full-on Snape.

Halfway through our 20 minute trip we reach Hey Mommy number 53 and all I hear and see and feel and am is Schwarzenegger.

It’s rough being so thoroughly loved. But it’s precisely why we become Mommies.

The Super Bowl of Homeschooling.

April 11, 2017April 10, 2017 Rachel Callahan A Day in the Life, Homeschooling: Not just for the socially awkward anymore.

To a homeschooler, there is nothing more thrilling than standardized achievement tests.

…Okay actually this is way too blanket a statement and is vastly over-applied.

To myself and my daughter and perhaps a few other homeschoolers, there is nothing more thrilling than standardized achievement tests.

I adored them every year when I was a kid. I looked forward to them with much excitement. I loved that my Mom took me to the store and let me pick out whatever snack my heart desired – she said I needed as much brain power as possible to help me to do well during my tests.

(10 out of 10 kids do best when they get to pick out their own snacks.)

And oh, the random snack I chose every year.

Potato Sticks.

I don’t know why I picked these – I actually don’t remember eating them at any other time except for achievement tests, but they were my standardized snack of choice.

(Maybe it was peeling that plastic seal off that allowed the metal ring to pop off in such a satisfying way. Maybe it was the film of oil on every surface of the inside of the can. Maybe it was the closest thing I could get to Fries in a Can.)

Anyway. Between my beloved Potato Sticks (do they even still make those?), the delight of filling in rows and rows of bubbles, and having a few days in a classroom with other homeschoolers, testing season was the best.

And it thrills my heart to see my daughter find the same joys as I did.

She asks me at least once a month, “How much longer until achievement tests?”

And, with much excitement and glee, they arrived this week.

I of course let her pick out her own snacks. She went with these attractive looking creatures:

Just as her mother before her, this is not something she normally eats, nor is it something she’s asked me to buy at any other time.

Also? They look like literal dog biscuits. So at least we share extremely questionable standardized snacking taste.

Anyway. She’s taking tests this week, and I’m proctoring tests (for a different grade), because if I’m not allowed to take standardized tests anymore, proctoring is second best. At least I get the joy of seeing other people scribble in beautiful little bubbles.

Right?

As such, I’ll be back next week, fresh off the oh-so-addictive high of helping little minds compare their smarts to all the other little minds out there in the world.

In the meantime, let’s discuss:

1. Did you love/like/hate standardized testing?

2. What unusual snack would you pick out today if you had a week of blissful multiple choice bubbling?

I think I’d go with Potato Sticks. For old time’s sake.

The Opposite of StormChasing.

April 7, 2017April 6, 2017 Rachel Callahan I'm a Glutton for Adventure, Tornadoes

The Alabama Weather Scene has changed since I was a kid.

Not in content so much – I remember tornadoes and warnings and staying indoors as things were flying about Wizard-Of-Oz style from my youth. My mom claims to have sat in a rocking chair on the front porch with me in her arms while a tornado tore through, dropping a tree on the back of our house. (I guess it was just a mother’s instincts to know that the front porch was our safe room that day. Who knows.)

Anyway.

The weather is the same. But the warning time of coming storms has greatly increased, as has the paranoia around those warnings.

When I was a kid, most of Alabama, it seemed, laughed off tornado warnings. In the same way, yet opposite, that we laugh at ourselves for shutting the state down for an inch of snow, we laughed at ourselves for never worrying about tornadoes – they happen all the time, after all.

2011 erased that attitude. We as a state suffer from PTSD of 4-27-11, and we take even thunderstorms seriously now. That, along with tornado prediction technology and coverage being greatly improved since I was a kid, is what has changed Alabama. When you add paranoia + predictions, you get state shut downs.

On Wednesday, a good portion of the state was in Tornado Possibility Dark Color 4 (out of 5 – if we ever get Dark Color 5 again, Chris swears we’re leaving the state), and so out of precaution, every school system closed – even The University of Alabama.

(Except for homeschool. If we’re going to be stuck at home all day, we might as well do school. Poor kids.)

But this type of “Tornado Day” was the weird, unpredictable kind – there would be no “front” or long line of storms coming through that you could watch with dread and trepidation, knowing to the minute when it would reach your neighborhood. It was the mostly sunny day kind, therefore adding to the explosiveness of the atmosphere, with violent pop-up storms coming seemingly out of nowhere in random areas.

Ugh.

Existential weather dread is worse when the sun is shining and the radar is clear. It’s downright ominous.

So I spent the day indoors, checking the radar every 5 seconds, fighting the losing battle of cell phone battery life versus the constant reminder of “Charge your devices in case you lose power!”

We were antsy. SO antsy. It was a beautiful day but even going out into the front yard seemed un-recommended.

Finally, at 5pm, I could take it no more. We were originally supposed to be out of danger by then. There was one small yet nasty storm east of us that the meteorologists were covering nonstop (seriously y’all – hail the size of freaking baseballs), and so no one was giving Birmingham the promised all-clear. There was some sort of “dry line” that was supposed to be coming through any minute, therefore clearing the environment of anymore storms.

You can’t see dry lines. But you can imagine they’re there if you think really hard and are positive you’ll explode to stay indoors for one more second.

So Chris and I decided that surely we were good.

Chris left straight from work to run, and we arranged to meet him at the Botanical Gardens later to trade off so that I could run, and that way the kids could run around the gardens in the meantime.

So we set out on a beautiful summer afternoon. When we got close to the gardens, big fat raindrops began to fall.

Of course.

But it was surely just a sprinkle, so I decided we’d ride up to the top of the city first – for a peek on how it looked on this weirdly sunny stormy day.

As we got closer to the ridge, the skies behind us began to look darker and more ominous. Quite like an Oculus bearing down upon us (for those of you who have already seen “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.”)

I checked where Chris was running on my Find My Friends app – a mile away, in the direction of the nastiness.

I should save him. He’s gonna get soaked.

Right after I get my picture.

I grabbed a couple shots, the dark cloud eerily covering the sun on a clear and innocent-looking day, then began chasing down my husband.

“Okay kids – you’re on Daddy watch. Keep your eyes out your window.”

It took a few turns, but we found him, right as he was crossing the street. He had headphones on, so I yelled at him. “Hey!! Do you need a ride??”

He didn’t even look back. He shot me a peace sign from over his shoulder and kept running. He totally thought I was some random busybody motorist.

I followed him down the road and yelled again. He yelled back that he was okay and kept running.

I drove around the block, parked, and started checking Twitter and the radar. A spectacularly nasty little storm had unpredictably (as predicted) popped up from nowhere and it was headed straight our way, then on toward our house.

Chris took the clue that we’d chased him down and paused to look at his radar. He texted me.

“On second thought, come get me.” (Paraphrased.)

I drove around the block, grabbed my husband, and peeled out to drive to his car.

We discussed what we should do. I wanted to go home and hide in the basement. He wanted to drive away from the storm. I finally realized he didn’t want hail damage on his precious car. He concurred. It made sense – as long as we could decisively tell which way the storm was not headed.

As we got back to his car, things began looking worse. And closer. He quickly formulated a plan and told me to follow him north – to a suburb on the opposite side of the city. We screeched out as rain began falling in earnest and giant lightning bolts started touching down. I might’ve whispered a few choice words just out of earshot of my children (I hope.)

Managing no red lights, we got on the freeway and sped north of town.

In no time, it was a bright, sunny day in front of us and to the left – but behind us and to the right it looked downright gross.

We ended up at a lovely park we’re never close enough to visit (Black Creek Park in Fultondale), taking a nice, calm family walk, while getting multiple texts from neighbors asking if we were okay and sending pictures of hail everywhere and the tree down on our next door neighbor’s house.

The wind was powerful and dry where we were, and we quickly surmised that we had, indeed, finally found that “dry line”, whatever the heck that was anyway.

We walked down the lovely rails-to-trails path, pausing with a hush to watch some groundhogs scurry into their holes, and finding a playground with delightful eccentricities to add to the beautiful and deceptively placid sunset.

The kids even found a massively nasty bug they followed around the playground for a good while – clearly a win.

He was inches long, y’all. I looked him up later and – no lie – he’s called a Hellgrammite. They usually live their entire larval lives (5 years) under rocks in streams, and only emerge if a thunderstorm chases them out. Everything made so much sense.

(Then they’re a full-grown adult for one week before they die – but for that one week they’re the most terrifying, dragon-sized fly you’ve ever seen. Go ahead – Google “Dobson Fly” and see what I mean. Add that to Alabama’s Hunger Games status.)

But I digress. Besides that nightmare, we spent our evening simply enjoying the exultation of successfully fleeing a hail storm.

Hands-On History: Sloss Furnaces

April 3, 2017April 1, 2017 Rachel Callahan Alabama History, Homeschooling: Not just for the socially awkward anymore.

Sloss Furnaces, part of the reason for Birmingham’s existence, has always fascinated me – especially photographically. I’ve taken pictures of it for years, but have never truly explored it. I have left it so unexplored that I didn’t even realize they had a gorgeous visitor’s center, gift shop, and museum.

But naturally it was on our list of field trips for our history project, so when we made it to that point in history, I emailed to inquire about a tour. They have a premium tour which includes the opportunity to create an iron mold and watch iron being poured, so I quickly chose that option. Molten hot metal poured with children watching? For sure – we’re absolutely doing that.

We arrived on a gorgeous day – a perfect backdrop for the exciting photos I knew I’d get to take.

Sloss Furnaces was a thriving pig iron producer opened in 1882, perfectly situated in the only place in the United States where all the ingredients needed to make iron lay within a thirty-mile radius.

The tour began, and despite our tour guide’s fantastic mannerisms, I might’ve gotten distracted by all the fabulous angles inside of Sloss to fully pay attention.

I definitely caught some snippets about the terrible working conditions (deafness and death being side effects of employment), but the angles…

We descended down some crazy narrow metal steps to the underground.

I remember clearly that he explained what they used to cart back and forth in this tunnel, but … photographs.

Obviously I need to redo this tour and not be allowed to take my camera along because everything he said was so very interesting and I don’t remember a single word of it.

I am not fit to be a homeschool mom. I am the worst. And I have the photographs to prove it.

(This is also Carla Jean’s fault for moving to Colorado because I can’t cheat off of her notes. Which makes me wonder how very much I cheated off her notes last semester…I am really not fit to be a teacher.)

After the riveting tour during which I learned so very much, we went inside the museum and watched a short film about turning Sloss into a National Historic Landmark. Most of Ali’s report (at the bottom) was gleaned from the video. So maybe she was distracted during the tour as well.

Then it was time for the mold making. They gave each of us pressed sand molds and tools for creating our designs.

This was SO MUCH FUN. And made me wish I had more artistic abilities.

After we all finished our molds, they were loaded onto a trolley and carted off to these workers, who were casually maintaining the fire as red-hot iron slag dripped out of their container, as it’s supposed to.

Never have caution signs had such a justified existence.

The best part of my entire month was when they took the vat of liquid iron and began pouring it into the molds. Watching and photographing the splashing fire made me beyond ecstatic.

…And totally creeped Noah out. But did I comfort my kid? No. I was too busy watching volcano being poured.

While we waited for our iron castings to cool a degree or two, we studied the forge’s various collectibles.

Clearly people had been having fun.

My kind of fun.

Those eyes…so turquoise. That skull…so melted.

The cart arrived with our creations, and the kids enjoyed trying to find their pieces. (Except one of our kids, who refused to claim his piece, insisting that his would NOT have looked like that.)

Ali, who had worked hard to write mirror-image letters in her mold, was quite proud of how her piece came out. And amazed at how heavy it was.

It was a most fantastic field trip, even though I totally failed at knowledge retention. I’ll be sure my report card reflects such.

Here’s Ali’s report:

Sloss Furnaces Small

Things I’ve been Enjoying.

March 29, 2017March 29, 2017 Rachel Callahan Stuff I like

I have not cared to blog AT ALL the last couple of weeks because I have just finished my first re-read of all seven Harry Potter books. One of my favorite book series, I’ve wanted to do this but never felt like I had “the time” to dive in. But Ali finished book 4 (Goblet of Fire), and I wanted to make sure our encouragement of letting her read the rest at her current age of 10 was a good decision. This was the perfect excuse I needed to immerse myself into Hogwarts and beyond – “For the child. I do it for the child.”

Here are my thoughts from re-reading:

– Upon my first reading, I did not enjoy book 5 (Order of the Phoenix). It was too dark, and Harry was too moody. But after having the entire picture of why Harry was grumpy and what was going on and what important information was gleaned in that year that was necessary later, I actually quite enjoyed it the second time.

– Books 5-7 are in a league of their own. They are the most gripping, engaging books I’ve ever read. I’m almost mad that the movies exist because of how much richness they leave out. I took 45 days to read the first four books, but only 6, 5, and 4 days respectively to read books 5, 6, and 7 – despite them being exponentially longer than the first four. They’re simply stunning works of art.

– My first reading of the books (before watching any movies, of course) happened when I was pregnant with Ali. Only books 1-6 were out during that time. Book 7 came out the next summer, when Ali was 6 months old and I was in the depths of post-partum depression (unmedicated at that point.) I did not remember this timing, but once I started book 7, I looked up the publishing date, sure that something was amiss, and it all made sense. My memories of 1-6 were very clear and mostly positive, but I remembered not liking book 7 and thinking it was a total drag. This time around, there were parts of book 7 of which I had zero recollection, and I enjoyed the book immensely. The moral of this story is: don’t read excellent literature for the first time while you’re depressed. Or if you do, read it again later.

– The books were infinitely richer on the reread, and lost none of the appeal because I knew how they ended. There are so many hidden nuggets throughout the books (even starting in book 1) that you cannot understand until you’ve read them all. Seeing all of these brilliantly included foretellings takes away any sadness over the lack of surprise.

– I’ve been simultaneously reading The Wingfeather Saga (by Andrew Peterson) out loud to the kids while reading Harry Potter to myself, and The Wingfeather Saga did not pale in comparison. If you’re needing another series to read that has many of the special elements of the Harry Potter series (lots of surprises, a fascinating and unique world, finding out more and more about how that world works as the series goes on), I definitely recommend it. It’s no Harry Potter, but it’s not too far off.

– Yes, I did give Ali permission to go ahead and read whichever Harry Potter books she wants.

Next on my reading list that will keep me from wanting to blog again: Harry Potter and The Cursed Child. I start tonight.

Other things that I’ve enjoyed lately:

– The Skimm – a free news newsletter (literal NEWSletter?) that catches me up on the news in a delightfully sing-song, lighthearted fashion. They write wonderful things like “meanwhile, Trump is trying to ctrl-z that budget item…” Y’all – replacing “ctrl-z” for “cut” in a news article is speaking my love language. It’s been a good way to keep up with what’s going on in the world without freaking out about it – and it’s the first daily email that I actually look forward to. Whether or not you get your news elsewhere, this is sure to entertain.

– dotted journals (sometimes referred to as bullet journals.) I discovered these journals toward the end of last year (much thanks to my dear friend Carla Jean) and ever since, they’ve been helping me organize my life. They’ve made me much more productive, and have helped with this year’s resolution, which is to have monthly goals rather than yearly goals. Working on something for 30 days is so much easier than a year, and I’ve often created a new habit by the end of 30 days, so I don’t need to track it any further.

I currently have 3 bullet journals in regular use (two Northbooks and one Miliko), and an extra bullet journal as a scratch pad. They are:

1. My to-do list/catch-all notebook – it contains a universal to-do list that I rewrite about once a month or whenever the page gets full, plus all sorts of other lists, planning pages, and information – keeping an index in the front of the book and numbering the pages makes this doable and possible.

2. A bible journaling notebook – I use one side of the page for bible study, and the other side to artistically write/draw a bible verse – it’s a way I can take part in the bible journaling fun without the stress of actually drawing in a bible and potentially messing up.

3. My monthly goals book (this one is the spiral-bound Miliko – I just leave the month’s page facing up and on my bedside table to make it easy to remember to track.) Each month I pick 5-ish things that I want to work on or track, and mark my progress each day, along with tracking how I felt that day and what I did that day. It’s a great way for me to track how things affect my Dysautonomia (a lot of my monthly goals are actually health “experiments” to see what helps make me feel better), along with keeping a short one-sentence journal of each day. I’ve found that it’s surprisingly fun to read back over.

In the back of this notebook, I’m also keeping up with mine and the kid’s mileage for the year. (I know mine in MapMyRun, but don’t track the kid’s miles anywhere else.)

There’s something magical about the dots in these journals that makes journaling and to-do listing so much easier and more fun. I really enjoy the manual part of it – I still keep my calendar on my phone, but written lists and tracking just feel right. Of course, a set of colored pens are necessary to truly make it this much fun. Oh – and a natural anal-retentive nature. But if you think I’m crazy, go search #bulletjournal or #bujo on Instagram. You’ll be lost for hours, mouth agape, at what crazy levels people go to bujo their lives.

– Yoga With Adriene – I needed to do yoga to help some back pain I’ve been having (still left over from 2015’s wreck) but the idea of going to a class felt like another thing that I didn’t have time for. It took me about a week to have a eureka moment and realize that there are probably yoga classes on YouTube. Sure enough, I found Adriene. She’s not too cheesy and has hundreds of videos to choose from – I like searching for topics and being gleeful that she’s covered them (“back pain”, “for runners”, “in a bad mood”, “left pinkie pain”) (Okay I don’t know if she has one for left pinkie pain but if anyone did, she would.) She also has videos of every length – 6 minutes to 50 minutes. Anyway. I kinda am in love with Adriene.

– Trader Joe’s – We’ve only had one for about a year and the first time I went in, I was so confused. Was this a grocery store? A snack foods store? A random collection of brand new products that I have to figure out how they fit in my life? But I’m finally starting to get the hang of it and finding the things I like, such as the dried peaches, dried sweetened mango, cinnamon pecans, frozen risotto, some of the soups (some are just terrible – it’s a real hit-and-miss kind of game), triple ginger cookies, dried okra (no seriously it’s interesting and good), and their refrigerated pastas – especially the butternut-squash-filled pasta. But I’m still learning so let me know what you like.

I have an embarrassing amount of workout clothes. But I’ve finally found my all-time favorite tank, the Brooks Go-To Racerback Tank.

More importantly, there are a few of last year’s model on sale for $12.60 on Amazon (and also here, size large in a different color, but this one’s not showing up in any searches so it might be gone soon – especially since I just bought two.) It’s long and thoroughly covers the butt, it’s not clingy, it’s comfortable, and it’s flattering. But definitely buy it a size too big.

What have you enjoyed lately?

Trading Professional Snacking for Soccer.

March 27, 2017March 26, 2017 Rachel Callahan A Day in the Life, Kids: The Experience.

Last year when Ali started back in gymnastics, I asked Noah what he might be interested in doing. We had not gotten him involved in any organized sports yet, and even though I didn’t at all want more commitments in my life, Mommy Guilt was getting the best of me.

But he quickly said, “I’d like to eat snacks.”

A fine sport if I’ve ever heard one.

But this year, he was very much wanting to play soccer. And even though two practices a week plus one game a week screamed against my very soul (OH the horrors of commitment!!), I signed him up. He was especially excited to play because he would be on his cousin Andi’s team, who happens to be his current favorite cousin.

I mean. How cute are they? This was right before their first practice and right after I googled “Where do shin guards go?”

I’m a pro soccer mom. Obvs.

The first practice consisted of Noah giddily running up and down the field, playing with Andi, and turning quite deaf from excitement when, the one time he did kick the ball, the coach kept yelling “Stop!! Stop!!! STOP!!!!”, as Noah kicked the ball off the field, past the bleachers, and to the back fence of the complex.

We had a talk about learning how to actually *play* soccer – it takes some seriousness, but that the game would be fun.

The next few practices went slightly better, although he was still at moments distracted by the pure joy of his situation.

The morning after he received his jersey, he came in my bedroom and whispered giddily, “I’m number 24!!!!”

There’s really nothing more thrilling than knowing that you’re important enough to be a number.

Finally, the first game arrived.

It was a beautiful night, the skies unseasonably hot with anticipation of what would go down beneath them.

Before the game started, Noah made sure to…inspect the nets. While Andi silently judged her cousin’s sports prowess. She is a soccer beast, after all.

He started the game on the bench, taking his job as Chief Gatorade Guzzler quite seriously.

By the time Andi needed a break from her ferocious playing, Noah had nearly finished his bottle. His bladder was going to LOVE it when it was time to play.

And soon enough, Noah got his chance. It took a bit of coaxing from the sidelines to remind him to follow the ball. And watch the ball. And kick in the right direction. But he got there.

And you may not be allowed to use hands in soccer, but his blue-Gatorade-tinged-tongue got FULLY INVOLVED.

Let’s look at that face of determination a little closer.

Their team played hard and lost significantly.

But you know who didn’t even realize what the score was?

This guy. Because he was in soccer heaven.

Thankfully, he had his cousin there to keep him grounded. And to inform him that they lost. And to make his happy heart swell with even more soccer pride.

The Genesis of A Palette.

March 23, 2017March 23, 2017 Rachel Callahan Homeschooling: Not just for the socially awkward anymore., Synesthesia

An update to my last post, about the discovery of my children’s Grapheme-Color Synesthesia…it probably won’t make much sense if you haven’t read that post first.

A couple of nights ago as I was lying in bed, I finally remembered what app Noah had played most when he was learning his letters – Starfall. I wanted to get up right then and check out what color the letters were, but I was also half asleep and dreaming of blue and pink Bs.

The next morning, I pulled it up.

This is the first screen of the app – you can tap on each letter, and it takes you through different learning screens that are unique to each letter, but the color of the letter stays the same as the front screen throughout the program.

I went and grabbed the chart he’d made the day before and began counting matches on my fingers.

A – match. B – match. C – match. D – match. E – match. F – match. G – match. H was the first letter that didn’t match exactly to what Noah had mapped out. I abandoned the plan of counting the matches and just started counting the non-matches on my fingers.

Then, because I’m the geek that is totally overanalyzing my child for fun and amusement, I made a spreadsheet.

Green = exact match; blue = near match, red = no match.

17 out of 26 letters matched exactly. 21 out of 26 letters matched or near-matched. And if you count purple/red a near-match, 24 out of 26 matched.

This was no coincidence. I had found the origins of his letter palette.

I do not think the app could have caused his brain to attach so specifically to associating color and letters (and certainly not numbers, since this app didn’t teach numbers – I haven’t yet remembered what app he used early on with numbers) – I think the synesthesia is caused by something specifically about his brain (studies have shown that synesthetes have more gray matter in their brains – ironic, huh?) – but I do think that this app provided him the basis of his color beliefs.

His Color Theology, if you will.

Noah came in the room and looked over my shoulder while I was “playing” on his iPad. Without hesitation, he listed off the letters that didn’t match. Or, in his words, that “they got wrong.”

“R is wrong. It should be purple. They have H as blue but it’s red. M should be brown. L should be green. X should be red.”

I don’t know why I spent all that time comparing and counting and spreadsheeting when he could’ve told me the differences in five seconds, but it was another realization in how quickly his brain picks up on those patterns as compared to mine.

I continued my exploration of the app to try and get clarity on the two letters that are two colors – B (blue and pink) and F (purple and blue.)

The B in the app is blue, but when you click it, it flashes to red.

Or is that a reddish-pink?

The F – “blue and purple” – was much more obvious. The letter is purple, and the background on every screen is blue.

As far as E (he had told me “the uppercase is yellow, but the lowercase is orange”), the letter was written on a yellow background…and the letters on the Exit and Enter sign are yellow…it was close enough for me.

I triumphantly cheered the app, treasuring it as if it were my own personal Rosetta Stone in understanding my seriously weird kid.

Note: I do think Ali has synesthesia as well, but not nearly to the extreme of Noah’s – and she’s also not as resolute in her determination of CORRECT colors. He is absolutely convinced that the colors are right or wrong – there is no room for error.