Very Public Restroom
Ella is very observant, and she feels the need to announce to everyone what everyone else, including herself, is doing. When she uses it to tell on herself or other people, this tendency is often times helpful, for example, "Mommy, I opened the front door all by myself!" or, "Mommy, Addison is eating shards of glass!" Her announcements are often humorous, as in, "Mommy, I just did a poop that looks like a snail!" Just as often it is amusing, though, her commentary can turn your ears red. Take, for example, "Daddy, Mommy just passed ...
Loving Each Others
My brothers spent most of their adolescence trying to knock each other's heads off. They were best friends. For a while I was in on it, too. I had the distinct advantage of being a normal size adopted kid in a family of biologically short siblings. As such, I towered over my brothers and was fun to wrestle with. I remember trudging across our back yard with a football under one arm and a brother attached to each leg. I always made it to the goal line because, try as they would, those 40 lb boys ...
Vegetarian for a Month
Steve and I have decided to go vegetarian for the month of March. The idea was mine to begin with, but I'm kind of fuzzy on the reasoning behind it seeing as how I don't have any moral or health problems with eating beasties--in fact, I find them to be quite delicious. I think it started out as some sort of Double Dog Dare when I was drunk that was escalated when I told Steve he should do it instead of his plan to give up booze for Lent. I'm not sure when exactly he found Jesus enough to give ...
Tiny Pink Ella
Every once in a while a story I've written in my notebook gets lost in the shuffle, only to be found and shared later when the fodder hasn't given me a chance to write about them lately. "Running Errand" was one such story. This is another. The events below transpired this past February. Tiny Pink Ella "Look, Mama, Pink Ella is jumping on a trampoline," Ella exclaimed from the back of the car. "Uh huh," I said. "Did you jump on a trampoline with Miss Joni today?" I knew her babysitter had taken Ella and her friend Emilie ...
Going to Agumano
This story is long overdue, but it was interrupted by Quandaries (making it indeed, the nature of Just Barely), and then by laundry, and then by dinner, and then by snotty noses... I should have gone to check on them, but I needed to get their lunch ready and it was so much easier to do with them not around. I should have gone to check on them once their lunch was on the table, but I was hungry too and I thought I might get a chance to actually make myself a real lunch today--one that consisted of more than peanut ...
Holiday Card
Ah, the Holiday card picture. I doubt there's a person under the age of forty who hasn't been made to pose for one at some point in their lives. I've had to do so for thirty years now (my siblings and I hoped it would end when we started having our own kids, but it has just been made into an opportunity to get even more people to stand still and smile for the camera.) When we were kids, the pictures usually featured some sort of celebrity along with the four of us. We cornered Ted Kennedy in ...
Regarding the Easter Bunny
Regarding the Easter Bunny We were always away on vacation for Easter when I was a kid, and for one reason or another The Bunny didn't make it to Florida. There was a feeble attempt at hiding eggs for my cousins and me one year early on, but an egg that was nestled in the cushions of the couch at our rental house was sat upon, thereby marking the end of that ritual. The only traditions left were ham, bloody mary's, and my grandmother's story about how, as a kid, she ate an entire chocolate bunny and then threw ...
Just Barely Best Friends
Last fall my daughter told me I was her best friend. It was the first time I had ever heard her use that phrase, and my heart melted. Later that evening, as she played in the dirt while my husband and I sat in the back yard, I overheard her telling a plastic garden shovel that it was her best friend. The club wasn't as exclusive as I had thought. For a while it was just me and the shovel. Eventually her father joined the club. There came a time when she used the word appropriately ...
Amish Nightmare
"I have a question to ask you," my friend told me over the phone. She sounded a little nervous, and I wondered what in the world she could want. "Would you be interested in taking an Amish bread starter?" Really, that was it? A bread starter? That sounded pretty harmless. "It's okay if you say no, it's kind of a pain. You have to do a lot of stuff to keep it going, but it makes really good bread," she added hopefully. "Well... that's really not my sort of thing," I replied. ...
Two Skilled Adults
The children got a playhouse from Steve's side of the family for Christmas. It looked really nice when I saw it on the floor at Sam's Club, so I was all, "Yeah, get that! It'll be great!" I knew some assembly would be required, but in my mind Steve and I would build it Christmas Eve while the kids were sleeping, and after they opened their presents we would lead them outside and there it would be, with a big red bow on it, and everyone would be a hero--the aunts and uncles and grandparents for buying it, and Steve ...
Thirty is the New Four
Last week was Ella's birthday. For months she's been planning what her life will be like when she's four. For example, when a thunderstorm drives her to our bed, she snuggles in and tells us not to worry, she won't be afraid of thunder anymore when she's four. She cried all night long on the Fourth of July, but says she'll like the fireworks next year, when she's four. Plans Ella has vocalized for this magic year include the following: She will be able to carry her little sister around and get her out of her crib, attempts at ...
Recent Posts
I’m pretty sure I’m going to be asked to leave any second now
My office at home is filled with baby clothes that I’ll never get up the gumption to sell on eBay, mountains of wrapping paper I bought at Target because it was 90% off so I figured it would be fiscally irresponsible of me not to purchase thirty-seven rolls, and boxes from college filled with incense and flannel pants and outdated geography text books, so I have to go someplace else when I want... [Read more]
It was funny… and then it sucked.
Last Friday night it snowed. And again, Durham went crazy. This is what passes for treachery down here: The horrors we were facing come Sunday But then Steve put boot chains on his Converse shoes and took care of business. Bad. Ass. Like our snow shovel? It’s highly abnormal for us to get this much snow, so Sunday we went sledding. Kind of. What passes for sledding in North Carolina is... [Read more]
Wow, you must be really disappointed.
People come to Just Barely for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they are folks who have subscribed to Just Barely, sometimes they are moms who have spit up on one shoulder, poop on the other, and a beer in each hand, more often they people who are very very bored at work, once a week they are my husband making sure that I haven’t written about anything too idiotic that he’s going to have... [Read more]
Three French hens, two turtledoves, and a bunch of *%$@ in our Christmas tree
At first glance, this looks like a typical, dead-because-no-one-has-watered-it-since-Christmas-day, mid-January Christmas tree. But the youngest has been singing, “Decorating the tree, decorating the tree, Addison is the greatest at decorating the tree!” and prancing about with strange objects, so let us take a closer look. In other Christmas decoration news, as those of you who... [Read more]
Midwest Girl Survives Winter in the South
Midwest Girl Survives Winter in the South: Cold in the Carolinas III If you live anywhere in the midwest or eastern United States you’re likely cold as balls right now. (not sure what that means, but I’m too cold to think it through) I’m typing with gloves on each hand and have each of my feet in a cup on coffee. But if you’re in Durham, there’s one thing you’re... [Read more]
