You guys. I lose track of a lot of things. Suddenly the kittens are cats. I’m about to turn 25 years old. I graduated college over a year ago… I’m working on a Masters’ Degree and I’m about to start another one. The polite offer I made my wedding photographer has turned into a company.

But, by far, the most stunning evolutionary tale I’ve seen over the past three or so years is that of Baby Jonas from Just A Bright Idea to Gummy Bear Sonogram Photo to Little Glowworm to Little Turtle to Little Monkey.

Now, he’s no longer a Little Anything, except a Little Boy, and even that’s a stretch. But my Goodness, he’s going to break hearts with his giant glass sky-blue eyes and his curly blonde locks.

Jonas, earlier this summer in his first pool.

Daddy, Jonas, Mommy. {Ryan and Kristin in their past life.}

Can we talk about how precious his little curl-mohawk is?

The major topic of conversation today were Jonas' feet, which are now too big for the baby PUMAs I sent him before he was born. The issue is that he won't let Kristin keep shoes or socks on his feet. At all. Which only poses a problem if you live in cold-climate areas. Like CNY.

Jonas reminds me so much of Kristin with his tenacity and his spunk. He has this devilish little sparkle in his eyes, and every time I see it twinkle to life, I see Kristin shining out.

He now has 8 teeth. Count them. 8. Teeth.

But, of all the images I got, the one that proves to me that he’s 100% Ryan’s son was when he gave the remote control a great slam against the coffee table, then shrieked with delight at Kristin’s reaction to what James and I have dubbed: Baby Crazy Face.

Jonas was so pleased with himself. He is 100% boy and 100% Ryan's son. This photo proves it.

New York State Fair tomorrow. Y’all get your Mullet Counters ready now, ya hear?

-MM.

I have a couple very large projects that I’m trying to get up and off the ground. Right now, they’re both sort of acting like stubborn bulldogs, firmly planted in place, waiting for me to say the magic word or produce the proper bait to motivate them forward.

This is juxtaposed against Moxie Missives and 11eleven11, who are constantly acting like Jack Russel Terriers, just waiting for me to take them out for a spin. And OMG! Can we play fetch?

Alas, this week, and part of next week, we cannot. I’m going to be taking a brief sabbatical from the websites until Wednesday or Thursday of next week, when I will come back with content and news so exciting your faces will melt off! OFF!

Until then, for your blogging pleasure, I recommend ambling over to the following sites, written by lovely and engaging people whose lives do not revolve around their cats. (I consider them some of the finest writers I’ve had the luxury of reading.)

Kyran of Notes To Self.

Alice of Finslippy.

Heather of Dooce.

Maggie of Mighty Girl.

Karen of Chookooloonks.

… You’re welcome.

And I hope you like what I have coming down the tubes for you next week. Until then..

xo. -MM.

I’ve never had to defend my relationship with James. It sounds stupid to say that out loud, but I used to make a habit of dating guys who needed defending– both BY me and FROM me.

It was pretty obvious right from the get-go that James was my match, trait for trait, quirk for quirk, smile for smile. Only once did one of my friends confide in me that after her only real experience with him, she thought he was sort of a douche.

“He is, sort of.” I told her. “That’s one of the things I like about him. Sometimes, he’s amazing, and sometimes he’s a complete asshole. But he’s never an asshole to me. And anyway, who are WE to judge someone for asking assertively for what they want? We do the same thing all the time.” She didn’t look convinced. So I confided that a lot of what I love about her– her tenacity, her noble nature, her willingness to self-sacrifice if it means fighting for what she believes in– are all things I saw and liked in James. She said she’d think about it.

That girlfriend of mine is going to stand up next to me when I marry James as my Maid of Honor. Life just seems to work out sometimes, doesn’t it?

Aside from that, I’ve never had to defend James. He makes a strong argument on his own behalf, what with the charisma and the intellect and that million dollar smile. But it hit me today that there are a million reasons I’m choosing to spend the rest of my life with him, and they all sort of boil down to this:

You know in action movies, when the stakes are high and every second counts and the two leads are walking high up above the ground, just ASKING to tumble to their death? One of them always slips, and the other one always reaches out and they catch each other by the wrist and hold on for all their worth. And at the end of the movie, before the credits roll, the one who did the saving makes a joke to the one who did the falling about the whole thing, and they have a laugh and walk into the sunset and life rolls on as the house lights come up.

That’s us.

Our life seems to insist on flipping through every orientation but Upright. We both lose focus and lose battles and lose patience. But whatever the ledge looks like, whatever one of us stumbles over, the other stops and helps brace for impact. We catch each other, set everything right again… Then we joke about it (to ease the sting sometimes, but more often because it’s so surreal) and let life just keep rollin’ on.

We take on the world together every single day, and you know what? We make one awesome team.

That’s why I’m marrying him. (That and, as always, his tee shirt collection.)

-MM.

There are a lot of things you can do with coffee, I’m sure. It smells nice. You can use it to age paper. I’ve heard of it being used in baking. If you have a shirt that you’d like to get rid of, it makes a great staining agent {this works better if your better half has a shirt you wish they’d get rid of…}.

But my favorite thing to use coffee for is Waking Up In The Morning. {This the PG name for the process I’ve alternately dubbed “Morphing from Swamp-Creature into Human-Being.”}

Oh Coffee. If I were Shakespeare, I’d write sonnets about you. Alas! I am not. I am just a small girl with big sleep problems and lots of writing to get done.

When it’s Seven Hundred Million Thousand and Two degrees out, I still drink hot coffee. I swore I would always be that girl who doesn’t care what people think, my righteous indignation so adamant to overshadow my crippling insecurity: I simply did not know how to make Iced Coffee good enough to drink.

The water-grounds ration was incorrect. It was too sweet or too bitter, and the ice always diluted it. It was a mess, an aberration to the Life Elixir I hold so dear.

Mishelle Lane of Aiming Low changed all that this morning, and I’ll tell you what, not only do I owe her my first born, I am adding her to the List of Women I Must Become Friends With. She is first and foremost a funny, excellent human being with a great voice and very, very good coffee sense. She’s also a talented artist. You can find her website (SecretAgentMama) {here} and her photography {here}.

This is the blurb that melted my soul, and won me as a new reader:

“While I’m gone I will push myself a bit, stretch a little more in my passion, gather around those that I consider my people, and I intend to shine and feel good.  We all deserve to shine and feel good.  I wish that for every single person.”

Right? She’s so excellent. And she makes amazing iced coffee! You can find her melt-your-face-off Iced Coffee recipe {here}.

You can thank me later for all of the above. In the meantime… cheers!

-MM.

*sniffle*

Please excuse my swollen face and stuffed head– I believe I have a sinus infection. I have lots of fun posts half-written, but the SudaFed has turned me into a pile of Jell-O.

There will be Things Worth Reading up here again soon. I hope. Until then, would you please be so kind as to pass the tissues?

-MM.

Yesterday, I got to go to the doctor for the second time in two weeks. This is exciting for me, because before that I was able to effectively avoid any sort of medical attention for almost six years {with the exception of the 5 minute doctor appointment, wherein I begged for new Migraine medicine and they acquiesced}.

For the most part, if I can’t cure it with Motrin and Sleep, I assume that God is doing his best to simply Call Me Up To Heaven, and I roll with it. Sometimes, to shake it up a bit, I’ll throw in an over-the-counter allergy medicine {because, as every good Catholic knows, allergies are from The Devil}.

But Wednesday morning, I woke up with a numb spot on my left thigh. I thought I had perhaps slept on it funny, and it was just asleep. 36 hours later, the skin was still dull-tingly, with reduced sensations. It was a bit unnerving, bust mostly it just made it impossible to wear pants, which felt normal everywhere else on my legs. James implored me to call the doctor.

No.

Christine told me it sounded like something I should take to the doctor.

Nope.

My mother told me that it was something that I should be seeking medical attention over.

Nnnnnn0000000.

Finally Christine said something that caught my attention: Compacted nerve.

I am not nice to my nerves, as a rule. I run at 97% stress 99% of the time. I fill my body with caffeine and cake. But I remember my mother uttering those same words as she laid on the couch with a pinched Sciatic nerve for a week.

I would rather chew my own leg off than have to lay in one place for a week. I called the doctor.

After I was poked with a broken tongue depressor, it was determined that I have developed a Peripheral Neuropathy, and I have to stop sitting on my foot while I write, sleep like a normal person {translate: not with my legs tucked up underneath me} and take Aleve for the next five days. Essentially, I’ve somehow added undue pressure to a nerve in my leg, and it is consequently not playing nice with the rest of my body. Namely, it has given me a numb spot on my leg. It does not appear to be life-threatening {which I suspected it might be} but it is not All In My Head {like I suspect James suspected it might be}.

If, after a week, I am still numb, or if it spreads or changes locations, I then get to see a Neurologist.

… All I have to say to that is that if it gets to that point, he had better look a lot like McDreamy.

-MM.

James is a little spoiled. Last week, I got him this fancy touchscreen watch:

Then, yesterday, he was having a rough day. So I bought him a fancy meatball griller.

{This is something that he had previously requested. It was not a shot in the dark. Though, it’s not a longshot to think that James would like something that could combine grilling and meatballs.}

It’s doubly exciting because, as I understand it, the packaging also contained a recipe!

But I do believe the real coup d’etat came with what arrived in the mail today: His very own personalized wrought iron Steak Branding tool.

You can find this little gem for your fella {here}. James hasn’t been able to use his yet, but he’s itchin’ to.

Wedding planning, moving and work is all stressful. I think it’s easy for Brides to lose sight of the fact that they deal with all that, on top of dealing with us. Sometimes, my fuse is unnaturally short and my temper is particularly volatile. He remains the person closest to me, which, at times, puts him right in striking distance.

I still love him dearly, which I tell him, as soon as my sanity returns. We work together to chat through things.

And every now and then, when I see he’s having a rough week at work, or struggling with our new living arrangements, or even for no reason at all… I’ll rustle around on Uncrate and find him something I know he’ll love.

As a small Thank You and a Big Reminder that we’re both in this together. The Team.

xo

-MM.

Grandma Betty, patroling the goldfish activity in the little backyard pond.

A little over… two?… years ago, Grandma Betty moved in with my parents. She’s my grandmother on my mother’s side, and she can make seeds grow just by looking at them. She will also feed you until you burst.

Grandma Betty classically entertained us with her stories of her childhood– specifically one about a rooster that she would always beg to have cooked for supper, because it would terrorize her. She would send us a crate of oranges and grapefruits every year for our Birthdays, and she could make anything grow just by looking at it.

Grandma Betty has turned the concrete slab behind my parents house from a potted-plant cemetery into a backyard oasis. Bird feeders, bird houses, a goldfish pond and beautiful ivy all flourish in little enclave. This afternoon, she invited me out to sit with her, and I took my SLR with  me.

A thirsty wasp chases me away from the bird feeder so he can nip a drink.

A wren, eyeing me suspiciously, as I linger too close to its birdhouse. I didn't get dive-bombed, but a squirrel definitely did.

A wild morning glory drinks in the sunshine.

One of the goldfish, hiding under the rocks at the bottom of the pond.

The other goldfish, popping up to get some sunshine, and to eat a bubble.

A rose, budding but not bloomed.

A rose, mostly bloomed.

Sunflower! It's too young to be harassed by the birds yet, but I think it's pretty all the same.

Decorative Birdhouse-- seems to be uninhabited but I like it, anyway.

A throwback to our heritage-- a Celtic cross.

A butterfly found the one weed in a part of the driveway that has loose stone, and sunned itself, slowly fanning its wings.

Queen Anne's Lace. If you look closely, you can see the red petals in the center.

I have absolutely no clue what kind of flower this is. Other than "very pretty."

Grandma, sitting in her rocking chair in the shade.

… I love spending time at home.

xo

-MM.

Over at The Wedding Blog, I posted today about who my bridesmaids will be, and how they were chosen.

It’s one of the most honest tributes I’ve been able to capture in words for my friends– I hope you enjoy it.

Find it directly {here}.

xo

-MM

“How can you sleep at a time like this? I just dreamt I was chopped into tiny pieces!”

… One thing I’ll say about James… The man is a patient, patient creature.

For the past three nights I’ve woken up from a dead sleep at 3:15 AM sharp, drenched in sweat, having just dreamt that I was being chased through a hospital by a butcher-knife wielding 20-something girl sporting scrubs, with the face of the creepy ghost from The Ring. The night before last I even woke up to think for a split second she was standing over me. With a giant knife.

Yes, I’ll admit I woke James up and made him snuggle. It’s one of the perks of sharing my bed. Nightmare Patrol, on call, 24/7.

I’m not being ridiculous people. You wouldn’t have been chomping at the bit to roll back over and nod off again, either. Trust me.

Renee told me, once, awhile ago (she may have actually been talking to someone else, because I don’t like to admit to having nightmares, because people always look at you like you’re crazy, and I get enough of that already) that between 3 and 4:30AM, that’s when your body is processing all the residual chemicals associated with stress. So if you find yourself waking up at 3:30AM and unable to nod back off, you are likely stressed about something.

Hm. Moved in with my future in-laws. Quit my job. Chasing my dreams. Applying to Grad Schools. Planning a wedding. Looking at buying property.

Nah, nothing here to raise my already buzzing level of general anxiety.

The fact that my loss of sleep correlated directly with my last day at Tretorn must be, I’m sure, total coincidence. And the girl chasing me with the giant knife? Well I’m sure Freud would just say it’s symptomatic of my penis envy (aHEM) and also not to eat so close to bedtime.

Yeah.

I’m just going to wiggle a little deeper into my denial. It’s so cozy here.

It would be lovely if I just adjusted to this new, exciting phase of my life smoothly, without dramatic incidents or emotional breakdowns.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

At least I haven’t lost my sense of humor.

-MM.