Category: Uncategorized

Following up on yesterday’s post, today I’m going to answer some questions posed to me by Jenny. Again, if you want us to interview you, leave a comment and let us know!

1) I dished some dirt on you, now it’s your turn! What’s some dirt you have on me that I won’t throttle you for sharing?
Let’s see… Ok, well, when we were young, Jenny was a really sore loser… we’re talking crying and gnashing of teeth. Fortunately, she grew out of it (although you might want to verify this last part with her husband and/or her brothers). She’s also pretty picky about how she takes her pizza. No thin crust (“I don’t like eating my pizza on a cracker!”) and no Pizza Hut (“I don’t like their pepperoni”). Personally, I’ve never met a pizza I didn’t like.

2) You are currently pregnant. Are you going to find out the gender of your child? Why or why not? MUCH to Jenny’s dismay, we are not going to find out. I will spare you my speech on ascribed gender roles, but basically my theory is that babies need the same stuff (car seat, diapers, a source of nutrition) regardless of their sex. And besides that, just imagine what fun it’s going to be for Jenny to make the big announcement on Mommin’ It Up once the baby’s born!

3) You are a full-time working mom. What do you do for a living? I am the Associate Director of Annual Giving at my alma mater. Basically, I write letters asking for support of the university… you know, just like the ones you throw away all the time.

4) If you were independently wealthy and a woman of leisure, what charitable cause would you take up and why? I would probably start with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, as my husband has Type 1 diabetes and it would really be sweet for it to be cured.

5) You live in the same small town you grew up in. What’s your favorite thing about living there? Hmm… that is a tough one. I really love living there. Contrary to popular belief, it is not a high school reunion every day. But I digress. I guess what I like most about living there is the community. It’s great to know most of the people who live there. For example, when I found a sitter for Kate during the day, I didn’t have to call the FBI to get a background check on the person, because I already knew her and her husband and basically all of their relatives. I also have a habit of leaving the front and/or garage door open whether we’re home or not, and it’s nice to not have to worry that we’re going to get robbed when I do that.

I saw this at the Diaper Diaries and asked Jill to interview me, cause I just loove to talk about myself. Here’s the deal, if you want to be next!

Leave me a comment saying “Interview me.” I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions. If you don’t have a valid email address on your blog, please provide one. You will update your blog with a post containing your answers to the questions. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

1. You share a blog with your cousin Emily. Give us some dirt. What’s one thing about her your readers don’t know that she wouldn’t hate you for sharing.
Well I have two things, since you asked, and inquiring minds DO want to know about Emily. One thing is that she seems to hit deer with her car a lot. Not on purpose, mind you. But if you’re a deer in southwestern Ohio, you might want to watch out for Emily and her silver Camry. The other dish I have on Emily is that she doesn’t use salad dressing. How gross is that? Every time we go out to eat and she gets a salad I just hope and pray that this time she’ll order dressing, but she never does. So sad.

2. The Big 3-0. You recently had a birthday. Share some “old lady” wisdom with us. What is one way your 30s are better than your 20s.
Well you know, I’ve had about three weeks of my 30s so I am pretty much a 30s veteran, and I am a LOT wiser. So that’s the first thing. I mean you turn 30 and it’s like the flippin’ Wisdom Fairy just casts a spell on you overnight. It’s great, really. Ummm, no seriously, so far what’s better about my 30s is that I have a better relationship with God than I ever did in my 20s. I am much more dependent on Him now. I let Him take care of stuff, and I know He’s got my back. I never quite got that until recently.

3. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes…you know the rest. You married your high school sweethart. What was your first (6th grade) impression of him? Were you right or wrong.
My first impression was that he was really nice and had poofy hair. I was right about both! (He no longer has the hair but is still very nice!)

4. You have a vast history of musical theatre and say you love to sing :). If you could be in any Broadway musical what would it be and who would you be.
Ooh GOOD ONE! Probably I’d be Dolly in “Hello Dolly.” ‘Cause she’s sassy and got to wear great hats!!

5. So Jen-Jen, Jenny, Jennifer, whatever. You have lamented the fact that your name is too common if you were born in the late 70s. I feel your pain, there were 3 Jill’s in my sorority pledge class. Anyway, if you could change your name, what would you change it to?
Man, Jill, you are like Barbra Walters or something! That’s a HARD one! I think I’d just change everyone else’s name so I could be the only Jenny. But if I had to change it…I would have two names, like Mary Claire or something like that.

Wanna be interviewed by me? Email me or leave a comment on this post with “Interview Me” in the copy!

The other night, Kate and I were out running errands. She was really tired (and in fact had fallen asleep at one point) and very grumpy and sad. At the end of our trip, I stopped at my grandma’s to borrow some eggs (yes, I do a lot of my shopping at her house, haha).

I didn’t want to get Kate out of the carseat, so my grandma came outside to sit with her while I ran in to get the eggs and anything else that I could scrounge up. Kate was upset the whole time (2.8 minutes) I was in the house, and when I came back out, my grandma said “Can I go in and get Kate a cookie?”

I said that was fine, but when Grandma went in the house, I turned to Kate (who was still fussing/sort of crying) and said, “Kate, cookies don’t make things better.”

She looked at me through her tears and said “Yes they do.”

So Grandma returned with like 15 cookies, and Kate happily scarfed one down.

She turned to me and said, with a big grin on her face, “See Mommy? I told you.”

Ugh. The kid has a point. Sometimes I think cookies do make me feel better. I am a big-time emotional eater, and I’m trying not to pass that on to Kate… we try not to celebrate things with food, etc., but I’m not sure I’m succeeding in my quest.

So what do you think? How do I turn this train around (for myself and my daughter!)?