Tag Archives: scarlett

My Fiona

She’s here, she’s here, my little niece is here! My rockstar sister brought her into the world on Saturday morning, and she has spent the last five days being perfect. Please, just look at this face.

Fiona

Her name is Fiona Catherine, and I’m allowed to call her Fee, but not Fifi.

So, naturally…

“Come, Fifi,” I say in an important voice, whenever anyone offers to put her on my lap. As if we are off to the country club to meet her friends Binky and Peroxide. As if we are having tea with the Queen.

“Fifi makes her sound like a dog,” my sister complains. But this is not a good argument for me, because my own daughter’s nickname is Scout, and although we were thinking Scout Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird, it turns out to be a very doggy kind of name.

The week after Scarlett was born, my grandmother called to tell me that not one, but two sitcoms she had watched that night featured dogs named Scout. She cackled into the phone and hung up. Read More>

|Categories: Life, Parenting, Relationships | Tags: , , , | Permalink

Curses

ALS TDI announced a new fundraising campaign this week, and I think it’s a great one. Swear2Care asks people to put their money where their foul mouth is by donating a dollar every time they utter a curse word. I’m a sucker for clever taglines, and so I really enjoyed this one: ‘Cuss ALS Research Matters. That’s good stuff.

As an Ambassador for ALS TDI, I joined a call last night to discuss the campaign, among other things. The F bombs were dropping like…well, like any kind of food I try to hold in my hands these days. By the end of the meeting, we all owed the campaign quite a bit of money. And that’s the point. As the Swear2Care website says, ALS triggers a lot of emotions. It’s hard to talk about it without getting heated up, so let’s use this to our advantage.

I love to swear. I think a well-placed F-word, for example, can be just as effective as the impressive sounding vocabulary words I learned in college English. It’s a helpful form of self-expression, and even the experts agree. TIME Magazine printed a story in May 2014 about how swearing can actually be good for you. Read More>

|Categories: Cure, Parenting, Research | Tags: , , , | Permalink

The Golden Beads

Otto sleeps in a crate next to Rob’s side of the bed. He’s not a quiet sleeper. First of all, he snores like a drunk old man. Second, at various times during the night he moves around in his crate so roughly and wildly that I’m almost positive he is transforming into some kind of werewolf, and that when he finally bursts out of his crate, he’ll be wearing a cape he fashioned using only his doggie blankets.

It can be hard to sleep through.

I’m back to wearing the BiPap with nasal pillows at night, which has really put a damper on my goal to never have anything that far up my nose. I’m also using the chinstrap, which helps me keep my mouth closed while I’m sleeping. To quote my friend Kevin Swan, the chinstrap has definitely not brought the sexy back. It makes me look like an emaciated high school wrestler, but I must admit I’m sleeping better.

I can no longer lift my left arm over my head for a stretch, and it’s been ages since my right was able to move that way. So I wake up in the middle of the night with shoulder pain, and if it’s really bad, I have to wake Rob and ask him to raise my arms towards the head of the bed. Obviously, this is the highlight of his night, especially when he was comfortable and snoring just as loud as Otto. Read More>

|Categories: Life, Parenting, Relationships, Venting | Tags: , , , , | Permalink