Hippie Bullsh!t Coffee and Other Quick Takes

1.) I bought some hippie bullsh!t coffee at Fresh Market a few weeks ago. I got sucked in because I had a taste for cold caramel coffee in a bottle, and the packaging is so pretty! Good font choice! Matte labels! And on the side there is a funny blurb written by someone admitting to be a blurber! It was all very enchanting, except it said things about how it doesn't have any of those "nasty chemicals" in it like other coffee (YES IT ACTUALLY SAID THAT), and I could not have rolled my eyes harder. Y'all! Once again, brief lesson: everything has chemicals. Everything is made of chemicals. Nothing but chemicals actually. Yes. EVERYTHING. Full stop.

But despite my eye rolling, and knowing it would not actually make me "focus" in any "natural" way, I bought it and drank it and it was delicious. Excellent use of one dollar next time you're at Fresh Market. Hippie bullsh!t coffee: RECOMMEND.

(Children who photobomb coffee pics for blog post: not included.)

2.) Mark took Charlotte to a park a few weeks ago, and in case you were wondering if she only likes to take selfies with me? Nope. Girl loves a good pic with Daddy too. I mean, who wouldn't? He's a pretty awesome human.

3.) We started a thing last month with a friend and preschool classmate of Anneliese's, whose big sister gets dropped off at school before his mom takes him to church on a route that goes right past our bus stop, at the exact time we are outside waiting on the bus. Which means Nathan and I did a lot of waving at them as they drove by, until we realized hey! Anneliese could just... get in their car, and save me a trip of loading up the babies and taking her to school.

So that's the story of why there are now two kids at the bus stop with me on Tuesdays and Thursdays (those are the days only Anneliese goes). They both love it. It's fun.

4.) When I was in Minnesota I got the worst chapped lips of my life, I think. I was using lip balm, just not enough I guess, or not often enough. One night when I was home I needed some and didn't have any in bed, so I asked Mark for his out of his night stand, and the next morning, I kid you not -- MY LIPS WERE HEALED. Like, almost completely better. Overnight. A second night and they were as good as new.

I can't believe the small fortune I have spent in the last decade on fancy lip balms, when REGULAR OLD CHAP STICK is basically a miracle balm. Y'all! Buy this! I am now officially a chap stick evangelist. Recommend.

5.) My new identity as a Kindle user is coming along. I like it. It is handy. It was especially handy for traveling. And for reading in the evenings in bed when my doctor-designed Sleep Plan (capital S, capital P, it is a PLAN) dictates that I should not have lights on. And e-ink is safe reading in the evening hours of dimness. Anyway! Guess who else likes the Kindle?

Our library website has a great page where you can sort the children's e-reader books they have, by topic and grade level. So that means Nathan can see a berjillion book choices, and two clicks sends them to our house in minutes. For free! LIVING IN THE FUTURE IS SO GREAT Y'ALL. In related news, I think someone might be getting his own (very basic) Kindle for Christmas, since someone's mommy is tired of sharing.

6.) Speaking of Nathan and reading, he picked out this book from the dollar spot at Target a few weeks ago:

Yep, that's Moby Dick. Most boring book in the history of books and English. (I love Melville, but I freaking hate that book.) Anyway all he saw was chapter book! one dollar! sperm whale on the cover! and he had to have it. It's a thing I would never say no to, of course, so he bought it and read it and then sent Another Nathan this adorable email about it and oh my lands.

This is why we let kids read adaptations of boring books we hate: because it's surprising that a whale would eat someone's leg, and he's guessing the whale must have been a girl. WELL.

7.) Still speaking of reading, I read this last week and found it just delightful. A lady who loved the Little House books visits all the sites in real life, and finds some disillusioning and some lovely.

This isn't the best LHOTP travel guide you can find, nor the best biographical info, but it doesn't intend to be either of those things - just a funny thoughtful lady traveling to Little House sites and writing about it, from her perspective. Really fun book.

8.) One last book thing! Another Nathan and I, unbeknownst to one other, both checked this book out of our respective libraries last week. A book about friends and influence and I mean... haaaaa okay universe. Good one.

9.) We let the kids try for a three-way sleepover last week. Usually this is just a Nathan/Anneliese thing, every Friday night, but Charlotte always wants to join, and so we let her try. We had done it once before and it was fine, but this one was doomed.

This photo was taken pre-doom. It was super cute until it wasn't.

10.) It got very cold this week, and the girls look very cute in their cold weather clothes. That is all.

November 1st

So, hey, I had a birthday!

There is not much exciting to tell about it, but it was actually a lovely sort of low-key day. I slept (somewhat) late, had a morning choir rehearsal, had a sweet brunch with Mark and the kids, spent most of the afternoon snuggling and reading, which is exactly what I wanted, and then went on a fantastic date to a vietnamese-asian-something-type seafood restaurant in Chapel Hill.

"Charlotte told me what to write,"
Nathan explained (rolling his eyes).

A lady in choir made finger cookies, which were FAR to reminiscent of
the snow adventure horrible finger situation for me to actually stomach.

We also shopped some for a new wedding/engagement/anniversary/whatever ring, to replace the one I lost on the cruise this spring. I can't make myself pull the trigger just yet, it's a weird mix of exciting and lovely and also SO SAD (no ring will ever be the one he put on my finger at our wedding) but there is one that he loves that we feel good about, so that will probably be happening soon.

Oh! And my dad sent me flowers as per his tradition.

I'm sure a lot of dads send flowers on their daughters' birthdays, but I'd like to think my flowers make me smile more than other people's, because the whole thing started when I was five and my dad brought home apology flowers for my mom but since it was my birthday I assumed they were for me (red roses! HA!) and I guess my dad couldn't bear to tell me they weren't, so he went with it, and then the next year I was so excited/expected to get flowers again that it turned into a Thing. And he's sent flowers for every single birthday since then, including the two years I was living in Europe on my birthday. There is something really fun and adorable about your dad tracking down a florist in a foreign country to wish you a happy birthday. (The internet was not then what it is now, y'all. Just trust me. It was a sweet and impressive feat.) Anyway it's a fun tradition and it makes me smile every. single. year.

(I just went and looked, and somehow this a story I have never told in a blog post before, WEIRD WHY NOT ERIN?)

Also! Marky got me a Kindle paperwhite! I am new to the world of e-reading, so y'all tell me what I need to know to become a kindle person, okay? Right now I'm not a kindle person. But I can be! I want to be! It is better than packing stacks of books when I travel, for sure! Right now I mostly only use kindle as a phone app, for reading trashy romance novels. Smut, basically. So a real kindle is like my version of big-screen smut! Yeah I said it. Anyway it's beautiful and I want it to be for more than that so help me!

And the size of this thing is just perfect. So much smaller than a tablet, so much bigger than a phone. It's like... a BOOK! (Duh, Erin.) (I am easily impressed.) The size sort of delights me.

A fun part of my new kindle was texting with Kelley in India for pointers on connecting it to my library account. What, doesn't everyone contact your friends in the third world to help with their first-world problems? (Yes, yes actually, we do.)

Anyway. I digress. Happy birthday to me! And yes, the leaves changed just in time.