Perforation Problems

My mom maybe wouldn't be happy that I put this picture up without her knowing, but she just looks so happy here, with Ryne on her lap and her family around her on her birthday. So I'm doing it anyway.

My mom's dog Sadie (right) met her twin (left) at the MuttStrut this weekend -- she wasn't really happy about it. How dare someone look like her? The effrontery.

When you come back from a long period away from the office, you just might find 40+ little pictures of chicken nuggets, french fries, and Tobias Fünke hidden all over your desk. This is just how we express our unadulterated joy that our creative director is back from maternity leave. 

More flowers. My friend commented on this picture on Instagram and said, "Spring is so exciting at your house." It really is. I love our big yard and the fact that all these weird plants pop up throughout the growing months. It makes me happy. LIFE. THINGS ARE ALIVE AND GROWING. BUT NOT IN A CREEPY WAY LIKE BRAIN-EATING ALIEN MOLD.

Michael's been digging out a new section of the driveway so he has an easier time backing out of the garage. Today it turned into a mud pit / pond. My future self (::wooooooo eerie ghost sounds::) will tell you that this looks a lot better once he puts the railroad tie in the right place, angles the side so it flows into the existing driveway better, and fills it with gravel. But current Haley just thinks it looks like a mud pit.

Nighttime Clyde in the dark...and my index finger.

Standard mid-day conversation with Michael: Michael: will we eat the cheese tonight?  me: um, that's a stupid question  Michael:  <3 Just in case you were wondering, my favorites this go-around were 1) Saint Nectaire 2) Double Gloucester 3) Sage Derby. Michael's were 1) Sage Derby 2) Double Gloucester 3) Saint Nectaire, which worked out rather well. All three were delicious -- even better than March's. But now our two month subscription is up, so we have to decide if the joy of getting weird cheese every month is worth the money... It probably is. 

As you've probably noticed, if I wait until the end of the day to take my 365 picture, it ends up being either Michael or Clyde on the couch. That's cause that's how most of my days end. So here's Michael on the couch, very intently playing Bioshock Infinite. He's just happy we put the tv back so he can play again.

Gallery walls are tough, man. This took me a good two nights to plan and put together, and really it came down to just sticking pictures up and hoping for the best. Here, I made a Vine of it. This isn't the greatest picture, but you get the idea. We still have a couple empty spots, but I imagine that will be taken care of in the general process of living and collecting things. I love the days after you finish a project like this -- the room feels brand new, and every time I walk in it, I think, "ahhhhh, new room." New color, new pictures -- I even dislike the couch a little bit less.  This is a better picture. Why didn't I just post the better picture and delete the dark one, you ask? Cause you gotta follow the rules, and I didn't take this picture until the next morning. I am taking this very seriously.

When we first moved back to Indiana almost 12 years ago, I remember standing at the window of my new bedroom and feeling completely overwhelmed by the immensity of the sky outside. In Georgia, you can never see very far -- your view is blocked by mountains and pine trees, and kudzu crawling over everything in sight. I was not happy to be in Indiana -- I missed my friends and my home, and I didn't want to go to college in a few months and leave behind the only familiar people I had around me now. But standing at that window and seeing that huge, blue sky and all that land stretching out in front of me, I felt the tiny stirrings of interest in a new landscape, and a new life. I felt the same thing today when I got home and stood on our back deck. The sky was so blue and so big, and with all that spring newness popping up around me, I felt a little new, too. While I still miss mountains (I can't help but get a bit giddy whenever we head south and the landscape starts to roll a...

I can't even vocalize this cuteness. Ryne's starting to slowly register things around him more. I only see him once every week or two, but he's definitely more alert, and it's adorable. I don't know what's going to happen when he actually smiles / laughs at me. I'll probably disintegrate into pudding. 

I had a seriously great day today. It's been a lovely weekend so far. First, Friday night we went to The Cheesecake Factory, which meant I ate my second grilled cheese of the day (shut up, it was National Grilled Cheese Day) AND I got french fries AND I got cheesecake to take home. Then we stopped by the Godiva store just before it closed, and I became a Godiva Rewards Club member (FREE CHOCOLATE, WHAT?). Most of my favorite moments involve food. It's just unavoidable and better not to fight it. SO MUCH JOY. Then we went home and I pretty much fell asleep on the couch. A good night. Today we went to get our passport photos at CVS, a thoroughly entertaining experience: I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn't a pull-down screen in front of the milk.  Then it was off to Lowe's to get paint for the living room. It's not that I finally made a paint color decision, really; it's more that I gave up and picked one after going slightly i...

I was going to make this my picture of the day: Until I remembered that I didn't actually take that picture, so it can't count. So I have to go with yet another picture of Clyde, unless you want a picture of the mismatched flip flops I accidentally packed to put on after I ran in the morning.  There they are, the two goobers. And just cause you're lucky: Beautiful. I'm so glamorous I don't know how anyone stands it. 

It occurred to me as I was writing the title of this post that I don't really know if this is a Japanese tree. I'm not sure where I got that idea, but it's firmly in my head. Maybe it is? This was taken from our library window. I love this time of year, when flowers are popping up all over the place. 

Today I ran outside for the first time since I started this whole "I'm a runner" thing. It went surprisingly well, except that I tried to leave Clyde at home and he wasn't having it. He might have regretted that when he realized running meant we don't stop to smell things or poop. Here he is panting like a crazy man -- but he got through all three miles like a champ. 

I went to the park for 30 minutes today to enjoy the sunshine and write a little. It's crazy how quickly I can forget that it was cold and snowing just a few weeks ago. Whenever spring comes around, I start to like life a little bit more. I like to sit on the deck and listen to the wind rustle, and smell the weird plant smell that comes from one particular corner of our yard. Everything seems a little bit better, and new. I don't think I could live someplace without any seasons, because how would you appreciate spring if you never had anything different? 

Tonight I tried this  (and this ) which involved lots of Mod Podge and food coloring. They're in the oven right now, so we shall see what happens.

In typical English major-nerd fashion, I very much enjoyed Patrick Rothfuss's post on punctuation today, even if he had this to say about semicolons: "Here’s the problem: Semicolons are for wankers. Seriously. You can go your whole life without ever needing to really use a semicolon.   Unless you’re an academic, of course. If you’re an academic, you’ve got to use semicolon to impress other wankers with how much of a wanker you are so you can get your paper published. You know, that paper you wrote detailing your in-depth Marxist interpretation of the last eight lines of John Donne’s “The Flea?” The paper where you used the word “moreover” twenty-seven times in eleven pages?   Most importantly, a semicolon looks really strange in a piece of casual dialogue. People don’t speak using semicolons. Unless they’re wankers." Sigh. He's right. Semicolons don't really exist in the real world.

We did some work outside today, which included putting down fresh mulch. Okay, so we only managed to do one flower bed out of six, but this one looks great. We're used to our neighbor's dog Sadie coming to visit when we're outside, but this time we also met this guy: I don't know why he/she is shaved except for the head, tail, and feet, but it can't be good. Kinda awesome, yes, but probably not good.

This isn't a great picture. I was trying to get a good shot of the mariachi band, but I didn't want to be like the mom next to me who was gleefully taking a picture and grinning like it was the best part of her weekend. I'm too cool for that, guys. But it's really rather fitting that this isn't a great picture, because this was not a great restaurant, and it did not have great food. It was disappointing because I was all, "Let's celebrate Friday!" and then "Yay, queso!"-- but this is what happens when you try new restaurants. It's not that great. That's why I stick to eating the same 5 foods in rotation and consistently order chicken fingers at restaurants. And while it has a certain novelty at first, I find restaurants with live music not that great, either. Especially when they come stand by your table and play while you stare at your quesadilla awkwardly wondering where you should be looking and when you can stop smiling. ...

Came across this today: 4 Writing Tips from Mark Twain My favorite: "The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is that you really want to say."  I've noticed this so many times. You start out writing with one end result in mind, and then by the end, the actual process/journey of writing has brought out much more than you actually intended to say. Maybe you've gone down a completely different train of thought -- a better one. It reemphasizes the importance of not editing yourself ( Shut up, Bartholomew! ) during your first draft -- get it all out first, then make sense of it. This is only slightly related, but when I was writing my undergrad thesis, I researched the connection between bipolar disorder and creativity. The cycle of manic states and depression (for mild episodes, at least) fits well with the creative process (especially poetry), where ...

There are spots where last week's snow still hasn't melted, but the first flowers are making their way to life anyway.

Is important when it comes to opening difficult jugs of apple drank.

In the 12 hours or so that we were home in between our wedding and our honeymoon, I decided to try to preserve some of the flowers we'd used -- because seriously, wtf is up with spending that much money on flowers you only enjoy for a couple of hours? I was about to fly thousands of miles away and I wouldn't even get to see them die. Sorry, that sounds morbid. But you know what I mean. So I tried two methods: air drying and pressing. The "flatter" blooms (and by that I mean ones I could get to flatten out by squishing them) I put between pieces of paper and then smushed inside a heavy book. They sat on the library floor, weighted down by Michael's Grandma's fancy editions of The Illiad  and Walden until we got home from Hawaii. I then took the rest and tied them in small clusters, leaving them to hang upside down in our laundry and guest room closets. There's such a difference in tone between fresh flowers and dried. It's like Miss Havish...

So, let's talk about this picture. I'm laying on the couch and it's getting dark. Michael's at the office because it's Monday night, and Mondays are the nights I get the house to myself to do stuff like watch 20 episodes of Girls or eat all the chocolate out of the secret chocolate drawer... or fall asleep on the couch at 9pm. So I did. And it was lovely. At one point, I woke up in some kind of sleep-drunk stupor, with three blankets on me and Clyde laying on my legs, and I said, "Crap, I have to take a picture." The weight of sleepiness was way too heavy to actually get up, so all I managed to do was take a picture of Clyde on my legs, then I passed out again.  In the morning I was in a bit of a panic thinking I'd ruined my streak, but I remembered this very dark, very boring picture and rejoiced.  So, HA. I AM STILL GOING. SUCK IT.  Here's the same picture Pixelmated so you can actually see the outline of Clyde, cause I k...