Perforation Problems

The picture-a-day thing is starting to become a bit tedious. It's fine on days when I do something interesting -- then it's easy to take a picture of something I don't mind talking about on here. But on the days that are ordinary, it inevitably comes down to "Do I 1) take a picture of my desk? 2) take a picture of Michael? or 3) take a picture of Clyde?" I did take a picture of Michael tonight, but as you've seen pictures of Michael recently, I decided to change things up for you. Now BEHOLD: A fuzzy picture of my ceiling fan.  I was tired, okay? It was hard to get up from the couch. The ceiling fan was right there. 

"I cried. Not because of any particular sad moment, but because sometimes the shape a story makes is like a key turning inside me and I cannot do anything but weep." From here .

This morning I drove 2/3 of the way to work with this guy on my windshield. My initial feelings were "Ew, gross." Why didn't I destroy him with the windshield wipers? I don't know. Maybe I was worried it would smear spider guts all over the place. Maybe I just don't like squishing things. Maybe I started having crazy thoughts like, "Do spiders feel fear? How would we know? Can you analyze a spider brain for that? Do spiders shake in trepidation?"  This is the same part of me that in kindergarten worried that my pencil had feelings and didn't like being sharpened all the time. I blame Disney and animated movies.  As the wind rushed past him, he curled his little legs in tight to his body to protect himself. At stoplights, he would slowly unwind and step towards one direction, then scamper back in the other, confused. I cheered him on: "Come on, Spider! Get to cover under the windshield wiper before the wind comes again!" Nope....

I stopped at Kroger on the way home today. I was trying to find my coupon for tortilla chips when a voice comes over the loud speaker: "ATTENTION KROGER SHOPPERS. WE ARE RUNNING A SPECIAL EXCLUSIVE ONLY FOR THOSE PEOPLE IN THE STORE RIGHT THIS MOMENT. IN TWO MINUTES, WE WILL BE GIVING AWAY A SPECIAL GIFT AT THE END OF AISLE TWELVE NEAR THE SELF-CHECKOUT. AGAIN, THIS IS A FREE GIFT JUST FOR PEOPLE IN THE STORE. YOU ARE VERY LUCKY. HEAD TO AISLE TWELVE." After a minor inner battle in which my brain told me that it was probably a crappy gift and it wasn't worth having to listen to whatever sales pitch they were going to give, and after surreptitiously eying aisle twelve from around the Doritos stand, I gave him and went to get my free gift. Cheese knife! Not the worst of special free gifts. I did have to listen to a five minute spiel on some magic heating pad thing, though. Was it worth it? Would I do it again? I honestly don't know. Probably.

I found this helicopter trying to grow into a tree in my strawberry planter. He was uprooted and evicted, but I'd never actually seen a helicopter "sprout" and thought it was interesting...

I snapped (can you still say "snapped" when it's a cell phone camera?) a picture of the campground sign just as we were leaving, in the 30 seconds I had while Michael was waiting to turn. The campground itself was nice, and the people running it seemed great, but this "Camp Revival" part of the sign, coupled with the cross at the entrance, made me feel a little bit like I was walking into a horror movie. This stuff seems leftover from the previous owners. Don't worry, all is well, and I don't think any of us left possessed by anything.

When Michael and Brandon decided they wanted to take Trail 8 up and over the tops of the three largest dunes in the state park, my first reaction was "hell no." "But Haley," my newfound calves of steel said. "We've done all that running. Don't you feel you can handle things like this now?" "I could do it, Calves of Steel, but would it be fun? It sounds like it would suck." "But the views!" "But the exertion headaches." "The sense of accomplishment!" "The sense that you just want to die where you stand." "The fresh air!" "The red hot oven face." "Don't you want to feel you've stretched the limits of your body and achieved athletic greatness?" "No." Somehow I ended up doing it anyway. I think I didn't want to 1) miss out 2) look like a wimp. And the truth is, I did handle it much, much better than I would have two years ago. It ...

Today we went hiking in Indiana Dunes State Park, which offered up some soggy marshes, alien plants, and tall, sandy dunes. I thought these round, leafy plants were really cool -- have no idea what they are.  And then there was this alien mutant fungus... I like this picture because I caught Michael right before he started jumping on the boardwalk. Because that's what you should do when on a potentially unstable structure over a bunch of muddy water, right?  Pretty trees, quiet marshes. I won't lie -- I thought of LOTR a couple times.  Trail 9 was supposedly "moderate" -- it felt a bit rugged when we started hiking up the sand dunes. But then again, Trail 8 the next day made Trail 9 look pretty pathetic, so I won't argue with their nomenclature.  At the top of a dune, looking out over Lake Michigan. This sandy depression was called "Beachhouse Blowout," which apparently is a thing that sand does, and not a party...

I've been on a serious hot dog kick lately. We got these Oscar Meyer Selects Angus hot dogs and they are freakin' delicious. Today was Day One of our Memorial Day Weekend Camping Trip, up at Sandy Creek Campground near the Indiana Dunes. There were a lot of capital letters in that sentence.  I was pretty excited about this camping trip -- hiking, a new tent, s'mores over the campfire...and a forecast for excellent, 60-degree camping weather. Unfortunately, this meant the low was in the 30's Friday night, which made for some uncomfortable shivering. All in the name of Wilderness, guys. And the All Holy Three Day Weekend. 

So this is kind of a weird picture of the day -- it's a picture of a picture. Today's my best friend's birthday, so I made her a collage of pictures from throughout the years. That's what all the young'ins are doing on Instagram nowadays. This one is my favorite -- we're in the middle school band room. I don't know what she was doing, but I like that I felt it appropriate to put a "You have CARROTS?" caption on it. Middle school, man.

There's not a lot to say about this picture. We had broken air conditioning at our house AND at the rental house in the same week. It ended up being quite pricey.

Clouds over the mountains through the car window.

I'm listening to the theme music from Out of Africa , which was one of the songs we played in band my sophomore year of high school (it's around 4:10 in this video ). My fingers want to play the main melody -- they remember about 97% of the notes, but then there are a couple that are just missing from my muscle memory, and I get lost. That's how I felt during much of my trip to Georgia. I spent almost ten years there, and they were pretty important years, but a lot of it feels distant now. Is that just what happens with time? Finding my way home used to be second nature. I used to ride my bike around my subdivision by myself as a middle schooler; this time we adults got lost trying to come in the back way. Driving the streets of Marietta, I remembered weird, random things -- like that this neighborhood was where the boy who took me to the 8th grade dance lived -- but I couldn't tell you how to get anywhere. And I'm not even going to get into how many names and fac...

As I write this post, it's gray and misty outside, the rain fogging between the trees like my backyard is something more mysterious than just my backyard. It's not, but that's the kind of mood I'm in right now -- like I want to turn everything into an intro scene to Lord of the Rings . It doesn't help that I'm listening to instrumental tracks from movies as I write. So forgive me if these next few posts sound a little overly sentimental or dramatic, like they should be backed up by the theme from Braveheart . I'm trying to catch up on posts. I've over a week behind, and that week covers a couple big events, like my trip to Georgia and camping over Memorial Day Weekend. I was just about to type the sentence, "I hadn't been home in several years" -- it's funny that my heart still considers Georgia home, even though the ties that bind me to it are slowly dwindling. It's really just down to this girl, here: But I'm getting a...

I later ate this strawberry, and it was sweet and delicious. This is how farmers feel.

Mowing our yard is a serious endeavor, and now we're stuck in the time of year where it has to be done every week. This picture appropriately conveys how Michael feels after having to mow in the heat. One hour for the front yard, two hours for the back = a lot of walking. 

Last time Michael and I went camping, we borrowed my parents' two person tent. The only way Michael could stretch out was if he laid down diagonally, which left me a nice little triangle of space in which to curl up in the fetal position. This year we're more prepared, complete with our own tent that we've tested out in the yard. Clyde doesn't seem to care too much about the tent. He spent thirty seconds in there and then got bored.  Look! Michael can stand up! When you're 6'8", standing up in a tent is more of a big deal.  We'll get to test out the tent for real when we go camping with friends over Memorial Day weekend -- I'm getting excited about the s'mores already. 

Let me tell you a story. It's called, "Seriously, Haley?" or maybe, "A Bra is Not a Reliable Place to Store Things," though that might get to the point a little too quickly. One of our house's flaws is that there are no sidewalks and the streets are too busy for pedestrian traffic. So when I want to run outside, I drive a couple miles up the road to an elementary school, where there are paths leading back into neighborhoods with plenty of connecting streets. I've plotted a nice little three mile route. Tonight Clyde and I headed out, Clyde excited to poop somewhere new and me excited about my new running shorts, in which I felt like a Real Runner. It's important to feel like a Real Runner even when your running pace is equal to that of an elderly woman with a walker. As I locked my car door, I realized that, crap, these shorts did not have pockets. Who makes running shorts without pockets? No problem -- I'll just stick my car key in my spor...

Here's my family. My mom, my dad, my brother Matt, my sister-in-law Courtney, 2/3rds of Michael's face, my brother Scott, my grandma, part of my future sister-in-law Taylor's hair (sorry, Taylor!), and my grandpa messing with his cell phone. And ta da ! My brand new placemats.

This is the second year in a row that we'll host Mothers' Day at our house, which is a big deal because, you know, that's like a real Adult thing to do. Adult with a capital A. * We're Entertaining , like people who buy fancy chips-and-dip dishes and napkin rings. We had to mow the law, and weed, and mulch, and I had to track down outdoor cushions and placemats -- because you know adults have things like placemats. Only juveniles get crumbs directly on the table. And tomorrow I'm in charge of all the food, which has me running my food preparation schedule over and over and over in my head. Waffles, then biscuits, then fruit, then gray, then sausage, then bacon, then eggs, ahhhhhh. As part of my present for my mom this year, I decided to make paper flowers, which I've been a little bit fascinated with since I saw these at  West Elm . I kept eyeing them but couldn't really swallow the idea of paying the $30. Internet to the rescue! I found easy-to-use tem...