She Likes Purple

Seven Quick Last-Day-In-November Takes

1. November is nearly over! No more daily posts, I know you are sobbing into your hands right now. But it was fun! I hope to keep up this posting-more-often thing. 

2. All I can think about today is The Vampire Diaries. I don't even care that I just said that and 98% of you rolled your eyes at me because that's nothing new, right? Anyway, I'm a huge fan of this show and I'd argue it's not just for teens or those who like teen-y shows. It's dark, it's bloody, it's sexy, it's quippy too. And the twists and turns are just fun and often surprising where I feel so much of television just fails to surprise me like I'd like it to. Anyway, last night's episode was very, very good and if you ARE a fan, well, read this recap of it. It's exactly how I feel about the episode.

3. I'm sure you super-duper care about how I want to wrap our Christmas presents this year but I want to do something like this, with holiday-themed stamps instead of bird ones. We're going minimal on the gifts, and that makes me actually excited about wrapping them! 

4. I love, love, love this dress. I think about this dress on my commute. I want to buy it and wear it to Mike's holiday party and then my holiday party and then my birthday dinner and then maybe sleep with it, too. It's nearly $300, though, and I just can't justify that in any way, shape, or form. (If you see this dress go one sale OMG PLEASE TELL ME.) (It would have to be like a 75%-off sale, but still.)

5. Speaking of dropping tons of money, it's rumored that my team (Texas A&M) is possibly going to the Capital One Bowl. (In Orlando.) I don't even know if this is true or if there are tickets to be had but I'm just trying to figure out a way to make this work. I don't know when an opportunity to go to such an awesome bowl will present itself again to us (uh, it hasn't presented itself since I was in high-school, so.) We have miles and points and....I dunno. Mike thinks it's insane and impossible and it very likely is. Still. I can't stop thinking about it.

6. I got the (unbelievable) opportunity to interview Spike Mendelsohn this week for Food Lush and since he's been a huge favorite of mine since his first run on Top Chef, I was over the moon excited about it. I was also nervous as hell, so nervous I could puke. I actually thought of cancelling. I actually hoped he would cancel. I know that sounds insane, but I was just NERVOUS. ALL CAPS NERVOUS. I went through with it because of course it was a fun opportunity and I couldn't wait to be able to say that I did that! I interviewed him! (Well, over the phone.) And it went well. He was friendly and warm. I'm sharing this because I think life does this more often than we think it does--it gives us cool opportunities that we possibly shy away from because they're just so nerve-wracking and scary. I'm going to try to remember this feeling. This feeling of doing something very cool even though it was very scary and being proud on the other side of it.

(Oh, interview goes up next week.)

7. December is tomorrow! High of 80 on Sunday! Texas is adorable. 

Ten (Not-So) Quick Takes Because I'm Feeling Chatty

1. I read to Kyle almost every night. This is simply My Thing in our house, even if Mike is around. No matter who does the PJ wrangling, the tooth-brushing reminding, the "STOP STALLING" yelling, I am the one to snuggle in with him to read a couple books. This is one thing I own in our house, this job of Book Reader, and it's a real full-circle kind-of role because if you ask me what I remember most about my own mother from my own childhood, I will tell you how she read to me. How she read so lovely, how she always seemed her most perfect self when she was reading to me, and every night I hoped hoped hoped she would read just one more book. Every night Kyle asks for just one more book.

Anyway, that was a very sweet lead-up to THIS: tonight as I finished up his book of choice (it's been Berenstain Bears' Picnic for like a solid month), I gave him a hug, a dozen kisses, another hug, and then he cupped my face in his hands and said oh-so sweetly, "Mommy can I give you a high-five on your cheek?" "That's called hitting, Kyle." "NO! NO IT'S NOT!" "Well whatever euphemism you've chosen, the answer is no."

Kids, man.

2. We're headed to California this weekend. I know, how did that happen? I am such a ridiculous vacation planner that trips are scheduled and booked and researched MONTHS and MONTHS in advance and then I shelve them and then they sneak the fuck up on me and all of the sudden we're on a plane and that's got to be confusing for the people in our lives and in our computers.

Anyway, we're going to celebrate a friend's 30th birthday. (Cherie! You know Cherie! She's the better half of Cherry Jean and she's also one of the best friends a person could ever hope to have.) She was so kind as to come to Vegas for my 30th birthday, so we had to reciprocate. We're taking the whole family on this trip (well, except Molly and let's not bring that up, she's bitter) and we're hitting the beach and going to Disneyland and also drinking adult drinks after our children go to sleep, oh yes.

When you ask Kyle what he's most excited about in California, he'll tell you 1) Riding on a whale (I've no clue) or 2) Legoland (Which we've not mentioned to him being in California because Legoland is 20 minutes from our house. IN TEXAS. Again I've no clue.)

Let's cross our fingers his mind is properly blown at Disneyland and I'm not going to have to guilt my three year old into humoring me.

3. THE BLATHERING SOLD OUT. I keep saying (to myself, to Mike, to the random internet friend who will listen to me) that it feels like a helluva lot of of hard work met a helluva lot of good luck. I'm just so excited we have our official people! And I'd now like to think about my Blathering Wardrobe. Here's where you come in. Saturday night is a wee bit fancier than the rest of the weekend and I want to get a new dress. Which do you prefer:

On the left is this one, and I'd color it up with a black blazer and black heels (maybe red/orange accessories?). On the right, the dress speaks for itself (check out the back) but I have no idea what shoes I'd wear. Black, maybe?

WHICH WOULD YOU PICK? WHAT WOULD YOU WEAR WITH EACH? (Heeelp!)

4. Mumford & Sons has a new album coming out next month (9/25!) and, guys, I'm an insane amount of excited. I actually thought to myself, "I should take off work to listen to the album on repeat all day," but then I realized I'd be out of town on a work trip that specific day, so taking the day off might be a wee bit problematic.

5. I taught my kid some yoga.

Speaking of yoga, in class the other day I thought to myself, "Wow, child's pose is awesome. I'd like a full yoga class with just this one pose." WHICH IS BASICALLY ONE STEP ABOVE NAPPING. It's basically stretching on the couch during an episode of The Vampire Diaries. I invented that.

6. On Style Lush, Hillary, one of my absolute favorites, asked what your timeless, classic, always-on-repeat albums are. I answered with indie folk, Texas country, and Christian worship. I confuse even myself, to be honest. What are yours?

7. I recently remembered something really wonderful and sweet my dad said to me on my wedding day. I hadn't remembered until then, and, wow, I wish I had remembered sooner.

8. Have I told you my sister is coming to Texas for Christmas? Rachel hasn't visited since Kyle was a baby, and her entire family has never been, and my boy has never met her boy, and I'm SO CRAZY EXCITED. I really am. I text her often with questions like, "Do you like wine trains?" and other things like "We're picking the Mexican restaurant, it'll be delicious, we promise/hope."

I can't remember the last Christmas morning I spent with both my mom and my sister. Don't judge if I put our tree up October 1st, and have already nearly planned our entire Christmas menu.

9. I have started a Facebook policy that is basically this: If you're an asshole, I'll unfriend you. I don't care if I shouldn't unfriend you, if you're my cousin's best friend and I might run into you at some random picnic in a couple years. I especially don't care if my only tie to you is high school English. If you are being stupid and saying thoughtless, mean things, I'm just going to go ahead and rid my social media life of you, instead of trying to make you see the error or your ways (which you won't). This has led to my Facebook feed being a very pleasant place to be. I rarely get riled up (by Facebook) and I think I may survive this election after all.

10. Mark your calendars, my friends, Sons of Anarchy returns 9/11. I'm thinking of recapping the episodes here, for no other reason than I REALLY WANT TO. Also, the promos stress me out already. The actual show is going to bring out the ALL CAPS, I am sure, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Seven Quick Takes: Family Issues, Taylor Kitsch, Smoothies + More

1. My dad was in Texas this past weekend, visiting for a couple days. Kyle hasn't seen him since he visited last summer, so it was great that he took to my dad so quickly. He even asked for him over and over after we dropped him off at the airport yesterday morning. My relationship with my dad is ... complicated (mostly complicated for me, admittedly) but it was still a good visit. I appreciated that he complimented our newly cleaned house and our tiny town and my sweet boy. (He called Kyle "perfect" and although he's not, ohgodno, his grandpa should think he is, so it was nice to hear.)

A visit with him stirs up so much in my head and heart, and I'm still waiting for the stirring to settle. Still, it was good to see him. It was good for Kyle to see him.

 2. Let's move on from Family Issues with an uplifting note on Savages (ha), which we saw while my dad was in town (heads-up: kind of an awkward movie to see with your father) and despite it being hide-behind-my-hands violent, I actually liked it. Taylor Kitsch redeems all those John Carter Battlestar Whatever Movies and brings the Tim Riggins-level appeal (apparently what Tim Riggins was missing all this time was FACIAL SCARS, who knew!) and Blake Lively even made me hate her a little less.

I don't know that I'd recommend it--man, it's just so violent and I know there are few people who seek out these kinds of movies--but I felt myself enjoying it in the middle of it, to my own surprise.

3. Hey, don't know if I mentioned it but a couple weeks ago we hosted Hometown week at Food Lush and Style Lush and I'm so crazy proud of the quality of the posts from that week. If you're visiting Texas, Chicago, New York City, California, and many other map dots, bookmark these posts, my friends!

4. My mom and I recently saw Jersey Boys together, and it was such a perfect day. We took in an afternoon show and then had a delicious dinner followed by champagne and cupcakes at my mom's house. Kinda funny, though, while I had definitely heard dozens of Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons songs, I couldn't remember if Frankie Valli was one of the singers on the plane that tragically crashed in the '60s, so the whole time I'm bopping to "Oh What a Night" and "Sherry" and "Big Girls Don't Cry," I kept waiting for Frankie to die in an awful plane crash. (Spoiler alert: He was not on that plane.)

5. Kyle is in this (adorable) phase where everything is "super" something. "Daddy drives super fast!" "That toy is super cool!" "The plane we'll fly on is super big!" and, basically, Mike and I have adopted it in our own vocabularies. Forgive me, boss, if my next marketing plan is "super awesome" or something like that. It's just, man, this kid is cooler than I'll ever be.

6. This is kind of a silly thing to write about but I had the most delicious smoothie from Whole Foods last week and I am STILL THINKING ABOUT IT. My life is thrilling. I've begun talking about smoothies.

7. I'm gearing up to start training for another half-marathon (well, two, actually) this winter and that means training starts in a couple weeks. I'm adjusting last year's plan to take into account that the half-marathon I ran at the end of my training last year was pretty brutally awful those last three miles, and I'd like to feel more rockstar than puking-in-a-Luxor-trashcan this time around. I very highly doubt that I'll be recapping each week's training like I did last year, but I'm sure I'll still talk at length about the training. Really this is all just to warn you that things may get Running Heavy around these parts again after a very Running Light spring. (First things first, I need new shoes, and I think I need them to be a fun color this year.)