so far, i can honestly say that blogging has been a 100% positive experience for me. sure i get stressed sometimes when lena sends me an email that says "weak post" or i feel like i am slacking or letting people down. i have met a surprisingly lot of new friends, reconnected with old and random ones and been able to come out from my own shadows of people i stalked to actually interact with them. in addition, blogging has played a huge part in my decision to learn to sew, to cook more and better, save money, live (even more) transparently, and of course the best thing it has done is to make our family mission statement "more than surviving" (though the magic has been shelved the past few weeks in favor of my survival. i have also been really lucky to never have to moderate (aka reject) a mean or hateful comment from an internet "troll," although i know that won't last forever and when it happens i will probably cry.
it sounds so cheesy to call this internet nonsense that we do "a community." but last friday it straight up was one for us. so you remember how me and jesse were in a huge fight that had me considering sleeping at work (i mean at night, not just during my normal work naptime)? WELL, i decided we really needed a date night at the last minute and posted an appeal on facebook to anyone who lives near us and might be willing to keep judah for a few hours. we won't even mention the fact that the bug is a huge crowd pleaser and got tons of responses. what i will mention is that within 4 minutes of posting that, i had a reply from newfriend lori b. offering to take him to her son's t-ball game and to dinner with her family so that jesse and i didn't start divorce proceedings.
this is cool. so we have hung out with lori and her husbo, evan, a few times in real life. once at a marriage retreat in 2006 and then again just recently at a mutual friend's house to watch the acc championship football game. they are another GT couple who also were really involved at CCF and we have tons of mutual friends (so in case they kidnapped judah, i'd at least know where to find them to visit him occasionally). but i am pretty sure she wouldn't have offered (or maybe i wouldn't have accepted so readily) if it hadn't been through our blogs and the interactions we have recently had through them.
good to her word, lori grabbed judah and partied with him for about 4 hours on friday. he came home in perfect condition, had a blast with their fam and the t-ball team and apparently ate and charmed everything in sight.
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looking fat and happy with one of lori's adorable kids and her babe of a husband (just saying!) who is kicking thyroid cancer's ass as we speak
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jesse and i used this blessedly unexpected free time to reach a wonderful cease-fire. it wasn't one of our kick ass die-to-myself for the sake of jesus reconciliations, but it was a good solid meeting of minds where we agreed that we were both totally spent (from illness, pregnancy, work, parenting, etc.) and that we had nothing to give which was why we had slipped into enemy mode and away from teammates (that mindset is SOOOOOOO freaking important in our marriage). it was fun. i sat on the same side of the booth as him, which we normally make fun of schmoopy couple who do this, but it was so that we had to be touching during the conversation, which makes it way harder to be cold and shut down toward someone while your legs are rub-a-dubbing.
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it was so cool that someone who isn't necessarily in one of our physical communities (yet!) reached out and positively impacted our marriage because of a connection made through blogs. that's cool, right?
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in another fun turn of events, i used a recipe from lori's blog to positively impact my weight gain and mood on sunday night. she made this suh-LAM-in dip that time we hung out with them last fall and so when i found her blog i begged her to post the recipe. she did oh so kindly HERE. for several weeks i was too feeble to even contemplate boiling chicken, but as my first comeback act of this pregnancy, we cooked her buffalo dip! my thoughts on it:
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it's outrageously good; think a chicken wing dipped in just the right amount of sauce and dressing and then all blended up with none of the work of having to gnaw around the bones. dear gosh. it does require something of a penance in the digestive department, but it is totally worth it. jesse and i have been eating it every day since sunday (maybe it would be better to take it to a party rather than stuffing our own faces with it). one thing i would change is to just heat the cream cheese separately from the dressing since the kind of dressing we got started separating out from its own oil content and just looked kind of weird. maybe it was the brand i got. next time i will heat the cream cheese until it's smooth and then stir in the dressing off the heat. i took in some leftovers to work and the people here flipped their snot over it. my boss actually closed his eyes and bowed his head.
ok, so maybe it looks like rabbit entrails...but remember anything with that shade of orange grease=heaven!thank you so much lori for everything from your blogging honesty to your childcare and diarrhea-inducing deliciousness! everyone, go out and make a bloggy buddy today! (see? i got rainbows)
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