Haiti

When I got on the internets this morning (in lieu of going to church, as O has a cold and I cannot let her share her germs and snot with the other babies at church) I had intended to post about my sewing endeavors.

But then CNN and a few of my fellow bloggers have dissuaded me.

I am very, very sad about the situation in Haiti.

Yes, catastrophes happen all the time, all over the world. The world is FULL of suffering EVERY DAY.

But Haiti was already full of people who were suffering, and now they've got a double serving. And what really makes me sad is the children and orphans who are there. The children and orphans who do not even have clean water to drink. An adult who finds himself without water can at least understand why, and maybe even take steps to get water. But kids don't understand. They just know that they're thirsty and hungry and they don't feel good. They did not ask to be born into such abject poverty or uncleanliness. They were just happily playing in their scrappy surroundings when one day the earth shakes, and now they have nothing.

Then this morning I read about 10 children still trapped in the rubble of a home as of Saturday. Kids! Trapped underneath rubble for DAYS. The workers could still hear their voices in there, faint as they were getting.

Yesterday NPR aired an interview with a man who was trapped with his colleagues under a collapsed building for 50 hours. I thought to myself, "50 hours??? I would have lost my mind by then." But 50 hours is lucky compared to those kids in the house.

And then there are the families in the U.S. who are adopting children from Haiti. Some of them do not know if their children are still alive. What if baby Olivia had been born and living in Haiti, and we finally got to pick her out for our own and just had to wait, and then the earth shakes and we have no idea if she's alive? Or worse yet, we hear from the orphanage that she is alive, but there is no food or water. And she's hungry and thirsty and sad. And we can't do anything to help her. She's just walking around that orphanage listlessly, looking for a drink, when there is none.

So any of you big-rollers, please give cashola to help the Haitians. Red Cross is a good place. Or pick from this list.

And you praying types, pray for Haiti and those kids. Well, pray however the Spirit leads you. But I feel really sad for all the baby Olivia's over there right now.

Jesus loves the little children. All the children of the world.

(Please pray for my baby friends in Haiti!)

Austin and Lauren's Wedding

I wish I had some entertaining things to relay about Austin and Lauren's wedding, but we were so busy at that time that I didn't have a chance to reflect or write down thoughts. Sorry, guys!

Basically, the wedding consisted of four days of wedding festivities, and I gathered that this was typical Southern fashion. And this was only wedding stuff, and did not include Bier family fun-times, which JB and I were not able to participate in as much as we had wanted. Cry, cry.

JB and I enjoyed the celebrations, but I still craved a day of rest. At one point I broke down crying in front of JB because I realized I wouldn't have time to return to the mega quilting store, Stitcher's Garden, in Franklin, to finish shopping. The store is so huge that Marian and I only got through about half of the building on our first trip. We squeezed it in while the guys were off getting their tuxedos. Fortunately, Lauren's Dad lost his car in the mall parking lot, so it gave us extra time to shop before we had to meet up with the guys again. Okay, so it wasn't any fun for Mr. Brown, who thought that his car was stolen (it wasn't--he just couldn't remember where it was parked), but it helped Marian and I out. :) Yes, I am weird for crying about not getting to go to a quilt store, but that's me.

The rehearsal was your typical rehearsal, but the dinner was something else! We ate at Mere Bulles, and it was very good food, and JB and I had a lot of fun visiting with people and also relaxing. I had 2.5 glasses of wine. That was about 1 glass too many. Ooops--haha! Here is Austin working hard on rehearsing, with Aaron Zull in the background:



The ceremony was very nice, if you ask me. The Reverends did a nice job. Aaron Zull (longtime family friend of the Browns, and incidentally I went to SLT with his son, who played the cello at the wedding, and his wife was Marian's IV staffer at UofM--small world!) did the message, and Chris Wright (longtime family friend of Hunts) did the marrying part. I enjoyed myself. Though perhaps a bit of the enjoying was due to the fact that Olivia was in the nursery with a sitter. I love being a free woman! Oh, and I had a front row seat:




The reception took place in downtown Nashville, at the Avenue, an old warehouse just south of Broadway. I had never been down Broadway, which is full of honky tonks and cheesy neon lights. It looked so fun! I secretly wanted to go there instead of the reception. I wanted to drop Olivia off at the reception and go have fun without her. No, I am not a bad mother. I am a woman. A woman who has for years loved Big & Rich's song that has the line, "Ridin' up and down Broadway, on my old stud Leroy," and now I knew what they were talking about.

But I was a good sister-in-law and attended my brother-in-law's reception instead. Where we got to hang with JB's family, who are lots of fun:


There was a live band, which I learned was Lauren's Dad's band. The dinner was dee-lish, though I didn't get enough of it, due to time and Olivia. JB did his best-man speech, which I think was head and shoulders above the girls' speeches (sorry, ladies, but victory for Jib!). And, no, I don't just like it better because I helped him write it (the gun show reference was all me)! Then they cut the cake. Wedding cake is so...so...generic? IDK. I just don't like cake, unless it's homemade with the frosting that you get in a plastic tub. Any other frosting is too sugary to me. So I never get excited about desserts at weddings. Fortunately, Austin had requested cheesecakes as a special side thing. MMMmmm. Good move, BIL.

I attended the reception with Olivia in tow. I had wanted to get her a sitter, but Marian reminded me that there would be plenty of people to play with her (and who would want to see her), so she came along. And Marian was right, that plenty of people wanted to play with her, but in an odd twist for Olivia, she only wanted to play with me. She was a very, very good little girl, but I couldn't just do whatever I wanted because I felt responsible and that I should be checking on her regularly, since she kept wanting me. She stayed up until 10:30, and then her little baby body gave out on her. The next morning I realized that she was cutting a tooth that night. So really, she probably would have been a party animal like usual, if it wasn't for that tooth.


So, a good time was had by all.

For more photos of the fun, check out my flickr set.

Down with the Old

I love old things. I especially love old architecture.

So it has been hard for me to go on my walks with Lucy and Olivia lately, because every day we walk by the old school two blocks behind our house and watch as it gets razed.

In 1924ish Grand Rapids Public Schools built what was then Ottawa Hills High School. It eventually became Iroquois Middle School until 2005, when it was closed due to budget issues. In 2008 Grand Rapids Christian Schools purchased the property for use as an elementary school (they're consolidating four of their elementaries into this one). Apparently their construction gurus decided that the upkeep on the 200,000 square foot building would be more expensive than tearing it down and building a new one.

Boo.

That place is an important part of the historic Ottawa Hills Neighborhood, which butts into our backyard. One day last week as we were walking by the school, an old man approached on his bicycle. He said to me, "I went to high school there! It's crazy..." He then watched as the backhoes tore into the brick walls. Poor guy. I saw photos on mlive.com about one last openhouse for the school (which I didn't know about! Argh!) and there was an image of an older guy walking the halls and wearing with his old Ottawa Hills letterman sweater. It was sad to me--even though I know that you can't keep everything the way it was.

I unfortunately do not have photos of the cool architectural detail of this building, but I found this one on the web. On a positive note, they are removing these stones and not including them in the demolition. Perhaps the new school will be using them:

Here are some shots I have taken as we walk by:




See, even Olivia is unhappy about this:

Icing on the Crap Cake

I have been trying to have a good attitude lately about having this baby. I’m fine with having a baby, especially since she’ll be the most beautiful, well-behaved human being to ever grace the planet. I mean, you can’t deny that mixing JB and me together can only result in perfection, right? :)

But then the realities of a baby start rearing their ugly heads. Well, the main one is money. We cannot afford daycare for the baby, and we cannot afford for one of us to quit a job to stay home with baby.

JB and I have been exploring several options to try to make this work. And we keep hitting dead ends.

Every time I hit a dead end, I want to scream at everyone who ever pestered me about having a baby, or who told me that it was time for me to have a baby, or who said that babies aren’t that expensive. I want to scream at them for pressuring me into something like this. But I know that’s not right. I made this decision. I made my bed, and now I have to lie in it. I could have called around and gotten daycare quotes before I got pregnant. But I did not.

So anyway, my biggest child-care solution was to work from home two days a week. That would cut $440 off of our monthly child-care bill. Two other women in my office have done this, and this is a very family-friendly place. I wrote up a very professional proposal and shared that I could do all of my job from home, with the exception of handling front-counter patrons, which are very few and far between on the Mondays and Fridays that I had wanted off.

I thought that this proposal would be accepted. I am a very good worker, am very organized, and have a very nice home office.

Yesterday I was told that I cannot have 2 days. They don’t even want to give me 1 day, but they will let me try it. One of the main reasons they want me in the office is that I am used so heavily to back up other departments when people are gone, and they need me to be able to do that (which is not in my job description, btw—I do it out of the goodness of my heart). Also, if there is an emergency situation with a member, I need to be here. When I got home and thought about all this, I felt pretty aweful. Apparently I can be used as the office workhorse to cover everyone else’s butts, but no one will help ME out in MY job on a day when I’m working from home and an “emergency” may arise. It’s not fair.

So anyway, I was seriously up all night being sad about this (and dealing with other pregnancy ailments). I need to plan these difficult conversations with coworkers about my job, how I feel, how I don’t want to be covering for everyone else anymore unless I get compensated for it, how I feel unappreciated, etc.

I lost so much sleep that I called in two hours late to work. I needed to get SOME rest before coming to work.

When I finally get on the road for work, I find myself driving through this new construction zone on my route. I’ve been driving through it for a week and was making a mental note to find a new route to work (to avoid the construction) when I see a policecar ahead of me on a side street turn on its lights. I drive past and move over so he can pull over whoever it is he’s after.

He was after me.

For speeding in a construction zone.

I had no idea I was speeding! I was following the flow of traffic! I thought the normal speed limit through there was 55, and I was going through at 40, like everyone else, thinking that that was slow enough.

Nope. The speed limit right now is 25. He said there was a sign. I said that I was sorry, but I didn’t see it, and didn’t know I was going too fast.

He didn’t care.

So, after a horrible day yesterday after feeling unappreciated at work, and then not sleeping in the night and being late for work, the officer chose to slap some shit frosting on my crap cake.

Thank you, sir, for giving a very pregnant lady a ticket. For giving her what will be an enormous fine (construction tickets are killer) that will make her even more poor and not be able to afford this baby. For making her cry her makeup off her face before she even got to work (yes, readers, the girl who doesn’t ever cry openly wept). For singling her out of the line of traffic that was also speeding.

If I had your home address, officer, I would leave my crap cake in a bag on your front doorstep and light it on fire.