My life after the 15 minutes…

 In honor of my sisters departing for Destin today—without me—I thought I’d dig into the past and write a blog specifically for my beloved Jennifer and Jessica. It feels so weird that this is the first trip you’re taking to Destin without Mom and Dad. I can’t tell if it’s a rite of passage or the beginning of them officially deciding they’d rather just stay home. Either way, I cried a little this morning realizing my family wouldn’t be there with you. I’m holding you to that thing you said about going back in August—because it is a moral imperative that I get a picture of Ashley’s little feet touching the Gulf for the first time. I need it next to the photos of the other seven cousins, and then we’ll just have to wait for Brian and Evie’s kids to keep the tradition going. They both say it may be a while. I guess I do technically have Brian here in Arizona with me—but let’s be honest, even at 25, Brian is still the same annoying shit he’s always been, and I would trade him for you t...

Last week I mentioned that I’d made a new friend when Bubs and I went out for tacos. I forgot to mention—her name is Amelia. Yesterday she texted me, all excited because she was finally getting the key to her new classroom. She asked if she could swing by and look through all the school decorations and supplies I had stashed away. Of course I said yes—I love having people over, and I really love any opportunity to give my husband fewer chances to say, “Dani, can we talk about those boxes and how much room they take up?” Evie and Brian are staying with us this week, so we had one former teacher (me), one current teacher (Amelia), and one future teacher (Evie) all going through about thirty Costco boxes full of classroom stuff. It turned into the perfect girl-date. We grabbed sushi from the grocery store, stopped for Starbucks, and spent the whole afternoon rotating between the garage and the baby, taking turns holding Ashley, laughing, swapping war stories about parents and students, a...

NSFW-ish ahead, you’ve been warned! So Bubs made a comment on Reddit yesterday—and in our ensuing in-person discussion over the matter, he noted that I’ve never apologized for diming him out to his mom on Junior Breakfast day. I’ve danced around this topic for a long time, but: Bubs and I first did the deed when we were... of a certain age (don’t want to get banned again). We had already tried to do it a couple of times. There was the time at his grandfather’s ranch where he got us lost and we had to be rescued after dark—that was a bust. There was the time my parents let him come with us to Destin for Spring Break and I convinced them our AP Lit teacher had a teleconference so we could skip family dinner and have the condo to ourselves—Bubs ended up thinking my little sister was me and came up behind her whispering how excited he was. (To this day, I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of someone doing something dumber.) That, too, was a bust. Finally, I just told him: put an air mattres...

Some of you may have noticed that Bubs has a new Reddit account, and he and I have been teasing each other over on my personal page. This makes me so happy because, out of everything that came out of last summer, the thing I enjoyed most was our online banter. We've always been pretty playful, but Reddit really helped us get our "mojo" back after a couple of years where we had grown kind of distant. I don’t know what this means for our other readers—because while I love walking down memory lane or typing up stories that Bubs wants me to write about, I’m not so arrogant as to think our past is interesting to anyone but us. Still, it’s such a joy to see his face light up when he asks me to write about a specific memory. Plus, preserving these stories is always fun. So, if you check my profile, you’ll see that Bubs responded to my request for him to call me a “delicate little bird” when I eat—by telling the story of a time I ate two full footlong meatball subs from Subway....

My favorite fan in the world—the one who will forever be known by the very appropriate Texas sobriquet, Bubs —asked me to write a blog today. Sometimes he still acts like a shy little boy and it makes me smile literally ear to ear—and that's the subject of today’s blog. I thought he looked like the cute little guy I’ve known for so long; he thinks I “embarrassed the shit” out of him. Tomato, tomahto—right? Bubs worked from home yesterday, and we desperately needed a grocery trip. My plan was to pack Ashley up and start getting used to doing the things I’m going to have to do as a stay-at-home mom. Ever since I was put on bedrest, Bubs has more or less treated me like a delicate piece of porcelain—whose value has apparently increased now that I’ve got a five-and-a-half-week-old attached to me most of the day. So he insisted on going to the store with me. No problem—I love spending time with him. And Ashley is starting to smile. No surprise: she smiles biggest in response to his ...

I don’t know the exact moment it happened, but I think the official date when my family and I became (minorly) internet famous was June 25th, 2024. What I do know for certain is that the events leading up to that moment—the ones that nearly ended my marriage of 10 years (19 together)—happened exactly one year ago today. I remember it clearly because my daughter earned a new stripe on her orange belt that day. I took a picture. I was crying—not just from pride, but also because I’d just had a huge fight with my husband. That photo popped up in my phone’s “memories” this morning. Thanks, algorithm. The stress that led to that fight had been building for a while. It really started with something small—like so many fights do. I took my car to the tire store because Bubs had been bugging me about the tire pressure for a few days. It had turned into one of those stubborn standoffs that happen in marriage. He was 100% right—my tire pressure was low. He said it would be easy to drag the air co...

Hi all...before I get started in on what a complete brat I am--a couple of people have asked for me to link my reddit account and email a1/gain. No problem at all--my reddit is:  https://www.reddit.com/user/DecentData5441/  and my email is danniynnad@gmail.com Bubs has taken some well-deserved crap over the past couple of weeks, but I always want to be fair and call out when I do something wrong—and yesterday was a doozey. I’m trying so hard to make my blogs more succinct and readable, but this isn’t going to be the one. I may run it through AI to see if it can clean up some of my grammar and spelling. One of Bubs and my longest-running fights is over something that happened at Schlitterbahn when we were 15. Those of us from Central Texas like to think Schlitterbahn is a world-famous water park, but now that I've moved around a bit, I'm not so sure anyone outside the San Antonio-Austin-Waco corridor has ever heard of it. What I can say is that Schlitterbahn was a huge part of ...

 I think one of the things that I have yet to learn, in all of the writing I've done, is word economy. This could be a really short blog post where I thank my husband for doing something amazing, thank you for reading and go about my evening.  You can probably deduce that with Bubs more or less out of commission and me and my little 10 times a day nursing partner--that our house has been an absolute disaster. I don't think I'm a clean freak (everyone around me completely disagrees) but I would walk into our kitchen and actually feel a panic attack coming on, it was so disgusting. It was even worse in that my brother and his fiance just finished up their school semesters so they were both going to come stay with us before he has to go back to Yuma and start a new research project in about a week. The room we set up for Evie is right next to the kitchen and there was no way I was going to let them sleep next to what amounted to a war zone.  Bubs has been able to get up and ...

One thing I have become a master at is doomscrolling while nursing our newborn. It's probably not the healthiest of habits, but Ashley has decided that her overnight feedings are going to be absolutely epic in duration. For all three of our kids, co-sleeping has been a lifesaver, and with both Abby and TJ (and for a while, Ashley), they would wake up in the middle of the night, I'd whip a boob out and get them nuzzled up, and then I could get some wake-sleep. Even those few seconds of being out were a lifesaver the next day. When our two-week hiccup occurred, she decided that she only likes being fed while I'm sitting up in my rocking chair, so it requires a whole other level of attention—and to keep myself awake, I scroll on my phone. That's when I came across this Reddit thread that was posted about a month ago: https://old.reddit.com/r/BORUpdates/comments/1k003hl/the_saga_of_the_wife_who_went_mexico_was_too/ The OP as well as the account that posted it are delete...

 My relationship with my husband has faced three major crisis in 20ish years that we have known each other. The first one was when he decided to cheat on me at 15 years old with a girl who was staying in the same dorm complex while he was at a sports camp. The second one is why all of you know me--it played out in a very public way and by the available last count, has over a million views on various social media platforms. We are living through the third as I type this. I can't stand the sight of him and I can't stand the sound of his voice.  Now, I don't want to scare anyone--we are not getting divorced. I normally wouldn't even mention that because normally the thought would be so far from my mind. Having said that, since almost everyone who reads this blog came to know us when we were technically separated, I don't want anyone to think that is where this is heading. I love him with my whole heart but at the moment, I am incredibly frustrated with some of the choi...