My life after the 15 minutes…

So another long break from blogging. For sure, my shoulder has been the main culprit, as for the longest time I couldn't really type effectively. I tried voice-to-text blogging a couple of times, but if you thought my writing was scatterbrained and chaotic, you should have seen me trying to speak a blog. Woo-wee. So how are things? Well, the really good news is that I am almost certainly not going to require surgery on my shoulder. When I was home, I did physical therapy and it actually started to feel so much better. I was even able to go back to work at the gym (with the strict prohibition that I have to get in much better shape before I'm allowed to demonstrate skills). We also needed to make plans for the summer.  This is one of those moments where I still can't quite believe how lucky I am to have married who I did. Bubs' gift to me and the kids this summer was sending us to Texas for the majority of the kids' break. At our district in Arizona, we're on a m...

I didn’t even look at my previous blog date before starting this one. My best guess is that I haven’t blogged in well over two months. As always, I never want to leave the punchline until the end of the blog. I’m not a cliffhanger girl at all. Everything is good…really good actually…well, save for a potentially year-changing injury. Ok maybe I do enjoy the occasional cliffhanger from time to time. So here’s what we’ve had going on in the past few months— We had a baby celebrate her first birthday. My gorgeous little ginger baby turned 1 on April 14th. I got myself a part-time job. I had a husband watching the news with extreme jealousy that his friends were flying a real combat mission on the actual aircraft he’s been flying for the last 10-ish years. Numbers 2 and 3 are very much related. So as you all know, we are apparently in a war (I guess? I can't keep up with the whiplash of what is or isn't happening) with Iran. I have a husband who, despite having a wife who wi...

One of the things I’ve tried very hard to do with these blogs is make them feel light and “mom-like,” mostly because that’s how I want to remember things. And I do go back and read them often. But the reality is, things aren’t always great. And the last month has been a prime example of that. Through the mountain of medical tests, psychiatrists, obstetricians, therapists, etc. that came as a result of the Mexico incident — followed shortly by getting pregnant — one of the things that came out is that I have bipolar disorder. I remember the psychiatrist very clearly saying, “What you’ve told me indicates to me you suffer from bipolar disorder.” “Suffer” feels like a strong word, because most of the time I am happy. I’m outgoing, I love being around people, and I really do think I live a pretty great life. But at the same time, there have been brief periods where I’ve fallen into deep depressions that all but immobilize me. And my way of coming out of those has always been a pretty inten...

As I sit down to write this blog, I’ve realized there’s been an overarching trend in my last few entries… I am an incredible brat. This is true when I read each blog individually. It’s also true when I zoom out and read the overall narrative of my writing since we first blew up on Reddit. I met an amazing guy when I was the ripe age of thirteen, and I’ve spent nearly every day since being an absolute pain in the ass. I’m thirty-four now. I write a lot of these blogs almost like diary entries. I try to make them entertaining for the people who read them, but a big part of why I write is to have a record of this season of our lives. Sometimes that season is big and exciting and a lot of people can sympathize or empathize with me. Other times I come across as a bratty, boring housewife who doesn’t appreciate how good she has it. After this long preamble, this blog will be the latter. One of the things that has always driven me crazy about my husband is how he can have 30,000 irons in the ...

As most of you know, we moved from our childhood hometown in Texas to Tucson, Arizona last year. For the most part, it’s starting to feel like home—and while I had my reservations at first, I’m actually starting to like it here. One of the things I’ve come to appreciate most is how quiet it is. Tucson is a very “normal” mid-sized American city of about a million people. We have all the same stores, all the same chain restaurants, mixed with a lot of local flair inspired by the Native American and Hispanic cultures that were here long before Tucson became a genuine Old West railroad town. (The O.K. Corral—the site of the most famous shootout—is less than an hour from our house in Tombstone.) That was until this week. Earlier this week, Today Show host Savannah Guthrie’s mother was reportedly kidnapped from her home on the north side of town. I tend to personalize stories like this anyway, but Savannah Guthrie has been something of a personal hero of mine since her reporting on the ...

Thursday was Abby’s 10th birthday, which still feels impossible to say out loud. I officially have a kid in double digits, and I’m not convinced that should be allowed. On my mom’s side of the family, tenth birthdays are… a thing. A big thing. I used to think it was just a Texas quirk, but I’ve since realized it’s more of a love language—one that involves travel plans, head counts, and a total disregard for subtlety. When someone turns ten, the village shows up. Which is why, earlier this month, Abby came to me with a very serious request. “Mom,” she said, “I don’t need a huge party. Can you please tell Grandma and Aunt Jenn I just want to stay in Arizona and maybe go to dinner with you guys?” This is Abby in a nutshell. Thoughtful. Quiet. Deeply aware of her own limits. I told her that was fine with me—but also warned her that it might break a few hearts. And that there was a very real possibility they would all just… come anyway. Because I cannot imagine my sister Jennifer ever missi...

On Thursday afternoon I was sitting in the school pickup line when Abby came bursting through the door. “Mom, I have a project I need to do before wrestling practice.” My eyes narrowed in the rearview mirror. “What kind of project?” With fear in her voice, she said, “A science project.” The violins of a horror soundtrack could have been ominously playing in the background. Everyone in that car understood what this meant. Well… almost everyone. Ashley, oblivious to the danger, kicked her feet and drooled happily that her sissa and bobba were next to her. But even TJ, the family’s resident chaos agent, actually reached over and put a hand on Abby’s shoulder. “Good luck, Abby.” This project had to be completed before the engineer got home. Now before I start complaining, I need to say this: we are unbelievably blessed to have a husband and father who takes such an interest in his kids’ schoolwork. In fact, our entire family exists because he was something of a math-tutoring prodigy in ...

This is one of those blog posts where I’m having trouble creating a coherent structure, because it starts with motherhood… and then swerves wildly into me being a bit of a deviant in my early twenties. Bubs and I made a bet yesterday — and this is me losing. The thing is, he claims he doesn’t even want to be “paid off,” but I’ll be damned if I let him hold an unpaid debt over my head for the rest of our lives together. Dani M pays her bets. The Bet Ashley has had her first cold of her little life, which quickly turned into a sinus infection. She’s been miserable, and I spent all of last week glued to her — loving it, but by Saturday I desperately needed a break. I also felt guilty that I’d been neglecting the older two kids. So Bubs and I worked it out: I’d take Abby and/or TJ out for most of the day, and he’d happily stay home with Ashley. Sounds great in theory. Except Abby and TJ woke up on Saturday morning with battle lines already drawn. By 8 a.m. they’d had three full-blown, out-...

So by design, I never talk about politics on this blog. That doesn’t mean I don’t care — it just means that making things divisive among the few readers I have left probably isn’t the way to keep everyone around. But for Bubs and me, politics are fair game. As much as we love each other — as much as I literally still see the stars in his eyes — there is very little we agree on politically. I think he’s an unfeeling libertarian driven only by data. He once said, “You’re somewhere left of Lenin, if Lenin were a paranoid housewife and teacher who sees everyone as her student or her baby.” Rude. Accurate. Annoyingly funny. I won’t get into specifics, but politics have hit a fever pitch lately, and maybe like the country itself, Bubs and I took up our very predictable positions. Earlier in the week he had a night flight, which meant he was home most of the afternoon. We could not let each other off the hook. We’d bicker, take a break, then one of us would see a social media post that valid...

We are finally home after an absolutely amazing Christmas break. I should probably look before I say this with any confidence, but I’m pretty sure the day we walked back into our house in Arizona marked almost exactly one year since our furniture was finally delivered and this place started to feel like home. I’m so tired that my brain is already wandering from where I meant this blog to go, so I’m taking that as my sign to just let it unfold the way it wants to. This past week held several big, beautiful milestones. Our eight‑month‑old experienced her first Christmas — a picture‑perfect holiday in my childhood home, surrounded by siblings, cousins, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and a few “soon‑to‑be” family members thrown in for good measure. It’s not hard to imagine that with all that attention, she was the undisputed star of the show. We also had a couple of false starts with my sister‑in‑law going into labor, which meant some unexpected quality time in an admitting room where we wer...

We are home in Texas for Christmas—a truly magical time of fights, makeups, cousins saying terrible things to each other, and four adults (formerly “the kids”) who should absolutely know better by now. Our trip got off to an auspicious start on one of the rare mornings Bubs will spontaneously dance with me in the kitchen. For a man not known for spontaneity, it’s one of my favorite things about him. His song of choice was “Fairytale of New York” by The Pogues. It’s actually a gorgeous Christmas song. Romantic. Wistful. And… lyrically questionable. As we danced, I heard the female singer casually drop, “you maggot, you f* ggot,” and slowly turned to see TJ frozen in place, staring at us like he’d just discovered buried treasure. You could practically see the mental file folder being created: Bad Words I Heard in My Own Kitchen, Therefore Probably Allowed. I made him promise not to repeat what he heard. He looked me straight in the eye and said, “Okay, Mom.” I know for a fact that ...

Every year you protest how big of a deal I make your birthday. Every year, I ignore you. It’s been happening for twenty years now (even the year we were broken up), so don’t ever expect it to stop. This blog is scheduled to post at midnight on December 19th. If you’re awake to read it, you’ve got so much more in store for you today, my little almost-thirty-four-year-old. Oh—sorry. Every year your mom reminds me you were born at 2:42 pm at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Albuquerque. I guess I’m not the only woman who thinks you’re basically Jesus incarnate. Lucky for you, you now have two daughters who also believe the world should stop and part to let you pass. Anyway, when this posts you’ll still have a while until you’re “officially” 34. I always struggle to pinpoint when I first met you. I think I just noticed you one day at your grandparents’ house after you moved to town. But my first concrete memory of you is the one where you were being a total smart-ass in Sunday school. You were sit...

It’s four in the morning when I start writing this. For me to be awake at this hour—especially now that Ashley is finally sleeping through the night—it means the hamster wheel in my head is spinning hard enough that there’s no chance of rest until I get the thoughts out. Right now, the reason I’m awake makes perfect sense. Will it still make sense tomorrow? Maybe not. But here goes. The show Landman got me thinking about a man named Tom. Thinking about Tom got me thinking about my years working at Hooters. Add in the fact that both my birthday and Bubs’s birthday fall in December, and suddenly all of it wrapped itself into one tight, emotional knot that dragged me out of bed and into this chair. Landman is a show about the oil industry in Texas. As a die‑hard Texan—and someone who went to school in West Texas—it resonates with me more than I want to admit. Parts of it feel like stepping back into some of the funniest, messiest years of my life. That said, while the first season felt ...