A bulleted journey...

A bulleted journey starting with pride and self-aggrandizement through hills and valleys of pretty babies and pretty coworkers to a destination of self-pity and more pretty babies.

Saturday morning, I ran twenty miles. I didn't quite kick it's ass, but I ran it. It was a great day, and I feel very accomplished. Most importantly, I learned some important lessons regarding pre- and during-distance run pooping.

I can't remember if I mentioned this or not, but I'm senior warden at our church. It's technically called "rector's warden" at our church, and the "junior warden" is actually the "people's warden." We're all about equal opportunity and not making anyone feel senior or junior. So instead of using those words, they make me a possession of the rector, and the junior warden a grammatical lesson in plurals. I digress. We had a church-wide professionally-facilitated workshop this weekend, and of course only the 50 usual suspects showed up. At one point, 3 hours into it, I turned to my priest and said, "dude, this is stressing me out." He responded, "you need to just let it go. I did." Which makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time. I have a very fierce love for our church and the parishoners, but GOOD LORD. I'm just thankful that it was an outside facilitator up there absorbing it all and pissing people off, not me.

I should add that as soon as I finished the 20 miles, I (laid down on the grass for a few minutes and ate a dripping popsicle and then) ran to my car, quickly showered and ran to church for the above workshop. I was this close to just falling over and giving up, and then I had to use up my precious remaining energy for patience, of all things.

Sunday, we had a going away party for our dear, dear friends Scott and Sarah. We love them so, so much. Since they're not going too far away, we're going to have to make a point to schedule mandatory and regular visits. It makes me (and them!) so happy that Grace can wake up from a nap in our house, look at us, and say "hi Julia, hi Erik." She knows us, and it would break my heart if we didn't have the same relationship with sweet Natalie as she grows up. It was a wonderful low-maintenance party, and Sarah looked fantasic holding a much-deserved post-partum beer.

Grace is addicted to watermelon. The only way you could get her to stop gnawing on the rind of one piece of watermelon was to distract her with a new piece.

I think I have a crush on my coworker Billy. He's tall, really tan, has a bit of a southern drawl, and, amusingly, is built almost exactly like my husband. The best part is that we had never talked. Until Friday. He used the phrase, "you're quite useful," (swoon) and then used the word "shit" in his second sentence to me (unswoon). And referred to my haircut as "remov[ing] excess weight." (un, unswoon). That's okay, he's still very pretty from afar.

I was going to use his last name in the above bullet, because it's one of those names that you can't separate. You know the type - you can't call them by their first name alone. But that's a google nightmare waiting to happen.

My friend Daniel just got his PhD. I am very, very proud of him, and very, very impressed. And also feel very, very useless and like I've been wasting my time. Yay.

Real, unbulleted stories on their way, I promise.

Sweet little Natalie when the camera almost caught me sniffing her delicious head: