As a child, I never realized how important those little routines were to me, although the adults around me must have, being that I likely threw a fit when I didn’t have my routines on a daily basis. As a child, you only know that you want what you want and you don’t always know why. Sometimes I feel that way as an adult as well. I want what I want and I don’t know why.

Routine is still important to my well-being and I still find myself using my routine as a measure of comfort. The days that I step off of my routine I find myself feeling out of sorts and irritable and “jack and jill” and “humpty dumpty” may start running through my head as I pull in deep breaths and try to clear my mind. Today is one of those days. Exercise has become part of my daily routine and I never thought I’d say that. Today, however, I woke up still exhausted. It happens about one or two days a month that I wake up still tired enough to go straight back to bed. I’m guessing it’s a chemical flux and that it’s my body’s way of telling me to take a day to relax.

Regardless of what I want on those days, I have no choice. I’m so fatigued that my routine is out the window. I’m used to it on my chronic pain/migraine days, but on the sheer fatigue days, I cannot resolve myself because I want what I want when I want it. Spoiled and childish, to be sure, but it’s my ROUTINE. It’s what calms me. And today, I can’t have it.

Over the weekend, I received an email from one of my students that made me feel both happy and sad. I’d never violate her privacy by telling you what the email said, but the gist of the email was that I’d made a decision that helped her with her faith in educators. Vague enough? Hopefully. We often do things that we never realize in a million years that other people are watching with a close eye. These aren’t the big decisions that we agonize over, either. These are small daily decisions that we either make with the bat of our eyes or that we briefly reflect upon before going on with the day and batting it away like a fly in the summer.

The decision that increased this student’s faith? It wasn’t something that I’d spent much time considering. It was an ethical decision that didn’t feel like it was a major decision at all, really, just common decency and common sense and good teaching practice. I consider myself a role model for my son. I try to model the behavior that I want these future teachers to exhibit. Beyond that, I don’t really consider my daily actions and their consequences outside of my profession as much as I probably could.

As I continued to reflect upon this email and what it said, it occurred to me that adults need someone to look up to as we go throughout our life. That need for a hero, or someone who continues to display attributes that we covet, never really goes away. We call it other things, such as mentorship, but that need for it and the approval of that person remains, especially if there wasn’t a lot of approval and support in the childhood of the person.

I don’t think that I realized that I was old enough to have this position for anyone other than my child. I haven’t decided how I feel about it yet, but I think I’m going to continue what I’m doing. It’s working for at least one of my students and I wasn’t attempting any big superhero intervention with my students in the slightest.

How are other people viewing you in the moments where you aren’t paying attention to what you are doing? Would it change how you handle yourself in those moments?

I’m really glad he has no idea where this blog is, nor does he read it, or he’d likely never speak to me again for telling you what I just told you.

Anyway, the boy loves music. He’ll sing in front of people when we play Rock Band but only because it’s “for the music.” I told you he has personality. When I tell people my kid is cool they don’t really believe me and they don’t really understand until they meet him and realize that he actually does seem to process things differently than other kids his age. There’s a 36-year-old hair band member in that 9-year-old body. At 3, his favorite song was by Bon Jovi.

I digress, I digress. I have no idea why anyone reads this blog because all I do is digress. I’ve turned into my 80-something grandmother.

So, AJ loves music. Yes, that was like 4 paragraphs ago. Get off my lawn. I heard him humming on the couch. Wait, that’s not true. It wasn’t just humming. It was full out song. “She’ll be coming round the mountain when she commmmmmmmmmmes, when she comes. She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes.” I’m sure they learned the whole song. This was the part that was stuck in his head, though. For an hour I heard this until finally I looked at him, made sure he saw me, gave him my most charming grin and sang loudly, “She’ll be coming round the mountain, she’ll be coming round the mountain, she’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes!”

He couldn’t stop laughing. The giggles overtook him, then me. We laughed loud and long together. He gasped at me, “Ma-Ma-Mama, I couldn’t help it! It just got stuck in my head and wouldn’t go away!” We sang it a couple more times and laughed louder and longer. We often sing together in the car. Lately it’s been songs from Glee. Yesterday it was songs from elementary school.

Now if I can just get the theme song for Veronica Mars out of my own head, I’ll be set.

So, a couple weeks ago, I was on a frozen pizza kick. I’d been home more frequently than usual and thanks to Netflix and their amazing instant streaming capabilities, I’ve been watching a lot more television than I normally would. I preheated my oven, stuck in the pizza and waited my 11 minutes.

…

…

At which time smoke started rolling from the oven, the smoke detector started bleating like an angry sheep and my dogs started howling like I’d stuck them all with needles. I’m certain the look on my face was not only sheer panic but also an incredible what the heck is happening to me when I realized that there was literally nothing I could do to stop the noise. It was 99 degrees outside so opening the windows meant undoing what the air conditioning had spent all day doing.

So, I did what any normal person would do. I searched for the batteries, which I couldn’t find. Then, I flapped doors in the house like an angry chicken until, 25 minutes later, the unhappy smoke detector quieted its banshee yell. Then I scraped the black off the bottom of the pizza and got down to business.

I mentioned this to the other adult that lives in my house who laughed and didn’t bother to mention that I could stop the angry noise by holding the button down for two seconds.

Fast forward to the next day where, lo and behold, it was pizza for lunch again! I’d made sure that the pizza stone was clean and ready to go. The oven was clean and there was no way the alarm was going to go off again. I was all ready for a good pizza. No black!

The oven hadn’t even hit 375 when the alarm started shrieking. The dogs started howling. I was a deer in headlights.

I ran into the kitchen and the oven was smoking. I have 9-foot ceilings so my 5’10″ self had to stand on a chair to reach the detector. I twisted and twisted the detector to try to find the batteries at which point the detector sparked and fizzled. Apparently, when they are wired into the ceiling they don’t like to be twisted. When I did this, all the lights in the left quadrant of the house went off.

Well…I stopped the smoke detector. Luckily it was just a broken circuit and the smoke detector is replaceable.

And hey, the pizza came out perfectly.

Someday I’ll learn how to cook. Or maybe just stick with the microwave. But not for popcorn.

My bad.

There was a time I wrote in my blog every day. This past summer, however, was a time for me to spend discovering who I have become as an adult and if I am satisfied with myself at the present moment or if I am ready to move forward and become more. Part of my job, that has become a part of who I am, is the ability to assess myself and use that assessment for self-reflection and introspection. It’s constant and consuming and can be overwhelming in both the best and the worst of ways.

Part of writing a blog is understanding and knowing the proper balance of how much to share with people and how much to keep sacred. This summer was pretty sacred for me out of requirement, necessity and propriety. The good news in all of this is that I feel like I have a better understanding of who I am and where I am going. One of the first things I learned in my undergraduate psychology Motivation course was that humans are motivated the most by Fear and Love and if you can combine the two there are few things humans won’t do.

It has been the summer of fear and love and confusion and growth.

I am me, which is more than enough, and I am content with the change and growth that are occurring even when it is scary.

It’s good to be back.

I wanted one of those little yellow pieces of plastic more than anything.

Luckily, I lived just down the road from my cousins and their parents were much crazier than mine. Or, it’s quite possible they knew that the secret to peace of mind over that particular summer lay in an enlarged water bill and a little piece of yellow plastic. Either way, my cousins got the slip-n-slide and I got to walk the quarter of a mile to their place every day to bust my butt on the plastic and the hard dirt underneath.

Run Run Run Run Sliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide YES I’M FLYING NO NO NO I’m rollling! OUCH!

And back in line I’d go. And don’t think it was a short line. I wasn’t the only kid who knew about my cousin’s slip-n-slide. We lived in the country and the neighbor kids heard. So did their parents, and their parents weren’t going to pony up for a slip-n-slide or a water bill either. We’d dutifully get in line about ten kids back until we bled enough that it just stung too much to go again that day.

Nowadays, oh how old I feel saying nowadays, nowadays, the slip-n-slide has become so fancy! You can slide into a pool! The piece of plastic is HUGE and there are safeguards for those wimpy kids who care about bleeding. On the 4th of July, I found out exactly how intricate the whole slip-n-slide industry had become.

In Nashville on the 4th, our downtown area is amazing. Truly an amazing sight to behold is the area by the river that just lights up with booths of any kind of food you’d like, booths where you can buy the coolest hats on earth and a whole street dedicated to the littlest cowboys and cowgirls in the city.

As jets flew over the city celebrating our Independence, we walked around with bottled water and looked to see what was happening in our fair land. My little sister marveled at the cute boys. My mom wanted to go see what was going on down by the river. And me? I kept getting pulled towards these huge inflatable bouncy things, as all moms do.

After getting a stamp on his hand that made all the rides FREE, AJ was off. One of the first few rides to catch his eye was a large slip-n-slide. When I say slip-n-slide, I don’t mean one close to the ground. This inflatable wonder was about 4 feet off the ground and looked like a long island. Kids would run and jump UP onto it where sprinklers would shoot down onto them for about 20 feet. The line was short, but the joy was long.

I stood by the end and watched as child after child, including my own, jumped onto it and laughed themselves silly. It’s not been a great summer by any standards, but I couldn’t stop laughing along with them. The thing about joy is that it is utterly contagious. Some would jump up there, realize “OH NO THERE IS WATER UP HERE” and try to get down until mom or dad would take their hand and then lead them through the slide. After which, they would cry to go back on. There was a devilish little thing, who couldn’t have been more than three, who would go through the whole thing, slam his body down to the concrete after he got done, like the hulk, and give devil hands. I’m not kidding. Just like the orange ones to the right. He was totally “rock and roll” about the slide. And AJ? AJ would run, jump, slide, fall on his bottom, laugh and do it over and over again. He probably did it 30 times. I laughed just as hard as he did every time.

Yes, children are amazing and sometimes the smallest things in life are a recipe for joy. Just add water.

I’ve never been out of the continental U.S. and I’ve been spending the better part of the month in my bedroom. Maybe my way of travel isn’t yours, but for me, it’s necessary and it helps. For the majority of my life, I’ve been a voracious reader and have had a pretty decent imagination. There have never been the time or the funds for me to actually go anywhere worth really digging into, but I can read about places and, in my mind, I have been there.

Lately, that has saved my bacon in so many ways. Southwest.com has a schtick that says “wanna get away?” Yes, I do! Oh, I do! A break, yes please! Right now, though, I’m moving quickly nowhere. But, in this room, I’m going many places.

As adults, we often turn off our imaginations and suppress our pretend-o-meters (yes, I know it’s not a real word, but please stay with me). And, yet, in the back of our minds, there is still the capacity for childlike joy in sheet forts and paper hats and closed eye pretend travel. So, I needed a break.

When I woke up, I was going on Safari. It is supernaturally hot in Nashville this time of year. My bedroom is on the second floor of the house and my ceiling fan runs 24/7 to help keep my room ventilated. My white noise machine was on and the gentle breeze blowing across my face felt good.

Suddenly, I was on Safari and staying in my Safari housing. It was so hot outside that the animals weren’t coming out. The palm fan was blowing a gentle breeze across my face as my hair gently caressed my ears and a small fly landed on my shoulder. I softly brushed it away and hugged my pillow tighter as I thought about what was going on in my home across the ocean…

the ocean…

I turned the lamp next to me on full blast next to my face and turned the white noise machine on to “ocean waves” and suddenly I was at the beach. If you close your eyes you can almost hear sea gulls. The power of imagination is strong when you focus on it. The lamp next to me mimicked the sun so strongly I wanted to pull the covers over my head because it was hurting my eyes.

It relaxed me.

The imagination we gain as children never goes away. We put it on a shelf and pull it out as grandparents so we can play in those sheet forts or play water guns properly or tell stories that make little ones truly believe that there is magic in the air.

Sometimes, as adults, we need to believe in magic, too.

I spent some time this evening reflecting and pushing myself out of my comfort zone and letting myself talk to others and be myself again and what I realized is that my struggle is not singular. If I’m having a bad weekend, someone else reading this is struggling as well. I want you to know that even if your heart is breaking, your body is aching, your mind feels lost and you feel fragile…you are not alone and someone cares deeply for you. The things that happen are hard and heart-breaking and stunning, but they are not the end for you.

Continue to grow and love and move forward. I’m going to try to do the same along with you.

Take care of my crops on Farmville.

Read my twitter feed.

Check my email.

Go through my Google Reader.

Eat some chocolate.

Blip some songs.

Instant message.

Call my friends.

Ignore my statistics homework.

Cuddle my pets.

Love on my son.

And not in that order. But don’t think for a minute that those crops on Farmville weren’t taken care of immediately. My watermelons are in top condition, thank you.

A lot of my blogger friends have, at some point, expressed remorse at taking a blogging break due to life events. I’m not that girl. I’m just not. My online life is important to me, but it’s not my only gig. Yet, I understand that there are certain expectations and that maybe I’m not fulfilling them for everyone. It’s cool. I came across a review of my site on my Google Reader (still have over 500 posts to read on that baby). Overall, it was quite complimentary and I wanted to say thank you for that.

To be quite honest, I don’t think anyone buys my blog on Amazon.com to read on their Kindle, but the fact that you would endorse me truly means a lot to me. The fact that you want me to write more means even more. Sometimes people need to be told they are missed to be motivated. I appreciate it.

I’ll see what I can do. Thanks again. You made my day.

Frankly, I knew it was coming. I’ve been a bad girl and I was due. When it came, it came and hit me horribly. Without going into all the details, life came crashing down and the effects are long-lasting and hard. Sickness and horror upon friends and acquaintances, hard times, school frustration, you name it. The business of life has been quite a lot to bear lately.

However, I’ve taken my licks like a woman and not a child and I think that I have just about had enough. Tonight, we’re in the black, karma. In. the. black.

I just went to take a shower. I was stank. Truly. My hair was greasy. I have been inside with the dogs all day due to snow and I just needed to feel clean. I leave tomorrow for a conference and if I don’t shower tonight, my long, thick, wavy hair will never dry in time for me to make my flight. It’s why I take my showers at night unless I want to have a bad 80s perm all day.

After making my way upstairs, I gathered my pajamas and went to the bathroom where I noticed that one of my two major sources of light was out. This wouldn’t be a problem but I needed to shave my legs. I know this is too much information, but bear with me. You have to know this part of the story. I’m 5’11″ and my body is all legs. I need that light to see and, quite frankly, I’d been waiting to shave until the night before the trip so I’d be silky smooth. Ladies, you know what I mean.

With a dubious look to the light, I started the water and figured I’d soldier on. How difficult could shaving be in the semi-dark? I could still see the legs, just not the hair.

This is the part where karma laughs at me loud and long.

We’re all good until the shaving part. I’ve put my conditioner in to set while I shave. With the first stroke, I know I’m in trouble. My blade is dull. It’s the last blade I have left before a trip I’m going on tomorrow and all I have is a dull blade, hairy legs and a dark bathroom. I make the unwise decision that if I shave MORE SLOWLY the blade will still do the work of a sharp blade.

I’m a smart person. This was not a smart moment.

I cannot see the leg, so I shave some areas and not others and then shave over some parts and make them sensitive and tender to touch. Nicks are everywhere.

This is when karma and I become even.

Someone in my house, either the 9-year-old or the 32-year-old, makes the unwitting decision that I need to be put in my place once and for all: They turn the water on. As I’m sliding the dull blade up my leg, yet again, the water goes from luke warm to scalding in about 2 seconds. I jump, the blade skips up my leg and…you can see where this is going.

I still have conditioner in my hair.

I’m hurt.

I’m angry.

And this is not funny.

Eventually the water turns lukewarm and I throw the razor across the bathroom and wash my hair out.

We are even, karma. Even Stevens. Do you hear me? It’s over.

The last gift I opened said “This certificate redeemable for one puppy of your choice!”

Oh, the excitement and joy! I knew exactly what I wanted: a blonde cocker spaniel. My mother, who tends to hate animals, stipulated “this is an outdoor animal” while I cajoled and begged and pleaded.

On New Year’s Eve, we finally found him. The most beautiful blonde cocker spaniel puppy there ever was. He hid from everything and because of his introversion, I called him my little “Shadow.” Later, I realized that it was a name mostly reserved for black animals, but I was 11. Cut me some slack.

In a rule that I still think was completely moronic, I was required to spend an hour a day with Shadow. I didn’t mind the hour, but there were days it was freezing outside and this was not an easy task. When it was at the freezing point or raining, I could bring him into a shed we had in the back yard or into the garage. I remember holding him in my lap and stroking his long, soft ears for so many of those hours and, though he was an incredibly hyper dog, he let me.

My time got shorter as I got older and became more involved with school and work. I took my first real job at 15 and I had to “make up” the time on the weekends, when I could. This led to some days where I would attempt to entertain Shadow for four hours at a stretch and he grew weary of me.

As he grew older, the gate in our backyard did, as well, and he grew more mischievous. He began to break free of his jail more and more frequently and somehow, no one had enough time to fix the gate. I spent hours searching for him and thankfully, because he had a collar, we always managed to find him.

Until early one morning over the summer of my 18th year.

The phone rang and woke me out of a sound sleep. It was my grandmother and asked me if my dog was missing. I had no idea and looked out the backyard where I could see the gate standing wide open. We’d had a storm the night before and I had no idea how long it had been open. I swallowed the lump in my throat and said that yes, I thought he might be.

Her voice quivered and said that her neighbor had called and said a dog had been hit in front of her house. It had been grazed by a car and was still breathing, but it wasn’t going to make it. It wasn’t bleeding, but the collar had my name on it. Was it mine?

I couldn’t speak.

My grandmother said that animal control had been called to come get the dog and not to bother coming to see him. He wasn’t going to make it.

I still regret not coming to see him. I was such a coward. He lay there alone.

30 minutes later, I heard a knock on the door. A tall man stood there and gently removed his ball cap. His eyes filled with tears and he said, “I got your dog in my truck. He got hit by a car. He didn’t make it.”

I nodded mutely and stared at the words forming at his mouth.

“He ain’t bleeding or nothin’. He looks fine. You can see him if you want to.”

Tears spilled down my cheeks and I shook my head head softly from side to side.

“I’ll take good care of him, miss. They don’t always take good care of these dogs, you know, but I knew he was special, this one. You took real good care of him and groomed him and everything, didn’t ya? I’ll take care of him, myself. I’ll make sure he’s ok, miss.”

I tried to smile and croaked out a thank you as the tears continued to roll from my eyes. He nodded slightly and backed down the concrete steps. He took one last look to the back of his truck, where I knew my dog lay.

I couldn’t close the door until the truck was out of sight.

All dogs go to heaven. I can’t believe in a heaven that doesn’t have them. They are the most pure hearts besides children and if there is an all-encompassing creator, surely He loves the pure hearts. If He doesn’t, then what kind of heaven would it be? I don’t want to be anywhere that doesn’t have my dogs.

Sometimes I dream of petting long, soft ears…

However, it is impossible to express what is in my heart adequately to those that have supported me all these years or for those who have supported me for just today. I don’t know how to say thank you in a way that conveys what I really mean to my friends who have been there for me all of my life and those who have just come into my life, in a time of great turmoil and are surely confused by the tornado I call a life.

How is it possible to give adequate thanks for all the good events and the bad that shape a life?

Thank you.

Jewel has a song in which she says “In the end, only kindness matters.” I believe that is true. I have a hard time living kind, but I experienced kindness today and I want to express my gratitude.

I hobbled into the gas station and slowly walked around the store and gathered my items. My nose was red and I was shivering. Leon and AJ were still out in Leon’s car and I was trying to be quick so we could get on the road to head to my mother’s house for Thanksgiving.

I filled my arms and walked to the cash register. As I placed the items slowly onto the counter, the cashier finished her conversation with her co-worker and turned to see what I was buying.

Orange Juice.
Halls cough drops.
A single pack of Dayquil cold and flu.
Carmex lip balm.
and Starburst fave reds (which I hoped I would be able to taste and ended up not even opening).

She looked at me with kind eyes and I didn’t say anything as I saw them fill with pity. “Aw, you must be feeling crummy, aren’t you, honey. Feeling sick?” I nodded and said that yes, I was, and thanked her for asking. As I was leaving, she said, “I sure hope you feel better soon.”

I thanked her again and got into the car for the long ride in which I slept deeply.

That small act of kindness–acknowledging that I felt bad and wishing that I felt better–made me feel better than I had in days. The one on one connection with a stranger that reminds us that we are not alone.

I am thankful, indeed.

Happy Thanksgiving.

June 2008

Sometimes I think I’ve accepted my aunt’s death. Sometimes I know I haven’t. One of the last and best memories I have of her was when she and my whole family (Leon, Adrian, Olivia and Mom) went to Gatlinburg for a week. Besides listening to her snip at my mom while she smoked cigarettes and talked about drinking coffee with Adrian, we also wandered around the town.

I love Gatlinburg for many, many reasons. Mainly, though, when I enter the Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg area I am filled with a sense of well-being that I don’t usually experience elsewhere. The beauty and serenity of the mountains there fills the empty spots I try so hard to hide in my life.

I didn’t know that the week spent there would be one of the last times I would spend time with my aunt. Traveling makes me irritable, crabby, and hard to get along with. I hate change. I long for a stable routine. What this means is that going on a trip is generally going to make me unhappy and snippy at some point even though I could be enjoying myself immensely.

After a particularly hard day of dealing with one another, we had all settled in at a hotel near the aquarium. One of the features of this particular hotel was its offering of karaoke on the weekends and we were there on a weekend. Anyone that knows Leon and I knows that we like to sing. Neither of us is as good at it as we used to be, but it increases our mood and decreases our stress. We made our way into the smoky karaoke bar area and after being surprised by a co-worker (who had no idea I was going to be there that weekend and vice versa) we settled down to watch some truly marvelous and truly awful karaoke.

Selection was slim as I am no good with “old school” country music and being Gatlinburg, TN, the majority of the music was such. They did have “My Ding-a-ling,” which will crack up several members of my family that remember when Mikey, Jeremy, April and I discovered the song at a young age. I wasn’t going there. We’d just bought one of the Karaoke Revolution games and it had the song “Why Can’t I” by Liz Phair on it. I thought I was somewhat rehearsed in it and wouldn’t feel completely inept, so I signed up to sing it.

I’ve always had stage fright. Even when I was required to be on stage due to extra curricular activities, I barely held it together. I never got solos in choir because of this fear. It made me shaky. Actually, I probably was quite terrible and that contributed to the lack of solo time, but the shaky voice was right up there. I digress.

As I was singing in the smoky bar, I noticed my aunt wander in and sit next to Leon happily smoking a cigarette. What made me laugh was that later she said, “You were so good I had no idea it was YOU on the stage.” Well, ok.

The rest of the week was memorable and I have some amazingly funny pictures. Later, I remembered that Gatlinburg was special to Penny because she got married there. She loved it there.

Tonight, I was thinking about her. Every now and then I put her name in a search engine. The only thing that comes up is notice of her death or memorial. It reminds me that it really happened. I remember how she looked the last time I saw her–but it wasn’t her. Those that don’t believe in a soul have never seen a beloved, fiery-spirited aunt lose her spark. The soul IS real.

I think of her often at night, when the house is quiet and I’m alone with my thoughts. I googled her, yet again, and realized that I was having a physical response to this. I got tense and shaky, but didn’t know why. And then I realized that Why Can’t I was playing on the tv. It was completely random, but I have to wonder about these things. Since that night, I’ve associated this song with her…

My faith is probably not as strong as it used to be. I spend a lot of time wondering about God and Earth and why things exist the way they do. Most of my thoughts center on a place outside of Earth and where people exist when they are gone. My beliefs about death and the afterllfe are conflicted.

So, since I’m human, I put my faith in something that knows more than me and choose where she is based on my heart and not my head.

For me, my Aunt is and will always be in Gatlinburg. She was with me there when we ran in the middle of a thunderstorm up a hill for 3/4 of a mile to get the car with her cursing mom the whole way there while I tried not laugh for fear of passing out. She’s in the aquarium where we made comments about crabs doing illicit things. She’s in the smoky karaoke bar where I sing to her without her realizing it’s me. She’s terrified on the skylift but dealing with it by smoking. She’s resting by the stream that we watched our first day there. Yes. That’s where she is.

Why can’t I breathe whenever I think about you?

Here’s one example.

In the middle of a disagreement…

Leon: (begins laughing uncontrollably)
Jillian: WHAT?!
Leon: I was just thinking “Maybe if I stay very still she’ll think I’m dead and attack something else.”
Jillian:…
Jillian: …
Jillian: I don’t even know what to say right now
(Later he admits that he thought “It’s not working, run away!”)

Yep. That’s our marriage.

Leon and I have been together almost ten years. About 3 years ago, Leon decided that, due to my brown thumb and my inclination to kill plants while I tried to keep them alive, that he would get me a small cactus. He proudly proclaimed, “Honey, you can never kill this thing!”

When he recovered from the death glare he received, he handed over the little cactus, which was about the size of a small shot glass. I took it from him and watered it when I remembered to do so. I gave it light, when I remembered to do so. And I remembered to move it from our apartment to our new home, when we moved.

The little shot glass sized cactus LOVED the new house. I’ve never seen anything like this. I put it in the window in my kitchen, right next to all the dirty dishes I won’t do, and it flourished. A lot. And it still does. To where it has become this. And this is why I can’t have houseguests. Enjoy.