A random assortment of words and thoughts.

I use "The Old Reader" for my rss feed.  Google Reader was the easiest rss feed to use back when it was going, and thankfully I found this when GR went kaput.

Anyway, on the right side of The Old Reader, it has a list of "dead feeds," which are blogs that haven't posted in a long time.  I thought about how long it's been since I wrote, and I wouldn't even make that list because I'd be so outdated.  It's only been 6.5 months, but really - there's been plenty to write about.

We now live in Iowa, my daughter is 1 and not wanting to nap this afternoon for some reason, and my husband is still doing army and currently doing hospital chaplaincy.  The weather is better here than in Chicagoland, though I really miss my friends and the various amenities/neighborhoods that came with living along the North Shore. 

I particular, I miss seeing people who aren't like me, or at least don't look like me.  That said, I am still tall, and that makes me different from a lot of people around here.  In general, I have found that women from Minnesota are taller than women from Iowa, but both a much taller than nearly everyone from the Chicago area.  Read "The Tall Book" to get some ideas as to why.

Baby Suzy is not a baby, really, but still can't walk, so the toddler label feels weird to say.  She is also tall, so just by sitting upright, she is able to reach pretty much anything she wants as far as toys go.  Her favorite toy is a book - any book - and she asks for them the second I get her up from her nap.  "Booh?!" she will say, with the sign for it.  If it's not "booh," it's "bah" (ball), "da", or "mamamamama" for when she needs something.  She LOVES kids and squeals or screeches every time she sees someone small.  In a word, she a lot of fun.  In another word, she's incredibly sweet.

Life post-seminary is weird.  We had less time and more space while living in Chicagoland, so now that we're at a much slower pace of life, we are in a smaller apartment where I can't ignore my kitchen and, therefore, it actually gets cleaned almost daily.  And I am cooking a lot, so pictures of what i make may actually pop back up on this blog again.

Post baby - my body is nearly back to what it was.  Yes, weight has shifted to a degree, but I don't think it has as much as it seems to for other women.  Really, I am gaining and losing weight (not too quickly anymore, though) in the exact same areas as I had in the past.  This means that my pre-pregnancy pants almost fit, but not quite all of them, and my outfit for Easter Sunday that I had planned months in advance didn't work out.  I'm probably 2 or 3 pounds away, but naturally Easter is 11 or 12 months away, so those gold brocade pants will be sitting in a closet near me for a while.

Now Suzy is really awake and ready to eat something (a "booh"?), so I better get her.  Thanks for reading, if you do, and here's to more writing and blogging.