My Little Baby Brother

I love my brother, Andy. He is seriously one of the funniest and craziest people I know. As siblings we are fairly different. I am more reserved with people (until I get to know them) and Andy makes it his life’s mission to get to know as many people as possible. He is charismatic and could make the devil go to confession. He is multi-talented (right now I am eating cheesecake that he made with raspberries from his garden). He is thoughtful (he also brought a piece of that cheesecake in for my friend Baa). He is giving. He drives me crazy with his spontaneity, but it also one of the things I like best about him. He is just an overall great little baby brother (and yes, he is neither smaller nor younger than me). He leaves me crazy voicemails all of the time (the latest was to ask me how the cheesecake was and tell me that he catches the rain down in Africa – bonus points if you know what he is referencing). He instilled a love in me for stupid 80’s music and softball. I hated him in middle school (and he hated me back) and in high school he became my protector, confidante and late-night-errand-runner-partner. Here’s to you, Drew, the bestest big bro a girl could have.

You know you are old when...

Merry-go-rounds are no longer make you feel merry, but more like you may want to puke. I loved merry-go-rounds when I was little. It was exciting to hold on tight and watch the world zoom around you, wind through pig tails, all the adrenaline rush a four-year-old can handle. Well, somewhere between 4 and 25 something changed.

Today I am at the Gormley family reunion running around with my niece and nephew. Natalie wants to go on the merry-go-round, and since she is two and liable to decide that walking while the merry-go-round is going is a good idea, I offered to be the good aunt and ride along with her. I love Natalie. I love merry-go-rounds. Kind of a no brainer. But after a couple of rounds of "faster, FASTER!" being yelled by Kyle, I was feeling quite sick. That's right. Sick, from a merry-go-round. I must be getting old. LAME.

On a separate note, 25 must be the age where people automatically assume you are going to have babies soon, or have one cooking in your belly. As I climbed off the merry-go-round and passed Natalie off to Kevin for MGR duties, my cousin said, "Nauseous? You have a baby in that belly?" To which Kevin and I both responded emphatically, "No." Seriously, I am going to get a shirt that says "No. I am not. Please stop asking." or a favorite response from my friend Rachel, "I don't have any ovaries." That should shut them up. :o)

Fun on the job

I work with Web sites all day at a Christian publishing house. One of the projects we are working on is a user review/comment function. Since I am the "business owner" for this project, the programmer came to me to get a list of words that would be filtered out if they were entered. Yes, I had to come up with a list of swear words. The thing is, I started and realized there was no WAY I was going to come up with them all myself. So I enlisted my friend Baa, and we enlisted our friend Becky, and still we were stumped. So, I asked one of my IT friends for a list. I mean, such a thing must already exist, right? The list exists and WHOA is it crazy. Some of the words I had never seen written down before and there were some that I didn't even know the meaning of (and I don't consider myself to be THAT naive). The list had close to 300 words - whoever knew there were that many vulgar words and sayings out there! We got a good laugh out of it though - picture three girls in Christian publishing trying to come up with all possible swear words. :) Just more fun on the job!

I'm sorry you feel that way

I hate that phrase. Because people say it when they don't think that they have done anything wrong. It essentially says, "Your feelings are wrong and I am sorry that your feelings are messed up, but I am still right."

It is a load of bull.