Just Life Archives - Page 3 of 13

Grief Therapy

Posted on September 9, 2013July 6, 2014 by Hannah Davis

When we started the adoption process, we had at least an idea of the risks involved.

We knew that nothing was for sure until the mom signed. The baby wasn’t our baby until that happened.

But when the expectant mom we were matched with decided to parent her baby, all of our emotional preparation didn’t keep us from being devastated.

We were thankful she made the decision shortly before we actually met the baby. We were thankful we didn’t bring the baby home and then she change her mind. It could have been so much harder.

But that is small consolation when you were expecting a baby and you end up with nothing but air.

I think everyone grieves loss and disappointment differently. For us…

We got a puppy.

Really, Chris probably would have done anything to make me happy again. Except getting the kitten that I suggested. He always draws the line at cats.

But when I jokingly said something about settling for a puppy, he was on his phone faster than lightening, looking at puppy listings.

I weakly protested the idea. However, when we met up with a lady in an Indiana Chick-Fil-A parking lot to see her 7-week-old Yorkie puppy, I lost all will power.

We brought home the little ball of fluff and named him Oliver.

And he’s kind of like a therapy dog (which I think means I can take him in the grocery store, right?). Because I’ve been pretty much okay since we got him.

Basically, it’s prep for when we DO adopt. Because he’s about as high maintenance as a baby.

I just hope I get him potty-trained before that happens.

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Almost Dying: Blood and Fainting Edition

Posted on July 9, 2013 by Hannah Davis

I blame it on Christmas.

Last week our garage flooded, soaking our Christmas tree box. Wanting to avoid musty Christmas tree, I spread the branches (which attach to the tree with metal hooks) all over the basement to air out.

So, yesterday I was on the phone with my mom and went downstairs to wash a load of laundry (which is still sitting, dry, in my washing machine, now that I think of it). I was barefoot.

And I heard this little squichy sound (I think. Or I imagined it later. Not sure.) and my foot felt funny. And it was dripping blood.

Apparently, I had emphatically stepped on one of those metal, very blunt Christmas tree prongs.

I said to my mom, calmly, “Oh. I just did something really gross.”

I clapped my thumb over the spot and tried to figure out if I was going to bleed out on the floor or be absolutely fine.

The verdict was leaning towards absolutely fine, since blood didn’t keep gushing everywhere. My mom was giving me all of the first aid instructions: “Wash it out with cold water in the tub, disinfect it, bandage it (Do you have gauze? You really should have gauze.), TETANUS SHOT.”

And I was holding my thumb on my hole-punched foot, thinking about the very blunt metal rod. And that I NEVER wanted to remove my thumb from my wound, because then I’d have to see it.

All of that thinking… I started to feel light-headed. I explained this to my mom as I sat down on the basement floor. Everything tried to go kind of grey and all the blood rushed to one of my ears (just one).

My mom told me to keep talking to her, which was really difficult while my body was trying to pass out. But I hadn’t had a shower yet, so if I didn’t keep talking, she’d probably call 911 and then paramedics would see me all dirty. Awkward. So I kept talking, sort of.

After a minute or two, the universe kind of righted. Then I started getting really annoyed, because I’m not melodramatic and I’m not wimpy and it was just a little wound that wasn’t even bleeding anymore. There was no excuse for fainting. Just as long as I didn’t think about the hole in my foot…

I dragged myself upstairs and gathered first aid stuff and washed out the injury. Turned out, it didn’t look that bad at all. If I hadn’t been on the phone with my mom, I probably wouldn’t even have gone to a doctor, but she kept saying, “TETANUS SHOT!” so I kind of had to.

My mom was also very concerned about the almost-blacking-out thing, but really? Metal rod puncturing my foot! Hang on… feeling a little light-headed now.

So I took a shower and went to the doctor. And the doctor didn’t care two bits that I’d almost passed out. She kind of looked at me like, “Yeah, so?” Apparently it was a perfectly natural response to my experience.

She said the puncture didn’t look that deep and she washed it out with hydrogen peroxide, put antibacterial cream on, and bandaged it. I could have done that at home. HOWEVER, I could not give myself a tetanus shot, so I guess it’s fair.

I don’t think my mom was very impressed with the doctor’s lack of concern about my almost-faint. But my mom lives in Wisconsin and I live in Kentucky, so what can she do? Call the doctor herself?

Wait. Don’t give her any ideas.

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The Davis’s Do Derby. Kind of.

Posted on May 3, 2013 by Hannah Davis

In Louisville, Derby just IS.

For two weeks, Louisville lives, eats and doesn’t sleep for Derby. The excitement is infectious.

Even at school, the kids design their own racing silks and Derby hats. They have “Derby Activities” where everyone goes outside and participates in relay races.

My heart wants to jump into the celebration full throttle, but so many of the events aren’t kid-friendly. Not really.

Everything gets kicked off two weeks prior to Derby with Thunder Over Louisville, the largest fireworks show in the nation. “That’s kid-friendly,” you say. This year, they were expecting 800,000 people. Taking kids into that crowd? Not friendly at all.

But we watched the top of Thunder over our back fence. So that’s kind of participation.

And then there are other events that aren’t parent friendly. The weekend before Derby, there is a hot air balloon race. Every year, I say, “We have to go see the hot air balloons launch.” And every year it’s at 7:00 AM on a Saturday morning. So you can imagine how that works out.

On the Thursday before Derby is the Pegasus Parade. This is kind of my go-to “do something for Derby.”

Last year was a disaster. Leah had to use the restroom so bad she thought she would die. And a giant balloon got stuck in some wires, so the parade was stalled for 30 to 45 minutes. We ended up leaving without seeing much parade.

But THIS year. This year would be better, I determined. I made everyone use the bathroom before we went. A guy let us into his saved seating, so we were right up front. I was pretty convinced the parade officials had warned everyone to avoid power lines with balloons. All good.

No. Leah decided her ear hurt so bad that she would die. Isaiah was bored and we were wasting his “play time.” And the parade kept getting stuck. Apparently that’s just how they ~~don’t~~ roll.

I was trying to be all cheery and enjoyful. But really, it was kind of boring just staring at the people across the street from us for long periods of time.

We ended up leaving after an hour and a half (I’m guessing there was still and hour and a half of parade to come). But not before we saw the Cards enter triumphantly and witnessed these rather disturbing sites:

Today is The Oaks, when they run the fillies. Most Louisville people skip the Derby and do Oaks. In fact, the kids have off of school today. So my son is spending his Oaks day by building the Kentucky Derby out of Legos. One way or another, we’re doing Derby.

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Berry, Berry Dirty

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Hannah Davis

As fruit goes, I like raspberries best of all.

When we bought our first house, I discovered raspberry bushes behind the garage. Each morning, I was ridiculously excited to pick a little bowl of berries, just for me.

We’ve moved a bajillion times since then, and at each new house, I’ve always talked about getting raspberry bushes, but have never done it. Mostly because I’m not an overachiever, but also because… No, that’s pretty much the only reason.

We own a house again, and it has a yard. So I started my raspberry bush talk a few months ago. I even toyed with ideas of where to plant them.

You and I both know it was going nowhere fast.

However, the other day at the grocery store, my eye caught a display of raspberry plants. They came in a box, which doesn’t seem like the most legitimate way to buy a plant, but what do I know?

I was enticed by the picture of fat, juicy berries. On the other hand, I struggled with the commitment. Once I bought them, I’d have to keep them alive. Plus, I was debating if I should really buy plants in a box or wait and buy them somewhere more real. Like a nursery.

In the end, I concluded that it couldn’t go too wrong for $5.99. And if I didn’t buy them there, I would never buy them; I’ve had some experience with myself.

As mentally taxing as it was to buy the plants, it was nothing compared to what came next.

Planting.

I had to dig a hole. I don’t regularly use digging implements or muscles, so this was a bit of a concern. I found a little hand trowel and an old shovel with a broken handle, left by the previous home owners.

Here’s the thing with dirt. When you start digging, there are worms. White grubby worms and brown slimy worms. I was sweaty and flinging dirt around and just trying to stay away from the worms. It was a terrible.

Eventually the little raspberry plants were in their awful, wormy hole.

I now realize that my years of not planting anything was birthed in wisdom, fueled by intuition. I’m not cut out for such crazy stuff.

There had better be berries in the morning.

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Hair (and Hard to Please People)

Posted on January 8, 2013 by Hannah Davis

I’m not much of a hairstylist. French twists and french braids? Forget it (those French are tricky people). I know nothing of updos and spiral curls. What about pompadours and chignons? No idea.

So anything I do with my hair is pretty basic and never involves more than a ponytail holder or two. And maybe hairspray if I’m feeling really adventurous. But it can’t take longer than 5 minutes.

Sometimes, though, I feel guilty… like maybe I’m letting myself go. So, to find out if I’m failing, I ask Chris how he likes my hair. Generally, his replies lack information, “I don’t know. It always looks fine.”

Thanks, Babe.

He does have opinions, though. When we’re watching TV, he’ll point out a character and say, “You should do your hair like that.”

Now, we’ll set aside the obvious fact that she’s an actress and has a whole makeup crew to get her ready every day. We’ll just ignore that.

The real problem is that the hairstyles he picks out are IMPOSSIBLE for me to do.

Sometimes it’s a girl with gorgeous, stick-straight tresses. Unless I spend 3 hours with a straightener and probably some product I don’t know exists, this is never, ever going to be my lot in life.

Or it’s a lady with hair so naturally curly, she can barely get a brush through it each morning. For me to accomplish this look, I would need more unknown products and more hours with a curling iron. And it would all fall out within an hour. Or, you know… I could just get a perm.

Lately, though, Chris has gotten easier to please.

The other day I went back to bed after my shower, with semi-wet hair. When I got up again, Chris complimented my hairstyle. I had to see what this amazing look was, so it could be replicated. Well, basically it had dried into poofy-at-the-top hipster hair.

Another day, I ran a brush through my boring, normal hair and walked quickly out of the bathroom. Chris said, “I like your hair like that.” When I inquired what he especially liked about it (since it was its normal self), he said, “I liked how it was blowing back.”

I mean both these styles are super simple! I can do this!

I just have to take a nap after each shower or walk around the house really fast all the time. Piece of cake.

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The Turkey that Was Late for His Own Funeral

Posted on November 25, 2012April 23, 2014 by Hannah Davis

I know some of you are probably waiting with bated breath to find out what I messed up for my Thanksgiving Dinner. Because, you know it’s inevitable.

Well.

I don’t like meat items that still look like the original animal. Frog legs? No. Clams? No. Squid? No. Hogs head? No one’s ever offered, but no.

So a turkey is really stretching it for me. Because it’s just a naked, headless bird. So weird.

And last year it wasn’t even completely naked, because it still had one little feather sticking out of each of the wings. Horrifying.

This year was my 3rd time cooking thanksgiving dinner. (My sister claims it’s my 4th, so either she’s crazy or I’m blocking a traumatic memory.) So I SHOULD have it down. But that’s actually where I’m at my worst. When I’m like, “Oh, I know how to do this. No biggie,” that’s when things go horribly wrong.

So the day before Thanksgiving, I checked the turkey cooking chart on the box of my turkey-cooking-bag. Don’t judge me, it’s only my 3rd (or 4th) time doing this. Later that evening, without looking at the box, I asked Chris (who is my personal calculator) to do the math for me, “It’s supposed to cook for 10 minutes for every pound, and then add 15 minutes. And the turkey is 20 pounds.” He said that meant about 3 and a half hours.

We were planning Thanksgiving Dinner for about 3:00. And we were kind of locked into that, because, not only were Chris’ parents at our house, but we’d also invited some friends over.

Thanksgiving Day, I was feeling pretty chill, since the turkey only needed to cook for 3 and half hours. I lazied around, drinking coffee and watching the beginning of the Macy’s parade.

Around 9:30, I decided to get a jump start on the turkey. I was feeling really proud of myself for being proactive and not waiting until the last minute, since it didn’t really need to be in the oven until 11:00.

First thing I did was to check the box instructions again.

Guess what? The cooking chart said 15 minutes for every pound and then add 10 minutes. Now, I’m no mathematician, but I knew that when I had transposed those numbers, it drastically affected my cooking-time calculations. I checked it on my iPhone calculator, since Chris wasn’t around. 5 hours, friends. 5 hours.

And if I could have just popped the turkey in right then, it would have been fine. But it’s never that easy.

Because, even though I’d looked up on the internet how long it takes to thaw a 20 pound turkey in the fridge, the turkey was still frozen. The internet lies.

I panicked-ly enlisted Chris’ help. Because we needed to get the nasty stuff out of the inside of the bird. (Anyone know of a turkey company that just throws the neck and giblets away? Please hook me up.) But all of the turkey’s holes were frozen shut AND it had it’s legs crossed. It wasn’t giving up without a fight. When we got it all unfrozen and unhooked, we pulled out the neck (ugh) and went digging for the giblets. No giblets.

After we’d both groped around inside of a dead bird for awhile, we called Chris’ mom. She wasn’t super interested in sticking her arm inside (can you blame her?) but she eyed it a little and said, “Well. I don’t know. They should be in there.” We discussed whether maybe they’d forgotten to put the giblets in. But I could never be that lucky. Then in a moment of genius or something, Chris found them in the OTHER hole. So awkward.

So we finally got the turkey in its bag (stop with the judging!) and into the oven. And it only threw our dinner itinerary off by about 30 minutes.

Everything else went pretty smooth. I did manage to fling some sweet potatoes around the kitchen, but that wasn’t much of a story, comparatively.

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Cooking with Hannah

Posted on November 12, 2012 by Hannah Davis

I don’t have people over for dinner a lot. Not because I don’t like people. Or dinner. I like both of those things very much.

The problem is I lack confidence in my cooking skills. When I do have people over, I usually feed them tacos or spaghetti. Pretty much anyone who has eaten at my house can attest to this.

But last night, some of the people I was having over had already had tacos and spaghetti at my house, so I decided to branch out. I mean, not fancy or anything, but it had more than 3 ingredients.

And when it came time to shred the chicken, I retrieved a latent memory from one of my 5 times on Pinterest (I avoid Pinterest, because it makes me feel guilty) where they assured me I could shred chicken with a hand mixer. I did it. And it worked like a charm. I felt like a Pinterest Queen!

So I assembled my dish, popped it into the oven and sat back to rest on my accomplishment laurels.

And then I saw it. The pot of rice on the stove top. The rice that was SUPPOSED to be in the dish that was already in the oven.

We had a staring contest for a couple minutes, me and that rice pot. I even opened the oven and stared-down the dish in there a little, trying to decide if there was any way to still get that rice inside of it. My conclusion was… no.

I do stuff like this a lot, so I’m pretty good at coming up with solutions.

Last nights’ solution was to eat the dish over rice. Which was fine. No one died of food poisoning (yet). Granted, Isaiah didn’t like it much, but he never likes anything I make. Overall, I feel like it was a non-fail.

And so what if I’m not a Pinterest Queen? Or Martha Stewart? At least I make other cooks feel good about themselves. Everyone has to do their part.

By the way, I’m cooking Thanksgiving dinner in a week. Should I be worried?

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How I Spent a Week’s Salary on Potato Salad

Posted on August 21, 2012 by Hannah Davis

Do not trust a tattooed, mumbling deli guy. That’s all I can say for myself.

It all started with potato salad. I was craving it and we have a cookout at Destiny Church tonight, which seemed like a pretty good excuse.

Now, my mom raised me to make stuff from scratch. Did she ever go to the Kroger Deli and buy potato salad? No.

But I just moved into my new house a month ago, and my kids started school today. And it’s Tuesday. Those all seemed like really good excuses to buy potato salad already made.

So I went to the store and asked the mumbly, tattooed deli guy how much a big thing of potato salad was. He said, “Mmrfh prbbly abt three.” Which I interpreted to mean, “Probably about $3.”

I was feeling particularly potato salad crave-ish and I assumed everyone else at the cookout would feel the same, so I told him I wanted two of the big containers. That should be about $6, right?

He was so kind, in a mumbly way, and said he could go in the back and get me some fresh and put it all in a larger container, rather than me have to carry around two containers. At least, that’s what I think he said.

Pretty soon, he came back with a nice bowl of potato salad, perfect for a cookout. It looked exactly like you would think two of the big containers in one bowl should look.

He placed it on the scale and gave me a scared look and said, “Sthat alright?” Which I think meant, “Is that alright?”

I don’t do good with numbers and there were lots of numbers on the scale, but I saw one set that started with a 7 and had two digits after it. And that seemed a little higher than $6.00, but who was I to quibble?

So I agreed. And I took the potato salad up to the self-check. It rang up as $32.00.

I stood at the self-check in shock for a while, trying to figure out what happened. Again, numbers aren’t my strong point. But from what I could ascertain, that 7 with two digits after it was how much the potato salad was per pound. And somehow, I had wound up with almost 5 pounds of potato salad.

I really didn’t want to pay $32 for potato salad that my mom could make or $3. But I didn’t know what to do. I had agreed to it, somehow. So I bought that potato salad. The most expensive potato salad of my life.

And the only thing running through my mind was, “Chris is going to kill me.” And then I thought, “Maybe he won’t notice.” But it’s totally blazoned on a sticker on the top of the container. So, since there was no hiding it, I figured I might as well blog about it.

All I can say is, I hope everyone really enjoys the potato salad tonight.

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Outside is So Not In

Posted on August 7, 2012 by Hannah Davis

I spent a few hours outside this morning.

Now, don’t worry that I’m turning all outdoorsy. It wasn’t by choice.

See, our new house has these fancy-schmancy door knobs that you can open from the inside, even when they’re locked on the outside. You know where this is going?

The kids were driving me crazy with all of their summer vacation fun (i.e. fighting) so I suggested that, since we now have a fabulous backyard, maybe they should actually go play in it.

Since my children have not had a backyard in 2 years, it seems they’ve forgotten how to play outside. I thought it was instinctual, but no. They needed me to find clothes for them to wear, rummage through boxes for outdoor appropriate toys, and provide popsicles to make the event possible.

Once everyone was shooed outside, I followed to clean up any dog poo I could find (yay me!). Because you know if it’s out there, they will step in it. I did this in my PJ’s and only my PJ’s.

About the time I got distracted by pulling some weeds, Isaiah tried to go inside to throw away his popsicle stick.

“Um, Mommy. The door is locked.”

Remember. I was in PJ’s. Only. And my cell phone was in my living room. So were my keys.

We tried every door on the house. We checked the windows. The good news? My house is impossible to burglarize.

Finally I faced the inevitable. I was going to have to start knocking on doors. I mean, that’s an impressive way to meet our neighbors, right? “Hi, I’m new to the neighborhood. I’m in my PJ’s. Can I use your phone?”

Turns out, everyone in our neighborhood works during the day. I tried asking a lady waiting for the bus if I could borrow her phone. It was an iPod.

My desperation finally led me to the corner flower shop.

They were kind souls who let me use their phone to call my husband for a rescue. He didn’t even answer his phone, because he didn’t recognize the number. So I had to leave a message, believing in faith that he would come unlock the house on his lunch break.

Until Chris came, I spent the next 10 hours (slight exaggeration) pulling weeds, while the kids argued over whether Leah was a town person, cowgirl or farmer and whether Sheriff Isaiah already knew her or if they had just met.

At the end of the story I was hot and stinky, covered in dirt and probably bugs. I was still recovering from the adrenalin rush of panic and I was hungry. But I was inside again.

This just proves my overall life premise. Bad things happen when you go outside.

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