feast or famine

Isn't it strange how I vacillate between blogging frenzy and blogging coma? Thanks for acting natural with me. I just do what I want. Sometimes that means blogging and other times it means getting a nasty farmer tan while I jog around town with my kids. I've been up to the latter.

Sidenote: I spent a lot of my adolescence not sure what "former" and "latter" meant. I recall scouring sentences with those terms for clues about which one meant the last thing said and which one meant the first thing said. Isn't that cute of me?

Remember how I work with the teenage girls at church? Welp, we recently had an activity about self-defense where the RS pres's hub (who is also a cop) said ass thrice, hell twice, and damn about ten times, all to a group of adorably mild-mannered 13-year-old prudes who he then asked to hit him. Yeah, it rocked.

One perk of living in the middle of the country is that, though our city is rarely a destination for people, it is on everyone's way somewhere else. This means that people can a) wave as they fly over OR b) stop at our house on a road trip. It's the season for the latter (that means the second one...you're welcome) because people I know in the West are driving to spend the summer in the East. And we're on the way! My hub's fam was in town recently and we had a load of fun, my hilarious and delightful law school friend Dorothy and her mom stopped over last weekend and my hilarious friend Davis (also with her mom, oddly enough) are doing the same this weekend. I really enjoy these visits. I love when distinct periods of one's life mix in surprising ways. And I am at a point in my life where I cherish good loud talks with fun friends.

Do you have friends whose essence can be summed up in one little story? I do. Dorothy pretty much eloped, as in, started the summer off engaged but by the time we started school again in the fall she was married to a different guy. That, my friends, is a sign of someone with a sense of adventure. Also, I once saw Davis accidentally put ketchup on a turkey sandwich because she is "used to putting ketchup and mustard on together." I adore both of those stories.

On a semi-related note, I shall now share two secrets to successfully make having houseguests even better, whether they are friends or in-laws or both or neither.

1. Lower your standards.

2. Put your pride in your pocket.

I'm not saying be gross. But I am saying relax and be realistic about what shape your home will be in. It is a fact of life that people LIVE here, some of whom are small children, so once everyone makes peace with that, suddenly having people over is really fun and you can just laugh and visit and bond instead of fuss.