I'm Only Good at Holding Dogs

I have always been a crazy dreamer. Not like the ambitious, shoot-for-the-stars kind. Like if I sleep, even for 30 minutes, I become a drunk wandering in an Inception movie. Usually without Leonardo DiCaprio present, unfortunately.

It was no surprise that last night I had a baby nightmare. My Facebook newsfeed is one big gender reveal party right now. I can't even remember who is having what at this point- there might have been some puppies thrown in there too. I've just resorted to saying, "Congratulations on that new thing."

I digress.

So, in my dream, I give birth. It was super easy and I looked at the doctor and said, "This was way easier than I thought it was going to be. People have been scaring me my whole life for this?" Some people come in and they try to put me in a wheelchair. "It's time to go see your baby," they say. I don't want to go. Like I straight up refuse to go see my dream baby.

But they wheel me in there and suddenly, I am standing over the baby and I realize that I am holding Minnie (my dog).

The soft-spoken nurse picks up the baby and asks sweetly, "Do you want to hold your baby?"

This is where crap gets real.

I squeeze Minnie to my chest and I yell, "I'M ONLY GOOD AT HOLDING DOGS!"

I woke up in panic mode, embarrassed that I had just yelled at these people- and that I had a weenie dog in a hospital. But then I laughed really, really hard.

Because, as ridiculous as this whole dream was, it encapsulates how I feel on an almost daily basis.

There are so many times in my life when I want to holler at God and other people, "I'M ONLY GOOD AT HOLDING DOGS!"

Prayer is a much easier concept when you know the absolute desires of your heart. It is not so easy when you and your heart are conflicted. When your heart is like all the emotion characters on "Inside Out" and they like to argue with each other.

It's hard to pray for a career when you're not sure it's the right move for your family and sanity. It's hard to pray for a child when you don't know if being a mother is the high calling for your life. So prayer gets put on the back burner because, let's face it, you're ONLY GOOD AT HOLDING DOGS.

But one of my favorite verses is Romans 8:26: Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words." 

Oh, intercede for me, Spirit. Intercede for us. Fulfill the unknown desires of our heart and give us the faith to accept the unexpected intercession.

But in the meantime, I will be over here- probably holding my dogs.

Weird Things and Winter Storm Jonas

So I'm over here stuck in Winter Storm Jonas. Actually, in Jonesboro, it was a pitiful "Winter Storm Jonas Brothers when they were scrawny and on Disney Channel." The National Weather Service deemed that name too long. They're no fun. 

Regardless, Justin took my vehicle today because his Ford Ranger would react to an ice cube tray like it was a frozen lake. We keep trying to remind it that it's a truck, but it doesn't seem to get the memo.

Let's be honest, I don't do cold. I would be doing the exact same thing if I had a car- but something about not having one makes me feel trapped. So I've had five days of personal reflection. I didn't reflect on things that matter, like how I can change the world or develop obliques that show. Instead, I realized some of the weird things I do when left to my own devices during long stretches of days. If you do any of these things, feel free to tell me and make me feel better about myself. If you don't see how anyone could do these things without being neurotic, please don't tell me that. 

• I own cute pajamas, but wear really weird clothing combinations instead. I passed a mirror at some point this morning and realized I was wearing: striped orange shorts, a blue nightgown, and a forest green Beale Street sweatshirt. You know that lounging seductress in Victoria's Secret catalogues that is drinking coffee with half of her long t-shirt hanging off her shoulder? Have that mental image? Yeah, that wasn't me. Because I wear shorts, I have to wrap myself in a blanket to stay warm. WHY DO I DO THIS? It's like I feel like if I wear a matching set of pajamas, my dogs will think I'm a Kardashian or something. 

• I have a sub-par makeup bag. I like to keep things "spicy" in our marriage so I try to occasionally have on makeup when Justin gets home. I also wear body spray and deodorant if I'm feeling particularly alluring. But because he has no regard for beauty products, I just can't bring myself to doll up with my $38 foundation or Urban Decay eyeshadow unless I'm going somewhere. So I pull out $5 foundation that I've had since college and dab on some ice pink lipgloss that wound up in my stocking a few Christmases ago. I look like an 80s pop singer, but I'm his 80s pop singer. I smell like Juniper Breeze and he gets lasagna. 

• I fast forward workout DVDs. I have been known to do the warm-up, fast forward through most of the exercises, and finish with the cool down. When people ask if you completed a workout, you can say yes without being a liar, liar, pants on fire. But your pants may, however, stay the same size and never get smaller.

• I pretend I'm on cooking shows. I don't like to cook when other people are around, partially because of insecurity. Partially because the kitchen looks like 3 competitors were running around, slinging pasta sauce and dropping food. My dogs wait beside my feet like I'm a toddler about to drop them some yogurt puffs. That's why, when Justin calls, I sprint to the finish like a contestant on "Chopped." I clean up my surroundings, I clean up the plate, and I put it on the table and await his judgment. Luckily, he's not pretentious like judge Scott Conant (who once told a contestant that he was "disrespectful" to his fish). If it's not poisonous or meaty, my vegetarian man will eat it up and go for seconds. 

• I squeeze my dogs as hard as I can, on the hour, every hour. This needs no further explanation.

Work Out, Baby.

One of my favorite hobbies is whining, whether it be in-person or virtually, with girl friends about eating right and working out. If I exercised as much as a I whined, Sports Illustrated would have itself a new cover model. We often send each other those clearly fake studies that say, "20 ounces of chocolate a day equals 1 hour of exercise, says scientist." We're like, "See? We're doing great. Move along."

Today's discussion covered what exercise style best fits our personality. My friend said, "I need structured classes. I need someone to tell me what to do and change it up. I get bored easily; I'm like a toddler." She has had two toddlers so I consider her an expert on toddlerisms.

It got me thinking. I already whine like a toddler. I bet we have more in common when it comes to exercise than one would think. Using what I have absorbed from my FWTs (Friends with Toddlers), I have come up with a few similarities.

1. Puddle Melting: It's not unusual for toddlers to go completely limp in aisle 7 of Target. One minute they are jabbering about wanting fruit snacks, the next minute they have morphed into an Alex Mack pile of goo (Nickelodeon 90s kid shout-out). With judging glares, you collect your 30-pound glob, place it in the cart and cover it with two loaves of bread.

This is me after spin class. Every time I have attempted a spin class, I loathe it with every muscle fiber of my being. This is the cycle for me. Friend asks if I want to take spin, I picture leisurely riding a bicycle, I realize- 30 seconds in- that this in no way resembles riding a bicycle, I go home and cry when I have to go to the bathroom, I vow to never do it again, a friend asks if I want to take spin, I picture myself leisurely riding a bicycle, and so on. The gig is UP. The last time I attempted Satan's favorite group class, I literally couldn't walk for a week. Like I needed someone to collect me, put me in a shopping cart and stick two loaves of bread on my face (I would have used it as a pillow).

2. No: Why we made the worst possible word to hear so easy to say, I don't know. But someone did that and now we have to live with tiny humans spouting it like there's no tomorrow. Come here. "No." Do you want applesauce? "No." Do you need to take a nap? "No." DO YOU WANT A MILLION DOLLAR GIFT CARD TO TOYS R US? That's what I thought.

This is me when a workout instructor (especially DVD ones- I own you. I'm the boss) tell me to do burpees. Some Crossfit fanatic please tell me why these are called that. If I eat a Sam's barrel of cheese balls while binging "Making a Murderer," I will often burpee. If I am going to do something as strenuous as drop down to all fours, get back up, slap my hands, and jump, I'm going to need it to be called something more hardcore, OK? When I'm told to do these, I straight up, toddler style, say, "Oh heck no." I will march in place until you are done with that nonsense.

3. Instantaneous Boredom: Have you ever been to a little kid's birthday party? The gift opening segment is pretty much parental damage control, It's a PR nightmare. You spend 15 minutes amidst the aisles of Wal-Mart doing FBI research on what toddlers like these days and the kid looks at it for 1.5 seconds and tosses it and grabs the next package. The parents pick it up, embarrassed, and try to show it to them again, but the child is like "BYE FELICIA" and tosses it to the curb once more. The parents try to explain that it will get played with when there isn't so much stimuli around. It's OK. He's 2. I get it.

I also get it because this is how I am with workout routines. Zumba classes tread the very fine line of being repetitive enough for you to learn the dang dance and not being so repetitive that you want to send threatening letters to Carly Rae Jepsen for bringing "Call Me Maybe" into the world. There came a point when "Dark Horse" by Katy Perry would come on and my legs would begin to shake in preparation of the leg routine. It's like my thighs were Pavlov's dogs and Katy Perry was the bell. I need to constantly shake it up (NOT SHAKE IT OFF. GO AWAY TECHNO TAYLOR SWIFT).

You see, when it comes to staying in shape, we're all babies. Ok, maybe not all of us. Some of you have Instagram accounts full of pictures of you and your boyfriend working out together. If I did that, it would be a picture of Justin telling me that if I can go immediately into my second set, I need to add more weight and push myself harder. It would be a sepia tone picture of me rolling my eyes.

I'm starting a "Biggest Loser" challenge next week with some church mates. Luckily, our church has inherited some shopping carts from the Target across the parking lot. Now I just need two loaves of bread and someone to push me around.

Present.

There's an older woman at church who regularly does something so meaningful, yet so simple, that she probably doesn't even realize she's doing it.

During the meet and greet time of service (aka, the worst 3 minutes of an introvert's life), she approaches and says, "How are your babies doing?" She might be including Justin too (haven't established this), but what she's truly saying is, "How are your dogs doing?" But she calls them babies, signifying their place in my heart.

She does it with sincerity and it's evident that she actually wants to know the answer. She knows, while some might belittle an animal's role in our lives, that they are a huge part of mine.

They are my present. In them, I find joy.

It's not like this is news to anyone. I have nothing short of 3,746 pictures of them on social media.

But the reason it's significant is because we live in a world where people rarely relish in other people's present. They can always have more children. They can always get a better job. They can always find their spouse a little faster. We begin to dread interaction with those that we crave interaction from because it's tiresome; it's physically and emotionally exhausting.

So far, having children has been an unsuccessful two-year journey for me. I say that, not to solicit sympathy or advice, but to better illustrate my overall message.

I want people to invest in my present; to enjoy my present with me; to ask about my present.

When pictures or talk of my dogs evoke comments like, "Ya'll need kids," or "Wait until you have kids," or somehow imply that my dogs are only fillers for kids, it's hurtful. Undermining my knowledge or ability to empathize with a situation because I'm childless is painful.

Because the truth is, this is my present. And most of the time, I am joyous in it. It's only when people fail to rejoice in it with me that the walls to that happiness begin to erode.

This post wasn't meant to be a scolding post. I realize most things that are said are unintentional and not meant to cause hurt feelings. I want you to know I'm not jotting down names and incidents in a revenge journal (watch yo back). I kid, I kid.

I only write this as a New Year's challenge. We may quit the gym and our diets after 2 weeks, but let's make a vow to live in the present with ourselves- and with our friends and family.

Ask them how they are doing now. Ask them how their parakeets are doing. Anything.

I promise you it will make their present brighter when the anxiety of the future starts creeping in.

Happy New Year!