*kendraspondence*

1.) My sister TP visited for a long weekend.
2.) She brought us “Follow That Bird” on DVD.
3.) I have cried three times already listening to “One Little Star” on “Follow That Bird.”
4.) We took a trip to the Berkshires, for my Uncle Chip’s wedding reception, after he wed his lady partner of 23 years.
5.) A reception under a tent in a big back yard with your dad and all of his croneys mock-Irish step-dancing?
6.) That is a lot of fun.
7.) Baby Girl was sick for the early part of the weekend, though.
8.) Once her fever broke, she just had diarrhea.
9.) She so finds the sensation of sitting in diarrhea diaper upsetting that she points to her diaper and says, “Open it!”
10.) I am trying not to end this list with talk of poop, so let me just wish you all a super happy Independence Day if you are a Yankee Doodle Dandy!

***

It’s our doll, Liberty Bell!

Here gathered are my stepmama, moi, and TP, making fun of my sister who always bends over in group pictures. Hi TP. <3 YOU.

Here we are with the old man…

I am still 15 lbs. heavier than I want to be, even though my eating has been near immaculate, my exercise near Olympian.

I accept what my body has done and what it can do. I just hate to see that whatsherface has yet to reclaim her derriere and replace my proportional one back where it belongs.

I don’t have the energy to truly focus on a diet that will guarantee a slimmer Kendra by summer’s end.

I don’t have the bandwidth here to capacitate a more formal, abysmally boring discussion of diets in general.

What I do have is this:

Today I pointed to this picture that is in our hallway. Lovey Loverpants looks like a bouncer for a Mafia bar (but dead handsome, no?) and I look half-baked (my allergies were horrible that week!).

Who’s that? I asked.

Baby Girl points to Loverpants, “Dis dis Daddy.”

Baby Girl points to Mama, “Dis dis Mama Mine,” and pulls her greedy hands to her chest on “mine.”

I could die fat, but I would die happy.

Lovey Loverpants recently said something that hurt me, although it was not meant to be hurtful. It was actually very perceptive. He said, “I don’t think you really like holidays very much.” Punch to the gut.

First reaction: YOU’RE SO WRONG! I live for holidays. I call off work for holidays (comedy!).

More removed reaction: Why would you say that?

Much much more removed reaction: Maybe you’re right.

Having my own family has been as much about fulfilling my own want of connectedness as it has been about fostering that for my husband, for my child. Holidays would come and I would zealously be doing a rain dance around the campfire, chanting and wearing my proverbial feathers and wondering why everyone wasn’t following my lead. I was becoming so zealous about HOLIDAY! TRADITION! COME ON JUST LIKE WE DID LAST YEAR ON ARBOR DAY! that I was depressing myself. I was going through the motions, I was filling a jar o’ holiday magic that had Swiss cheese holes in it.

So for Father’s Day, we kept it low-key. Earlier this week, Loverpants took the day off, we hiked around a cool cemetery with our friends Jane and Martin, and today we just ate some soul food, and Loverpants put together his Dad’s day present. And after he was done, he did some push-ups on it, and then Baby Girl demo’d her push-ups, and we all laughed, marking this holiday as one in which we laughed and counted our best blessings, not because we were prompted to do so by Hallmark, or any lame tradition I tried to invent, but because we were together in our tiny living room with shoes and raisins all over the floor. Together, healthy and laughing and so blessed.

Knock kno——wait.

You’re inside and I’m outside. Why are YOU the one knocking?

Oh fine.

WHO’S THEEEYERRRRR?

Why! It’s my wedding dress crying for me to clean it. It’s only been sitting there for four years. Hey, wait, what’s that pushing out beside that –

Why it’s the Great Peanut Butter Faced Avenger!!!

Said she could live in there if we just keep spooning peanut butter through the door….

I inherited this animal instinct from my grandmother that I cannot seem to disinherit. Whenever I even smell the scent of Someone Who is Good Humored, I immediately have to tell him or her something embarrassing I just did, like, a few seconds ago.

Today I am breezing out of the gym, carrying Baby Girl who is rotating her head back and forth and pointing at BLUE BALL! (and guess how many blue balls you can find at a gym with shelves upon shelves of exerballs? Many! So let’s repeat every time we see a BLUE BALL!). I pass the front desk and see Seemingly Good Humored Girl at Front Desk and I feel as though suddenly the exit door is blocked by fierce laser beams barring me from leaving the building without sharing with Good Humored Girl the following:

“Oh my goodness everytime I pass that inspirational weight loss story I just start crying I look at her story and I just think ::gets high breathy voice:: if she can do it I can do it oh my goodness I don’t even know that woman and I just start crying it’s just like watching ‘Oprah’”

Good Humored Girl looked back at me with this pleeding smile as if to say, “Please leave, because I know you are about one ‘oh my goodness’ away from telling me about how you went to the hospital with a tingling in your shoulder last week and by mistake you got a hysterectomy, and frankly I am just really happy reading USWeekly today, so thanks.”