Wondering...

I'm sneaking in a quick email check during the conference, and while I'm at the library I'm wondering: why are the library chairs more comfortable than my expensive office chair? That I sit in. For eight hours. Everyday?

College priorities. That's why.

Eeek!

We are swamped at work right now with the conference coming in Thursday. On top of that, we *may* just be buying a house.

Oh crap.

and :-).

For laughs

Like really? For real?

Images: Baptism

Andrea with Gus.


Gus handling the baptismal water like a pro!

Yogurt: The Official Food of Women

Are you sick of all of those lame yogurt commercials targeting women, and their unrequited and insatiable love of all things yogurt?

"The I-have-a-Master's, but-then-I-got-married-look!"

This has me cracking up. Thanks for the link, Jenna!

What a wonderful weekend!

Although I'm exhausted and this week at work is GOING TO KILL ME (Open House today, meeting in Boston tomorrow that STARTS at 8:30 am, CE weekend A...) we had a wonderful weekend. Friday I was completely exhausted and fell asleep on the couch at 9 PM. Even though I had to get up early Saturday morning, I still slept almost ten hours, and it felt SO GOOD.

Saturday morning I got up and made fruit salad to bring the Lisa and Tanya's house for breakfast with Tanya's family and friend Elspeth. We had a lovely breakfast, then hung for a little while but rushed home to clean quickly before Tara's parents arrived. Once they arrived, we went out to dinner at Paul & Elizabeth's (one of my favorite joints!) to find out it was Northampton Restaurant Week, and all participating restaurants had special three course menus for $20.08 per person. I enjoyed a lovely antipasto platter with some delicious tapanade, a linguine with pesto and fresh shrimp entree, and a slice of carrot cake with maple frosting. MMMM mmmm!

Sunday morning we got up early to all get ready for church, and we met the Favorites and practically the entire Favorite family at church to prepare for Gus's baptism. He was a dream. He was cheery and engaging and bouncy the whole 1/2 hour before services, and then was an angel during the prelude and welcome. During the order of baptism he was goofy, smiling at everyone, staring at the fans high above on the ceiling and just generally being silly and laughing! And laughing! Then laughing more! He was making everyone in the church laugh! He handled the baptismal water well - my guess is it probably felt good because it was about 1,000,000 degrees in the church by 10:15. Soon after the baptism (I only cried once) he had a bottle, then napped for the remainder of the service. On the first note of the organ playing the postlude, he sat bolt upright in Tanya's arms, caught Tara's and my eyes, and grinned an unbelievable ear to ear grin as if to say, "Hi! How long have you been here? I love you!" It was very, very sweet.

Lisa and Tanya had a lovely party and we hung out for a long time. Among the other gifts we gave them in honor of the baptism (donations made in his name for a month's worth of education for one girl in India, moringa and apple trees in developing countries) we also wrote him this letter:

________________________________________________________

Dear Gus,

It will be a long time before you can read and understand this letter fully, but we find it no less important to try to explain to you the importance of you in our lives. Today we became your Godparents, so there is no more fitting a time for us to tell you how much we love you and how very, very dear you are to us.

We continue to talk almost daily about you, the ways in which you change and grow, and how your own exploration of the world around you, your sense of wonder, discovery and curiosity, is a lesson that informs our own ability to explore and discover the world around us. Through you, we are able to see the world from a different perspective, one supple with innocence, openness and love. You are a gift. And we love you more than you can understand.

We have both had an interesting and sometimes complicated journey toward discovering our own spiritual and religious selves. On the day that we were married, we felt God's presence like on no other day ever in our lives. We were surrounded by our parents and siblings, plunked in the middle of a fragrant and blooming annual garden in Northampton on what was one of the most beautiful days we had ever seen. The sun shined so brightly that we both got a little sunburned during our brief wedding ceremony. Reverend Andrea, the same pastor who baptized you today, married us. We all huddled and cried and celebrated and it was then that we realized the true beauty of God's grace. We were not supposed to be anywhere but right there at that moment, amid the collective love of our families, surrounded by the full blossoming of nature around us, with nothing between us and the heavens - it was a perfect moment of God's grace.

There are other moments of God's grace in our lives. Our two nephews, Harrison and Griffin, are examples of that. Our families are a continued blessing. As are the thousands of perfect moments we share with each other. Moments we will share with you and your moms, and those that we will share with our own children sometime in the future. Since the moment you were conceived you were part of God's perfect plan, and we hope that we continue to learn from you. We can't wait to watch our love for you grow, for you to grow up in a household and a family in which our love for you knows no bounds.

In that love we hope you grow to understand how to love others – how to be passionate and wise and to love your neighbor as yourself. We hope that you learn to love the planet and nature and how to become a good steward of the Earth. We hope that you stand up for others when they are hurt, to love deeply and to be brave. We hope that you will love to learn and help others. We hope that you will feel strong and smart and full and cared for and well-loved. We hope you will someday discover something you are passionate about, or many things you are passionate about, and that you will follow your passion with humility and courage. We hope that you will journey with us so that we all discover new ways to love, to be passionate and to seek justice for those who experience injustice.

Thank you for the gift of your love and your life, and for allowing us to walk with you.

Love Always,
Val and Tara
________________________________________________________

All it all, it was an INSANE weekend, but it was really lovely, and I wouldn't trade it for the world.

And now Tara and I are Godmommies, so the real work begins!

Image: PITA

Today when I spoke on the phone with Jenna, she dared to say, "I can't believe you haven't uploaded any of your graduation pics yet!" as though as I have no right to do whatever the FUCK I WANT RIGHT NOW (I have earned that right, haven't I?!) So, I thought I'd post this for her.

So, Jenna, this is for you. It's a bone. To get you off of my back. A picture for all to see from graduation, just for you. I love you, dear! And I hope you're still talking to me right now.

The Red Envelope Response (he he he)

Subject: [CM] Re: He may be their Dad, but he'll always be your man.

Dear Valerie Hooper-Lindros,

Thank you for contacting RedEnvelope. My sincere apologies that we sent out an email that was so gender specific. We understand that not all of our clients are married or heterosexual, and it was definitely not our intention to cause any offense to anyone. I have filed a Customer Experience Report which included a copy of your email to be submitted to our Headquarters to alert them of this presumptuous error.

We would like to take a moment to express our gratitude for taking the time to contact us. Without your input, we would never be able to grow as a company. We also realize that we will not succeed unless we go the extra mile.

In closing, we would like to apologize for the assumption that was made.

If you have any additional questions or concerns, our Customer Service staff is available 7 days a week from 6am - 9pm PST. Click on Customer Service at www.redenvelope.com for a live chat with a representative, or call toll-free 1-877-RedEnvelope (1-877-733-3683). Thank you again for contacting RedEnvelope, and please visit us again soon.

How to tick me off

Send me emails with this subject line, simply because I am a female customer:

He may be their Dad, but he'll always be your man.

Needless to say, I sent a little nugget of an email over their customer service department.

Image: Bruise

And here's where I show you the mysterious bruise I got on my leg during graduation:

Video: Typical Saturday Morning

I'll leave out the video of the part where Tara and I stay in bed late on Saturday mornings, and instead share this video with you. Saturday is the only day we get to sleep in, so Bob loves to come snuggle and cuddle early in the morning and sleep in with us. And this is the typical event that ensues:

Last uncontacted tribes

Sarah shared this with me and I am obsessed with the story now.

New commitment

Tara and I have a new commitment! Aside from the other things we are using to fill our free(-ish) time now that I'm done with school (mainly house-hunting, excessive demands at work, and vacations!), we are committing to training to walk a half marathon! During June we will just be doing some general physical get-in-shape kind of stuff, but in July we start training. We're doing it on our own (with the help of a self-printed guide from prevention.com) so hopefully we won't lose our motivation. We need cheerleaders! That's YOU!

The training includes a mixture of workouts, including rest days, something-other-than-walking days, short walks, long walks, in-between walks, and culminates (hopefully) in a 13.1 mile round trip walk. I measured, and it's 13.1 miles exactly to Amherst from Northampton on the bike path.

Here's to our adventure!

Image: What a way to go out!

My last semester grades are UP! Two As! And an overall grad school GPA of 3.918. I am damning those three A-minuses I got! (Click the image for a better view.)

Image: Return to the land!

I'll post about graduation weekend soon. Until then, thanks for the calls and cards and visits!

Going dark

The family arrives today/tomorrow to participate in/witness my graduation, so I'm disappearing until all the festivities are over.

I'll be back with pictures to post soon!

Jenna is almost here! (Hi, Jenna!)

The first White valedictorian at Morehouse, an HBCU

As a student of higher education, I'm fascinated with this. I'm not sure how I feel about it, actually. What are your thoughts?

Graduate School Retirement: What it's like

I've always heard that people who go into retirement are actually busier than they were when they were working. Not being retired myself, I can only relate through my experience since finishing graduate school a week ago. In part, things are better because I'm sleeping better - less wear and tear on my mouth guard, and I'm sleeping shorter amounts of time. At first I thought that meant I was sleeping worse, like my body and mind didn't know what to do in the absence of stress, but I think it actually means that I'm sleeping better. I think the sleep I'm getting is less restless and fretful, and I'm waking up early because I am rested. That feels good, because I haven't really had that for a week straight in three years.

Among the things that are keeping me busy are pre-graduation events, pre-baptism events, and all of the deferred maintenance on me, especially my hair. Yesterday I went for a long walk outside, and despite the five mosquito bites I came home with, it was lovely. So, I have a haircut today, dinner with the cohort Sunday, we had a picnic last night, we're assembling programs tomorrow, we're meeting with the pastor tomorrow, too, and a realtor on Saturday and blah blah blah. All of the things that have been put off for anywhere between four months and three years are happening now!

I have not cracked my huge stack of growing magazines, and my knitting and quilting are dusty. I hope to pick those things back up over the summer.

My next project is to mimic this. You can check out the full list, Mighty Life: Things to Do Before I Go, here. I want to reflect on the things in my life, what I want to do and see. I am also taking a lesson from Mighty Girl and will begin to list the moments I hope pass before me before I die, those moments I hold sweetly in my head and mind.

Until then, I'm looking forward to the busy-ness of the next few weeks. Both the celebrations and the quiet moments. I've been waiting a long time just for time. And I think I've earned it.

Today is the day

Need I say more?

UPDATE: HOLY SHIT. My hands are still shaking.

Now that I can use my brain for other things...

this is blowing my mind!

Anagrams are fun! I know - I'm a loser. Ask Jenna about the conversation about Justin Timberlake's new album that we just had. Oh, wait. I think I promised her I wouldn't tell anyone about that.

Sorry, Jenna! Like I said, I hope you still love me after this month is over and done with.

:)