I got an invoice this week to renew the registration of my blog, and I realized that I haven’t written anything here in… uh… *checks notes*… over 3 years. So, hello! Here’s what’s been going on over in my little corner of the world.

We’ve been living through a pandemic for over a year now! If you’re reading this in 2021, you already know that! And it has sucked so much! You probably know that too! Ok, let’s move on!

There are a lot of things that have happened in the last few years that I never blogged about, like: we bought a house! The kids all have their own bedrooms, the backyard is fenced for the dogs (yes, dogs plural, more on that in a minute), I have an office with doors I can close, it’s in a beautiful neighborhood close to a community park and the schools here are great. It ticked every box of everything I wanted in a house. It’s also come with challenges, like finding that we suddenly have to buy a new water heater or some other major expense, but overall it’s been great and I love it here.

Dave also bought a house less than 2 miles away, so we have a super easy commute getting Catie and Lucy back and forth between our houses, which has been really nice. He and I are still amicable as ever – honestly, we probably get along better now than we did when we were married. I like that we can get along and have an easy relationship with each other; I think it really reduces any stress or tension that the girls might pick up on.

Work has been awesome. I was moved to a different team, but the move makes more sense for me, and I really like my manager. I’ve now been with this company for over 10 years, and I can’t imagine that I could ever find a job that’s a better fit for me than this one. I’m really happy on that front.

The pet switch-ups: I think when I last blogged, we had adopted Fifi and Sunny as kittens, and we also had Roxie (the Yorkie). Sunny unfortunately passed away from a disease called FIP that’s 100% fatal in cats. We were devastated to lose her when she was only 2 years old. We’ve since adopted another cat, Toby, who is just about the greatest thing on four legs. He’s so sweet and cuddly and just a hilarious goofball of a cat. I mean, look at this face.

We got him from the same rescue where we adopted Fifi and Sunny. They got him from a kill shelter where he’d been dropped off when he was 2 years old. I cannot fathom how anyone can interact with this cat and not immediately fall in love with him, so I don’t understand why anyone would ever surrender him to a shelter like that. I wish I knew more about his backstory, but the most important thing to know is that he’s ours now, and I absolutely adore him. I’d adopt 5 more cats if they were all like him.

As for the second dog: my stepdaughter, Olivia, found a beagle who’d been dumped on the side of the road, she was skin and bones at the time. Olivia brought her to us, and we thought that since she was so old, nobody else would ever adopt her, so we’d just keep her, take care of her, and give her a happy end to her life. We thought that maybe she’d live a few months at most. That was 2 years ago.

So that’s how we got Ada. She and Roxie get along great, which is surprising because until Ada came along, Roxie hated all other dogs. Ada is as dumb as a bag of hair, but she’s very sweet and just wants love and treats. We have no idea how old she is – she only has a few teeth left, she has cataracts and arthritis, she coughs all the time because she’s got congestive heart failure, but she keeps trucking along. She’s the age where the vet just shrugs and says, “Your guess is as good as mine.” We have a lot of jokes about how old Ada is – like: before us, her previous owner was a guy from the Old Testament named Methuselah. Or that she used to hang out with dinosaurs. And at the rate she’s going, she just might out-live us all. She’ll be hanging out with Wall-E after all the humans have vanished off Earth.

Because of her arthritis, she can walk around the house and to the backyard to do her business, but she can’t walk long distances on a leash. The pandemic meant that walking was our only escape from the house, so that’s how I justified making an insane purchase like a dog stroller.

My logic is that maybe she can’t walk very far, but she still likes to be included when I walk Roxie? She genuinely does seem to enjoy her little rides. I’m sure that I’m now known as the Crazy Dog Stroller Lady to all my neighbors, but all little kids we pass seem excited to see her. I figure the fresh air is good for her, and pushing a stroller with a 22-pound dog in it adds a little bit of an upper body workout to my walks, especially when we go up hills. (And our neighborhood has a LOT of hills!)

So that’s four pets we have now: two dogs and two cats. I think we’re good with that. It feels like we’re maxed out.

As for the four kids, there have been some pretty huge changes on that front. I’ll go from youngest to oldest:

• Lucy is now in 4th grade, she’ll be 10 years old in May. And she’s still a hilarious little firecracker just like she has been since the day she was born. As she gets older, her sense of humor is maturing and she’s just an absolute riot. I don’t even have words to sum up how fun and awesome she is. I enjoy her a lot.
• My stepson, Jack, has been living with us full-time for 2 or 3 years now. He’s 13, and he’s in the same grade/school as Catie. He’s had a huge growth spurt during this pandemic, he’s suddenly as tall as me and he’s needed all new clothes and shoes. He’s also matured a lot in the last year or so, and getting to be his “bonus mom” is turning out to be one of the great honors of my life. I always figured I was lucky to have two girls because I wouldn’t have known what to do if I had a boy. Raising Jack these last few years has taught me that being a mom to a boy is just as fun and wonderful, albeit in different ways that I find equally delightful.
• Catie is 14(!) now. She’s artistic and sensitive and funny and lovely. She and Jack are starting their last quarter of 8th grade, then they’ll be off to high school in the fall, which is BANANAS. I still think of Catie as my tiny little blonde toddler, and it knocks me sideways to think that she’s going to be taking Driver’s Ed soon. Neither of us are ready for that. (Catie especially. She hasn’t changed much, she still hates trying new things, poor bug.)
• Olivia, my stepdaughter, is 16, and she’s just a pure delight to be around. She’s so mature and easy to talk to. I always thought teenage girls would be a struggle, but it’s really not with Olivia at all. She’s also very private about her business, so that’s all I’m going to say about her. I don’t know if she’ll ever read this or not, but I want to be respectful of her feelings regardless.

In other news, Chris and I had our 9th anniversary a couple of weeks ago (of dating, not marriage – it took us over 5 years to decide to get married). I still think he’s the greatest guy in the world for me, and he seems to still like me despite the fact that I do things like impulse-buy a stroller for one of our dogs. So we’re pretty great.

It’s starting to look like there’s a light at the end of this pandemic. Chris got his second COVID vaccine today; I’ve had my first dose & I get my second in a couple of weeks. Our parents are all fully vaccinated now. It’s starting to feel, dare I say it, almost hopeful? There are so many things I want to do when this is over: host sleepovers for the kids, go on road trips, take honest-to-God/leavin’-on-a-jet-plane vacations, down to simple things like having my parents over for family dinners. Hopefully we’ll be able to do all of that really soon. Fingers crossed.

Catie was in first grade when the shooting at Sandy Hook happened. It gutted me at the time, all those babies who were lost, the same age that my little girl was. A friend’s nephew was one of the children killed; his twin sister was in another first grade classroom and survived. I can’t imagine what those families have endured.

This most recent shooting in Florida has been devastating in its own way, especially seeing cell phone videos and the screenshots of texts the kids sent to their parents and siblings because they thought they’d never see them again. I can’t imagine getting a text like that from one of my kids. It makes me sick to think about it.

Last night, Chris and I were watching the news, and saw one of the Newtown children’s moms being interviewed on TV.

I said, “Her son should be Catie’s age.”
Chris said, “Yeah, her son was the same age Lucy is now.”

Since Lucy was just a baby when Sandy Hook happened, I never thought of it that way. It just hit me hard, this awful feeling that none of our babies are ever safe in this world.

This morning, I asked the girls when was the last time they had a lockdown drill at school. Neither of them could remember, it’s such a common occurrence. They used to trigger Catie’s anxiety; the night after every lockdown drill, she would panic and cry, and I would have to lie in bed with her and rub her back until she could settle down enough to fall asleep. Now she doesn’t even really register it.

Since Lucy is only 6, I wasn’t sure how the school explained the whole lockdown drill process to them. I asked her if she knew why they did them.

She said, “It’s in case a bad guy comes in with a gun and tries to shoot us.”

And that, folks, is the story of how I ended up hugging both of my daughters and sobbing my eyes out at 7:30 this morning. (Until Lucy told me that I was hugging her too tight and she couldn’t breathe.)

I don’t know what else to say about this. I just hate that this is the world my kids have to grow up in. I’m watching these teenagers protesting, and I’m scared to feel anything like optimism, but I really and truly hope these kids can fix this mess, where all of the adults have failed them.

Things happen in the news sometimes, and I think “hey, I should blog about that,” because I have a lot of opinions on a particular subject and my thoughts can’t fit in a 140-character tweet. But then I never actually sit down and write it out.

(Well, ok, I did last July during the whole birth control ACA Supreme Court case. I guess political posts are something I do once a year now.)

Ok. So. The Confederate flag.

I grew up in Mississippi. The Confederate flag is one of those things that I’ve seen my whole life, in one capacity or another (bumper stickers, flying outside of people’s houses, on the damn state flag, etc). And I don’t want to write a whole long thing about whether or not the Confederate flag is racist, because it is undoubtedly, inarguably racist, and there are no less than a million books and articles you can read about it if you don’t believe me.

(Examples: What This Cruel War Was Over, which quotes the actual secessionist documents, or The Surprisingly Uncomplicated Racist History of the Confederate Flag, which focuses more on the 20th century, pro-segregation use of the flag.)

But there’s a weird thing I keep thinking about in this argument. The people who are in favor of the Confederate flag say it represents “heritage, not hate.” You hear that a lot. I hate that phrase, for what it’s worth. I think it’s a cop-out.

I’ve also heard people say, “I’m a Proud Southerner!”

And it got me thinking about pride in general, and the different things we take pride in.

I’m proud of my kids. I’m proud of my career. I’m proud to be a in a loving relationship with a good man. I’m proud to have built such a strong support system of friends and family in my life.

But being proud of the geographical place where I was born doesn’t make sense to me, because I had nothing to do with it. I’m proud of the things that I’ve accomplished, things where I actively made a choice that led to a good outcome – like, for example, I’m proud that I graduated from college.

Am I proud to be from Mississippi? No. Fortunate, maybe. I suppose growing up in Mississippi gave me a particular perspective on life that I might not have had in other places. I don’t think that perspective is any more or less valid than anyone else born in any other place, though.

I’m also fortunate that I was born into a good family that loves me, supports me, and has helped me to become successful in life. But really, the geography doesn’t matter at all, it’s the people themselves.

And on the subject of family and heritage: my great-great grandfather was a little boy at the time of the Civil War, too young to become a soldier. He had several older brothers who did fight for the Confederacy in the Civil War, and a few of them died in combat. (I believe there were 8 boys total, but I can’t remember how many of them fought in the war. It’s been a long time since I did that genealogy project.)

I also know, because there are African-Americans in Mississippi with the same last name as we had – which is one of those highly unusual, “Americanized spelling of a Swiss name” type of last names – that obviously at some point, my ancestors owned slaves.

But here’s the thing: it’s not hard for me to acknowledge that I love my family, and also acknowledge that my ancestors fought for the wrong side. Those two concepts are not mutually exclusive.

And to be clear, I’m not ashamed of them either. Just as I don’t take pride in anything I didn’t accomplish, I also don’t see the point in apologizing for my great-great grandfather’s brothers, who died over 100 years before I was even born. I have no control over what they did. I’m sure that at the time, they thought they were on the right side of history. And until someone invents a time machine, I can’t go back to try to enlighten them about race issues.

So, yes, I suppose the Confederate flag is part of my heritage. I’ll own that.

But just because it’s associated with my past, doesn’t mean it has to be part of either my present or my future.