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Guest Postapalooza: Morgan from The 818

As the greatest guest post week in the history of blogs comes to an end I'd like to first say thanks to all my guest posters and everyone who came and read their posts.

Last up we have Morgan from The818. I think I found her blog from Top Baby Blogs (shameless link to get you to vote for me) and it was really the first mommy blog I really liked. Check it out if you haven't...it's a fantastic miss of her life with Delilah and Scott with some great design stuff peppered in.

Here are things you'll want to know about Morgan:
  • She's married to Scott...this makes her the 3rd guest this week married to a Scott (or Scot)
  • She says she's from The 818 but that is not totally confirmed...she could be from The 747 
  • Either way she lives 2 blocks from a great friend of mine but they don't know each other...however they probably see each other at a coffeehouse or something because the world is weird like that
  • Her Torah portion was much more boring than mine
  • She had some fantastic theories about Lost but they weren't right...mine were also pretty wrong
  • She writes for a living, so you know she's gonna bring some good stuff, and you'll often find her pop up on Cargoh so look for her there...it's a great site, like etsy but more designy (designish?)
  • She, like my wife, is a fan of the double space after a period in a sentence.
  • As you will read she gave me some fantastic delivery room advice

And I should mention that her daughter Dee is super cute and in the top of my list for potential ladies for Miloh once he is grown. Harper, Mandy's daughter is also in the running.



So, Kenny asked me to guest post. And I said yes. And then I promptly passed out. Okay it didn't happen exactly like that. But both of those things did happen. And, they both lead me to a flux capacitor type moment in which I all at once knew what I should post about on Kenny's Blog. See, when Staci was in labor Kenny tweeted asking for last minute advice. Kenny is one of my best internet friends, so naturally I responded with the sage-est advice I could muster from my labor experience: "If she has bangs, and she starts sweating, and they're standing straight up, and you're gonna take pictures? For the love of god man, get her a hair clip!" I'm not trying to brag or anything, but Kenny said it was the best advice he'd gotten to date. So with that in mind I'm going to talk about something that I'm pretty sure all Dads can benefit from: My hair. {But I'll bring it full circle, I promise, I won't leave you hanging on the passing out thing.}


Men who read Smonk You, (there are men who read Smonk You, right?) everything you need to know about your wife, you can learn by looking at her hair. I'm not even really a high maintenance kind of woman, and I still wear my emotions on my head. Like when I was in the seventh grade and my boyfriend Scott May broke up with me and my Grandmother died on the same day and I shaved the bottom of my head from the top of my ears to the base of my neck like a [bleeping] Samurai. Or in college when my future hubby and I broke up and I dyed black streaks through my bleach blonde hair to match the blackness of my cold black heart,obviously, and then used so much czechoslovakian peroxide on it that it fell clean out.


When I was 26 and getting married and life was all around sunshine and roses, my hair was shiny and windswept and generally fabulous, and when I lost my job last year I chopped all that shiny fabulous hair off in favor of a muddy brown bob a'la Audrey Tatou...or possibly someone much more miserable and less cute.


Point being - when my hair started to shed like the dickens (Is it obvious I have no idea what "dickens" are?) and then tie itself in crazy knots, and finally make like a banana and get split ends (like, crazy split ends) I should have known something was up. My hair was speaking to me. Even as I grew it out and coaxed it back to it's natural color in an attempt to reclaim my pre-baby ME {the aforementioned windswept and fabulous version} my hair, my eternal mood ring, was flailing it's little hair arms, and screaming at the top of it's little hair lungs "SOMETHING'S AMISS!!!" (ew, my hair totally does not have arms and lungs - that's a weird visual, and I'm sorry.)


But I paid it no mind. And the other day when Delilah was at my Mother-In-Law's, and Scott was playing the drums downstairs, I sat in the bathroom digging rats nests out of my once shiny hair - and I started to feel dizzy. As the room started to buzz I vaguely remember my hair whispering "I told you so" before the blood drained from my brain and my head hit the floor (but not before my face paid the open bathroom drawer a visit on the way down.)


In no uncertain terms, I passed the EF out. I don't really remember waking up - I just remember that it took a long time for me to figure out what was going on. That I was lying face down on my bathroom floor and that the loud beat I was hearing wasn't coming from some weird club (my first thought was that I was drunk somewhere behind a club...which I honestly can't tell you the last time that happened) but was in fact my husband down stairs. That I hadn't laid down because I was drunk, I had fallen, blacked out, and HOLY SHIT WHAT IF DELILAH HAD BEEN PLAYING ON THE FLOOR IN FRONT OF ME.


After I called Scott enough times that his cell phone shimmied off the shelf he'd laid it on and on to his tom tom he found me standing at the top of the stairs shaking a little and rubbing my head. It wasn't pretty. It freaked us out something fierce.


Long story short, I was dehydrated. Badly dehydrated. From breastfeeding and sweating and some other less pleasant things that I'll refrain from discussing here for fear that Kenny will never let a girl step foot on his blog again. That, and I'm wired weird so this nerve in my abdomen accidentally sent a message to my heart to stop thereby cutting off blood flow to my brain and causing me to pass out. (At least, that's how I understand it. My online medical school wasn't totally clear on that.) I was given IV fluids, and about a million tests, and wow, I just realized that this post has taken a turn for the serious, but the point is, it was a wakeup call. My daughter is nine months old and she's amazing and I've thrown myself into parenting her with reckless abandon, but I've been so busy taking care of her, that I completely forgot to take care of me. But parenthood can do that to you. Which is kind of incredible when you think about it. That you can fall so madly in love with this little thing that you can completely forget about your own needs. But you should try not to. Because happy parents make a happy baby. And...Kenny rules. L'Chaim.

Comments

  1. Morgan, what a terrific post. Great fun to read, per usual (usual being when Kenny refers to you in his blog and I hop over to yours). "Happy parents make a happy baby," what an excellent thought. But please do take care of yourself so you can raise Kenny's future daughter-in-law.

    Please ignore Scott's inability to help you in your time of need. Percussionists (like myself) and drummers zone out when playing. And we tap on everything, but you probably know that.

    For Kenny and Morgan: At least your Torah portions weren't in the Leviticus rules area (19). Heck, I know that I shouldn't have my tattoos or my ear piercings. Good thing that I didn't have to read Leviticus 20, as that would have ruined me for life. Fortunately, I don't think they have kids read that for their bar and bat mitzvahs nowadays.

    Anyway, great post! L'Chaim and Shabbat Shalom.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Jackie - shabbat shalom back atcha! You know you are always welcome to visit the818 even when Kenny doesn't link to me!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hair. I agree. One should look at a woman's hair to see how things have been going. Though I've never fainted (oh, my) I have been known to wear my hair bun style for a week at a time. Yes, parenting is important but you are so right that we are too. I'm gonna go schedule that hair cut now. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  4. This makes me want to find out where the Torah portion from my passage into womanhood came from. Going to call my mom tomorrow to see if she can dig this information up.

    And of course, I heart Morgan and her writing and her moments and her big picture ideas.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Oh, and I forgot to say, that I too am a big fan of a double space after a period in a sentence. I have to delete that extra space all the time to make my tweets fit.

    ReplyDelete
  6. hahahaha - metta I am cracking up about deleting double spaces to make your tweets fit - that and the "-" take up about half my character limit every time.

    ReplyDelete
  7. The double space is a pet peeve of mine because it's a vestige from typewriter days. And it was the standard when we were in school...but now with computers auto spacing things they aren't needed...

    When proof reading Staci's papers when she was getting her masters she ignored all my edits on the double space.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Well Kenny, I am an English teacher and papers students write must have two spaces after each period! :P

    ReplyDelete
  9. WHen Miloh goes to school I'll make him fight that 2 space rule. I know it's in some style books but most have 1 space...but it is controversial (maybe I should do a post on it because that gets readers)

    here's a good wiki article on it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentence_spacing

    ReplyDelete
  10. I'm with the girls on this one. Double space after punctuation.

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  11. Though I feel like I have double space in my sole, I am all for updating my style and dropping a space. I mean if I can't change with the times then I might as well got sit on an egg. Oh, and don't even get me started on D'Nealian style handwriting that is taught in schools.

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  12. Apparently I must have double spaces on the bottom of my shoes. Sole.

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  13. LOL, I didn't know YOU were the reason Metta was on a double spacing rant (twitter) but alas...this may mean war? I know, I sound super vicious, don't I?

    Also, your guest-posters rocked!

    ReplyDelete
  14. I thoroughly enjoyed the guest post week.(double space)Do you think you could make it like a semi-annual thing?(double space) Like Victoria's Secret, except with blogs not bras?

    ReplyDelete
  15. Katee – I could definitely see this being semi-annual. And please stop by next Wednesday when I school everyone on the spacing issue. Spoiler alert: the answer is one space.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Well, as a writer by trade and a grammar-stickler, I didn't question double-space after a period UNTIL I focused my copy skills on marketing.

    After some initial hesitation (and just flat-out demanding that the Art Directors I worked with re-insert the double-space they'd thoughtfully deleted), I soon saw the light. Now I think double-spaces are outdated and look pretty silly in print.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Yeah, very scary thought about passing out and being the only person there for your child(ren). Glad to see you pulled through!

    Jews blog??? The Jewish population is very, very small. I know cause I'm one of them! I just didn't think we were representing but lo and behold, I'm wrong! So it's with a big Jewish Mother(Daddy?) hug that I say, "Mazel Tov"! Great post!

    ReplyDelete
  18. I thoroughly enjoyed the guest post week.(double space)Do you think you could make it like a semi-annual thing?(double space) Like Victoria's Secret, except with blogs not bras?

    ReplyDelete
  19. I'm with the girls on this one. Double space after punctuation.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Well Kenny, I am an English teacher and papers students write must have two spaces after each period! :P

    ReplyDelete
  21. Oh, and I forgot to say, that I too am a big fan of a double space after a period in a sentence. I have to delete that extra space all the time to make my tweets fit.

    ReplyDelete

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