Politics, Stories
Sarah Holland
Campaign Update: March

"How's the campaign going?"

It's the question I get most often. It's also the question I'm never quite sure how to answer.

Good? ... Great! ... Your guess is as good as mine. ... We'll see May 17th!

The truth - I suppose - all depends on what you're measuring. 

Campaign Update: March
Celebrations
Sarah Holland
Felix's Winter ONE-derland

This weekend we hosted a Winter ONE-derland party in honor of Felix's first birthday. Considering this child was born during a snow, it seemed like an appropriate theme. Well, the weather had other plans and it was 70 and sunny! I could have hosted the dang party outside! 

Felix's Winter ONE-derland
Stories
Sarah Holland
Ruby

For my 30th birthday, I created a list of 30 things I wanted to do. One was to write a historical fiction short story. This is the story and as Ruby keeps calling to me here lately. I thought I'd share it here. 

Ruby
Food
Sarah Holland
Nicholas's Freezer to Crockpot Meals

One of Nicholas's New Year's resolutions was to try freezer meals. He'd prepped meals for the week on and off through 2015 and wanted to see how it would work to prepare an entire month's worth. Then, we could just pull a meal from the deep freeze, throw it in the crockpot, and on a busy day dinner would be waiting for us.

Nicholas's Freezer to Crockpot Meals
What I Learned
Sarah Holland
5 things I learned in January

Dear 2016, Slow. Up. I just picked my word for the year and finished off my New Year's Eve champagne like five minutes ago and now it's two days until February!

Whew.

5 things I learned in January

The simplicity of a small town

It happens every time I go out of town for a conference or large event.

I tell people I’m from Paducah, Ky. I tell people we left our lives in D.C. to move back to my small hometown. I tell people I live without a Target and food trucks and sky scrapers.

Then, the questions start to come. 

They ask how I like it, what we do for fun, do we ever miss the big city. There seems to be some expectation that I will confess our small town existence is only temporary or complain about how bored we are from lack of museums or fancy restaurants.

When instead I state plainly that I wouldn’t move back to the big city - any big city - for love nor money, there is always shock followed by something that sometimes shocks me.

Interest. Curiosity. Even envy.

Second (or Third) Time Mommy Anxiety

I wrote this post on Salt & Nectar in 2011 when I was pregnant with Amos. As Nicholas and I consider expanding our family once again, I realized some of these anxieties are resurfacing. Even with one more child "under my belt," I still worry that next time I will encounter something I just can't handle... 

It all started with the kicking.

I remember Griffin kicking. But it was the cute, surprising “Everyone come quick!” kind of kicking. Amos - not so much. His kicking is constant and strong and keeps me up at night. His kicking seems more like he’s trying to escape...through my belly button.

Flashback Friday: New Kids on the Block

NEWKIDSONTHEBLOCK.jpg

Welcome to Flashback Friday, where I delve deep into the piles of my childhood memorabilia so that we can reminisce, laugh at the bad perms, and finally prove that merely throwing away your NKOTB door hanging does not diminish your love for Jordan Knight.

My birthday is Sunday. I will be 32.

Do the math. It should not surprise you that I was a huge New Kids on the Block fan.  

I had shirts and a sleeping bag and the aforementioned door hanger. I had a beach towel and a giant button and all their tapes and a Jordan Knight doll with a rat tail. 

Jordan was my preferred New Kid. People who liked Donnie were bad girls. Everyone knew that. Donnie was a trouble maker. After he set fire to the hotel room in Louisville, I let everyone know my elementary school girl thoughts on Donnie. 

He was no good.

Jonathan was for shy girls. Joey was cute but too much of a baby. Danny...well, Danny was Danny. 

Jordan was a dream. When my friend Jenny (yes, the same Jenny) had a party for their pap-per-view concert, I still remember him standing high on a platform with with a white button-up shirt being blown open by a fan. It is burned into my memory forever. I'm pretty sure I screamed.

When someone at the party took my seat in front of the television, I locked myself in the bathroom and cried. 

I still maintain this was the only reasonable response.

 My friend and I got in constant fights with the boys at our school over who was cooler - New Kids on the Block or Vanilla Ice. They constantly asserted that Jordan and the lot were gay. I got in HUGE trouble for explaining to my friend Erin what that meant.

My parents never took me to a concert because they didn't love me. Obviously. Finally, when the tree of nostalgia was ripe, New Kids on the Block went on a reunion tour (the first of many). I bought a ticket. I was INSANELY excited. 

Then, I got pregnant and was so sick with nausea I couldn't go.

It is a multi-generational plot to prevent me from seeing Jordan Knight in person. 

Again, only reasonable response.  

I once argued passionately to my mother that the New Kids on te Block were going to be bigger than the Beatles. This argument is burned into my memory because my mother reminds me of it ONCE. A. WEEK. At least. 

They were my first boy band. My first true pop music crush and the first time music and the emotion it can evoke really affected me.  

Even after I get rid of the last of my memorabilia - years after the last reunion tour, know this.

New Kids on the Block, I'll be loving you (forever). 

Were you a NKOTB fan? Who was your favorite New Kid? I promise not to judge...too harshly.  

 

signupimage.jpg
 

Got advice?

There are a lot of blog posts out there angrily dismissing unsolicited parenting advice.

This is not one of those posts.

It might sound strange but I welcome uninvited parenting advice. “No one knows my child better than me.” Or “I’m going to raise my child the way I see fit” are not really sentences that exist in my vocabulary.

Saying goodbye to the internet?

Last week, Glennon Doyle Melton of the blog Momastery called it quits. Well, she called it quits for 40 days. At the top of her game with hundreds of thousands of readers and a New York Times best-selling book, she said goodbye to the internet. 

The internet, I think – is turning into a compulsion for me. I’m starting to look to it for my own worth. I’m looking to it for comfort and as a balm for loneliness. I’m using it to hide a little from real live people. And I’m using it to numb my feelings. To zone out. All of this scares me because these are all the things I used to use booze for. And these are the things I still use food for sometimes.

I identified so much with her post. I am also a striver - a person who’s shifting definition of success is too often linked to external factors instead of internal motivation. The internet – in particular the world of blogging – can often play to my worst instincts. I see other’s success (including Glennon’s if I’m being honest) and, instead of feeling inspired, I feel like a failure. So, I go out into social media looking for sources of positive feedback and/or plain old distraction.

However, her solution feels somewhat gimmicky.

,

Flashback Friday: Youthful Politics

,

Welcome to Flashback Friday, where I delve deep into the piles of my childhood memorabilia so that we can reminisce, laugh at the bad perms, and finally prove that merely throwing away your NKOTB door hanging does not diminish your love for Jordan Knight.

Listen, people. This is not all fun and games and Lisa Frank. It’s time for me to share some darker aspects of my past. I wasn’t always the super-gorgeous, super-smart, super-liberal (and super-humble!) redhead you see now before you.

In fact, the entirety of my childhood and adolescent years I was a Bible-beating, super-judgmental, conservative.

The online home of Sarah Stewart Holland