Ollie The Wind Beneath My Wings This thing keeps happening where Matt shows up and does all of this complicated and probably dangerous work in my house with minimal effort and only half his attention and
Ollie Conversations With Emrie I mentioned last week that my niece Emrie was coming to my house for a sleepover. This is the niece who was formerly AKA "The Niece Who Hates Me,
Annie Pictures from my Phone & Weekly Distractions I'm so nervous. 24 hours from now the Niece Who Hates Me is coming to my house for a sleepover. I'm going to spend the entire
Ridiculous My Garage I keep finding this weird stuff in my house because it was built sometime right after cavemen developed the first tool. Ok, so it's not quite that old.
Ollie Up On A Soapbox This weekend I dragged Matt and Ollie across the great state of Utah to help me collect 100,000 new things for my home improvement projects. Matt has become my general contractor who I have do at least ten new projects in my house
Ollie Pictures from my Phone & Weekly Distractions My five-year-old niece Emrie, formerly known as "the niece who hates me," called me tonight to ask if she can come sleep over at my house. Our relationship
Tinder Is Jon Really A Common Name? I'm not totally sure whether what the kids are calling "the Tinder" is still a popular thing among the kids. I know it was a year
EMBARRASSING Prison Recently I went to prison. I realize that it's a little bit misleading to not include the article "the" before prison. Because when you put the word "the" in there, it means that you were just visiting. Probably
Ollie Pictures from my Phone & Weekly Distractions Grateful it's Friday around here. It was a long and hard week for me. I almost entered the Witness Protection Program on Tuesday just to get out of
Ridiculous Homeowner Responsibility One of the most difficult things about being a first-time homeowner is suddenly taking on a thousand new responsibilities that I've never had to deal with before or, in some cases, had even contemplated. A lot of these are simple, but not
Palau A Big Day for Hannah Rose I met Hannah Rose three years ago. We both ran in the same 5k and took first and second place. (This was not a very competitive race, but we usually
Ollie The Neuter Clinic The other day Matt asked me if I had any time this week to take Ollie back to the spay and neuter clinic to get him checked out. His unmentionable
Rebecca Rebecca Paints the Floor Ring ring. Eli: Respecta! This is the stage name I have chosen for Rebecca. Rebecca: Eli. I'm trying to get a hold of Matt to ask him some important home repair questions. But he isn't answering. Eli: Well you can
Ridiculous Fifth Grade Notebook After her last visit to my home, at the end of which Cathie ominously announced to all within earshot that she would expect me to clear out all of my
Ollie Pictures from my Phone & Weekly Distractions Happy New Year, one and all. Because the magic of the season made us lose track of reality, like it always does (see this [https://www.itjustgetsstranger.com/2013/01/
Ironman 2014 Each year when I sit down to write the New Year wrap-up post, I begin the process by reviewing what I wrote the year before. It gets me in the mood to reflect. And it's always fascinating to me to review the
Rebecca My Driveway I think my house was initially built with horse and buggy in mind. At least, that's the only way I can explain the driveway. It's exceedingly narrow, and I don't really know why because there is definitely room
Daniel The Top Ten Most Viewed Stranger Posts, 2014 Every time I get on Facebook right now there are a thousand posts that are like "check out Amy's year!" and then you can click on it and scroll through a thousand pictures to see what Amy ate in 2014.
Rebecca Half a Carload My friend Burke is possibly the greatest human being of our generation. A couple of weeks ago we were talking about how I needed to move for the eleventy millionth time in the last ten years and how much I was dreading the task.
Ollie Eli's House So it's getting late and I just finished the three-hour AMAZING Survivor finale. Did anyone watch it? I know it's not 1998 anymore, but some of
Movie Review 10 Things I Learn from "It's a Wonderful Life" 1. Flirting should be funny. One of my favorite lines from the movie is when ol' what's-her-name (the blonde bombshell) is walking down the sidewalk and George
Ollie Rebecca's Near Murder Rebecca was babysitting Ollie at her house on Friday, so I texted her to see how things were going. I logged away in my mind that I needed to try
Ollie Pictures from my Phone & Weekly Distractions I'm in my mostly vacant house, having spent the afternoon and much of the evening here taking care of installations and bids for various projects. It's
Ridiculous Six Chairs Eli: Hi. I would like to buy this table and six of these chairs. Lady: Great! Let me make sure we have enough in stock. Eli: No problem. Lady: Let's see . . . hmmmm . . . well we only have four of those chairs. Eli: Ok.
House How to Become a Grownup Megan texted me and told me to show up at some address on Monday at 4:00. I didn't really know what would be happening but that was more or less par for the course in this process. Buying a home is
