katie allison granju

Jon helps alot, and I’ve been more careful about letting the kids eat/drink in the car.

But last week I broke my rule and let E. have a milkshake somewhere back in the back of the van. I told him to be sure to throw it away. Then I forgot about it…until the car began smelling of rancid milk.

I thought I got the offending smelly spot cleaned up, but last night H. told me that since it still sort of stunk, he would fix the problem by placing several drops of patchouli oil in the car. I agreed.

This morning my car smells like a foul brew of hippie sweat and curdled goat’s milk. The patchouli was a bad, bad idea. So learn from my mistake.

katie allison granju

katie allison granju

I toyed with keeping my maiden name when I first married in 1990 (”Allison”), but my husband said he would really like it if I changed it, so I compromised, and legally changed it to “Allison-Granju”…for a time.

“Allison-Granju” became very unwieldy, plus once we had baby H. only 17 months after tying the knot, H’s last name wasn’t “Allison-Granju,” but “Granju.” So I eventually - some time between baby #1 and baby #2 - changed my last name to “Granju,” using “Allison” as a middle name when I write. I introduce myself in person as just plain old Katie Granju. My closest friends and fam call me Kate.

One bummer about this whole name changing thang was that my cool middle name - a family name - got totally lost in the shuffle. It’s “Brittain” - a lovely name. Now, however, baby C. has that as her middle name, so I like that.

Anyway, then I got divorced, but decided to keep Granju as my last name, mostly because I liked having the same last name as my children. As a smaller issue, I’d been writing and working under “Katie Allison Granju” for basically my entire adult life at that point, so I figured I had better not mess with that. Plus, I’d already changed my name twice, and I figured that no matter what happened going forward, I was just done with the whole name changing thing. I don’t really want to have a whole “name history” littering my past.

When I remarried, I sort of toyed with changing my name to Hickman, but it just felt right to remain who I was - who I’d been at that point for my entire adult life: Granju. Interestingly, Jon also came into our marriage with a name leftover from his first marriage. When he and his ex married, he took her maiden name as his new, legal middle name: Adair. And even though they broke up, he likes the name and doesn’t really feel like dealing with the hassle of another legal change, so he retains the name he took on via a woman he’s no longer married to.

In hindsight, I wish I’d just kept my name when I first married. That’s what I’ll enthusiastically suggest to my daughters should they ever tie the knot.

katie allison granju

Do any of you have this rule? Why? How do you make it work? How does it work in practice?

katie allison granju

I met someone for the first time at a meeting today - someone I’d heard a lot about over the years. She had also read some of my writing and heard about me from here and there, but we had never met in person.

At the mtg, I was wearing some black slingback pumps, and this black Prada knockoff shift dress just bought. No make-up. Still working toward my Gwyneth-Paltrow-in-the-move-Sliding-Doors-haircut hair.

After she and I had chatted for a whle, she told me I wasn’t at all what she expected.

“I thought you would have long hair and birkenstocks and be all sort of earthy crunchy and stuff.”

II laughed, and told her that after a brief flirtation with some birkenstock wearing in the early 90s, I now have a moral opposition to birkenstocks and crocs and anything resembling such shoes on my feet (go for it if you love them - they just aren’t for me). They make my feet look all….hobbit-ey.

I found t really funny that - at least to one person - I have a very different “written persona” than I actually am in person.

It was a fun meeting, actually.

katie allison granju

katie allison granju

Primary Wave, the publisher that owns most of the Hall & Oates catalog is shopping around a cartoon called “J-Stache” in which John’s upper-lip hair is used as a weapon to fell such evil stache-wearing villains as Tom Selleck and David Crosby.

katie allison granju

Not only does this record shimmer and sizzle (excellent qualities for summer pop listening), you can download the whole dang thing FOR FREE.

katie allison granju

katie allison granju

Suddenly, however, she is on a nurse-o-rama all night long. And occasionally she lets me know - I can just tell - that not only does she want to nurse 645 times, she also wants a bottle during the night.

This all started right after we returned from vacation (she slept great on vacation), at about the same time she suddenly started to crawl, and attempt to walk, and started saying her first two words clearly: “Bye” and “Cat.” She has a lot of developmental things going on all of a sudden.

One of the great things about having several older children is that I have perspective on stuff like this. With H., if he had been waking all night, I would have been (and was) incredibly frustrated and worried and anxious. With C., even after a hard week of low-quality sleepage like we’ve had, I am relaxed because I know that next month will be different, and this too shall pass.

katie allison granju