So many crazy thoughts in my head these days...so many desires ranging through my brain like restless panthers at the zoo. They have a latent power that I wish I could release in a productive, fruitful way.
I want to run away, I want to go to Africa and start an orphanage or help at an orphanage. I want to rock babies that don't know comfort and rub the backs of children who wake in the night and long for a mother's touch. So many needs, so many worthwhile causes.
And yet it is Africa that holds my attention. I have wanted to adopt now for a couple of years. I don't know why God would put that desire there if there is not to be an outlet for it. Instead of going away, it has grown to encompass the abovementioned dreams. I just want my life to make a difference; to do something to ease suffering.
I'm tired of being sated, tired of being satisfied, tired of being so all-consumingly consumed with consuming as much as possible to fill a void that will not be filled with all the goodies in the world! I'm wanting something big, wanting something meaningful, wanting something so very different.
"He who is faithful in a little thing is faithful also in much"
Lord knows I have not been as faithful in the little things as I should have been over the years. I'm working to change that, working to reverse that, before it's too late, so that I might be deemed worthy to have more entrusted to me. May the Lord restore the years that the locusts have eaten!
• 1 Comments • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link
So this weekend I...
painted the ceiling of the dining room
painted the ceiling of the kitchen
stripped wallpaper off the hallway and wiped it down
painted the hallway
painted another coat on the kitchen ceiling
bathed 5 kids
did the laundry
made a salmon dinner with mashed 'taters and green beans (boy was it good)
Pretty amazing, huh? Yeah, I thought so too.
This morning I bent over to pick up a cheerio while holding Toby on one hip and my back went "poing". That's right, just like a cartoon. Except this wasn't funny. Maybe if a big boulder with "Acme boulder company" written on it had fallen on my head, that would have been funny. But this hurt, so that pretty much nullified any comical effect my hobbling into the room and falling on the floor might have had, at least for me.
So now I can barely walk. I need to go to Wal Mart. My back is unsympathetic. I have lots to do still, but my body isn't listening. It has staged a mutiny against which I am helpless to put down.
Pass the ibuprofen.
• 1 Comments • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link
Today I went to the dentist. I was there for 3hrs, 15min. I had 5 cavities filled.
Here's a funny thing...when you eat ice cream and your mouth is half numb, it feels like the ice cream is half cold (the un-numbed side) and half hot (the numbed side). It's weird.
In other news, the contract on the house/property we were contemplating fell through, so we're back at square one preparing to put our house on the market.
Life is funny.
• 2 Comments • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link
Last night I wrote the 100th page in my novel.
100 pages of blithering which may or may not be the ultimate in tripe.
That's the trouble with writing. I just don't know. I'm too close to it. I can't see the forest for the trees. Is this something anybody would want to read? Is there any purpose to this writing? Is is edifying in any way?
There are times when I write something, and as I am writing, I know it is good stuff. My fingers fly, the words flow, and inside I'm thinking yeah! go! go! go!
But it doesn't really happen often enough. Usually I'm writing, and I'm thinking oh good grief, what is the point anyway? Which isn't very good for the writing morale, generally speaking. When I read over what I have read, I think it sounds pretty good, but at the moment...notsomuch.
Which makes it wearisome. Sometimes I get tired of my characters. I think why don't they just get a grip, already? why are they so whiny and petty?
And then I remember that I made them that way, and, hopefully, will improve them with time.
Kind of like God might feel about us, I imagine.
• 2 Comments • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link
So scrap the whole "putting the house on the market so we can move to our dream property" thing. The property in question was snapped up by someone who did not already have a house to sell first. Oh well!
In other news, I finished all the re-write on my novel, some 90 pages. I am now writing new stuff. It's kind of scary.
• 0 Comments • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link
So far, so good...
1. Garden is in place. We've planted pole beans, scarlet runner beans, zucchini & crookneck squash, tomatoes, peas, carrots, watermelon, pie pumpkins, and birdhouse gourds. Now to see if anything actually grows...
2. One week of summer school is almost over. The kids are learning all about birds, keeping nature journals, and, most importantly, enjoying themselves. Our eggs are incubating, and the owl pellets are here (not dissected yet, though...that will happen next session when we study owls and birds of prey. Our summer school is divided into three 3-week sessions. This first one is a general overview of birds and how they work).
3. Have a tile dude coming next week to give us an estimate on the aforementioned bathroom.
4. My dentist appointment is this Tuesday. I'm so, so very excited. Not.
5. Tobias has an eye appointment with the pediatric opthamologist on the 19th. I think almost-8-months is older than he told us originally, but hopefully we'll still be able to hog-tie him (Toby, not the opthamologist) well enough to get it done.
6. Ah, yes, the "other stuff". I think you know how much of *that* is getting done.
Oh, and here's a new item on the list:
7. Sell the house. Sell the house??? Why would we want to do such a crazy, disruptive, exhausting, aggravating thing???
Well, we've found 5 acres that we think just might be our dream property, and we're thinking if it is then we'd better try to snag it. All in the Lord's hands, of course...the sellers don't want a contract contigent on us selling our house, so we have to get a buyer before the place we want gets sold. Not sure what the chances of that are, but we're taking the plunge! Say a prayer that we have wisdom in what we are doing. The house on the property is woefully small for us, but we'd be adding on/finishing out certain parts of it to make it work.
• 2 Comments • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link
We have returned from a vacation in Texas to find that summer is in full-force around these parts (it already was in Texas). When I sat to fold the latest batch of laundry I found a long sleeved shirt of mine to put away, which means that before we left it was still spring. Alas, the heat and humidity has arrived for good. Time to break out the sprinkler!
Highlights from our vacation (in no particular order):
1. Target (I'm sure there's some reason we should be boycotting this store, but don't tell me, I don't want to know)
2. Old Navy (ditto above)
3. Kohls (the prices! the prices!)
4. Scarborough Faire (kids had a great, but exhausting, time)
5. IKEA (oh. my. gosh. It was so...beautiful...)
6. fellowship with family
The kids would add swimming, but I didn't do much of that. I sat and watched them to make sure no one drowned. At least the relative's trampoline death-trap was broken, so I didn't have to worry about that.
And now, on with real life.
Things to accomplish this summer:
1. Big, fat, honkin garden full o' veggies and fruits. We plan to get started this weekend. Wish us luck, as we have at least one fat rabbit in our backyard.
2. Summer School. We are keeping nature journals, studying birds, taking hikes, dissecting owl pellets, and hatching quail.
3. Renovate our upstairs bathroom. After a whole year, I'm ready to have a working shower again. Sheesh.
4. Take care of dental work. Is it a bad sign when you can see holes in your teeth?
5. Get Toby's eye punctured so it stops gooping everywhere.
6. Sewing, scrapbooking, and lots of other things that I know will never actually get done but I like to put them on every list I make just in case.
• 3 Comments • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link
So, I'm writing a book.
Hm? Oh, yes. I know.
It's easy to say. Lots of people say it.
I'm writing a book, they say.
And everybody tries to look interested, and maybe they ask a few questions like what is it about, and when will it be finished, and say things like send me an autographed copy when you're done!
But they're not really interested. And they don't really think it'll ever be written. They're just making polite conversation. But I know the truth.
Writing a book is hard.
The process of getting from I'm writing a book to I wrote a book is grueling. I want to be a writer that sits down and it just flows. I want the muse to settle herself down next to me, pour me a cup of coffee, and type away with superhuman speed on my laptop while I drink it (the coffee, not my laptop--it's not really drinkable, but thanks for noticing that poorly worded sentence. Shut up.)
Most often, though, I page the muse eleventy-million times and she never calls back. She's flighty that way.
So I muddle along the best I can, wringing the words out of the depths of my soul, searching for the perfect combination of intellect and emotion, deleting more than I write, taking 3 steps forward and 2 steps back, and every once in a chartreuse moon coming out with something that I actually like.
Maybe I'm doing something wrong. I wouldn't know, having never written a book before. But I know one thing for sure...
When I'm done, I'll be happy to sign your copy, but you're gonna have to fork over the dough for it.
• 1 Comments • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link
We. Are. Sick.
Again.
~~insert primal cry~~
Gabriel erupted yesterday afternoon. Molly last night. This morning Gabriel was perched unsteadily at the top of the staircase, eyes bleary, hair a blond froth of tangles. He croaked "yeah" at me when I asked him if he was feeling better, but one touch of his fiery little body proclaimed the opposite. He's watching his beloved Thomas the Tank Engine right now, drinking lots of water, a towel under his head in case of further spewage.
I haven't checked on Molly yet.
This ranks right up there with "ask the same question repeatedly, even after receiving an answer 5 times" in the list of How to Drive Someone Insane.
What are you saying, Lord? Is there a lesson here somewhere, other than the obvious one of Service to the Striken? Mayhap You are saying something? Something like "Clean up thine eating habits, oh lover of sweets and convenience foods"? I hear You. Really, I do! I'm not deaf to Your wisdom, only stuck faster in my ways than a 15 passenger van off the soft shoulder of a country road (but that's another story). Our bodies round these parts more resemble slop troughs than temples of the Holy Spirit. Why must change be so hard?
• 0 Comments • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link
In this story, I walk along a beach. I wear jeans, rolled up to just below my knees to avoid the surf. I glory in the feel of the water foaming and eddying around my ankles. I stroll casually, but I am careful to keep to the shallows. I am wearing jeans, after all, and wet denim is a distracting sensation, to say the least. I do not want distractions. I want to concentrate on the sea air, the taste of salt on my lip, the sound of gulls crying, and the sight of pelicans nose-diving into the ocean.
If you have ever walked along a beach in just such a way, then you know how the story ends.
I stoop to examine a bit of sea flotsam, or study the acrobatic wheeling of a certain bird, and the sea presses its advantage. A wave that is just that much bigger than the others scrambles up my shin for a mad second and I leap away, but not fast enough. My jeans are wet with the salty, scratchy sea water, and I can almost hear the wave snickering as it melts away. The ocean has a way of catching you off guard.
There are times--not often, but more frequently than can be classified as "seldom"--when I'll be overtaken in my busy-ness by a wave of recollection that leaves me standing, mildly perplexed, like one with seawater-soaked cuffs, unsure of how best to proceed. These recollections are not of my "glory days" of high school popularity and prestige, in which some are prone to wallow (actually having such days would make those recollections more likely in my case), but travel back a little farther, and that's where you'll find me. Rewind another, oh...eight or ten years...See me? At the bank drive-through? I'm the one with stringy blonde hair and glasses, sitting in the front seat of the green station wagon. Yeah, I actually won the "I'm in the front seat by Mom!" call that day after school as I rushed towards the car with my two brothers. I'm waving at the bank teller, waiting for her to ask The Question.
"How many kids ya got in there with ya?" she says, her voice a tinny resonance from the speaker.
"Three" Mom calls back.
The plastic projectile shoots through the tube and my mother retrieves it. There is a momentary tussle as my brothers and I grapple for its contents, but the fates are once again smiling on me, and I emerge victorious. I get the grape. My brothers get the pineapples.
The strength of these memories amazes me. The oddest things will trigger them. Let the light pass through the window in just the right way and I'm a 9 year old again, sitting on my bedspread talking to my stuffed animals. The scent of springtime soil as I turn it over in my garden catapults me back to the running board of my Dad's tractor, where I stand next to him on a swealtering summer day, yelling to be heard above the engine's roar. I am 10, and he's letting me have a ride once around the field as he plows.
At times the longing to be a child again nearly takes my breath away, like that errant wave that turns out to be a little colder than anticipated. Life overwhelms me. I don't want to be the mom/adult/spouse/responsible party. Just once more, I want to walk through the door and smell dinner in the oven, and hear come sit down and tell me about your day. I want mom to pick me up from school so I don't have to ride the bus for an hour before I get home, and I want to go to the library and pick out 15 of my favorite books to bury myself in. I want to sleep over at my best friend's house and wake up with absolutely nothing to do for a full 24 hours. I want to ride to the swimming pool in that old station wagon, telling mom to turn off the air conditioner for the last 5 minutes so that the water will surpass mere relief and take on a near-mystical quality of bliss when we finally plunge in.
Who can predict the moments that become memory? The things we never intend to remember at all become the memories we cherish. We take for granted the blessings we are surrounded by and realize one day that the very taking for granted was part of the blessing. The definition of nostalgia is a bittersweet longing for things, persons, or situations of the past. Bitter, because it is gone. Sweet, because it was ours for a time. And I enjoy the little waves that catch me by surprise. I wring out my cuffs, smile at the water, and continue on my way.
• 2 Comments • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link
Wow, what a great template. But what is that funny looking apparatus there on the top of my page? It looks vaguely familiar, but I can't quite put my finger on what it could be...some sort of primitive communications device, perhaps? I seem to recall having one in my possession oh so, so very long ago.
I can't really be this old, can I? Not REALLY? But yes! I can! My oldest child saw a station wagon, a real, honest to goodness, terrifically long, horribly hued, battered relic of a station wagon the other day, and she burst into guffaws of disbelief.
"WHAT kind of car is THAT??" she spluttered.
And then I wept.
No, not really. I told her that THAT was exactly what I rattled around in every day of my childhood, apparently eons ago. I remember laying in the "way back" (our term--my brothers and mine--for the farthest reaches of the fuselage) amidst blankets, pillows, and stuffed animals, gliding along through the dark on our way to Grandma's house in Texarkana; one ear pressed against the floor, listening to the gentle ~ker-chunk~ker-chunk~ker-chunk~ of the wheels as they hit each separation in the highway, the other ear attuned to the whispers of my brothers and the barely discernable murmur of my parents in the distant front seat as they charted our position.
The Mr. and I will celebrate 20 years of marriage this year, another fact that never ceases to give me pause. I know we discussed, at some point in our youthful immortality, what it would be like to be married for so long. Back when the anticipation of things to come caused our hearts to beat a little faster, and all the potential of Anything and Everything hung heavy on the horizon like an exotic fruit just waiting to be plucked and savored. We discussed how old our oldest would be when we hit the big 2-0. And I can't remember exactly, but I'm fairly certain that, in my mind at least, I giggled at the sheer ridiculousness of the notion. I mean, come on! That was how long our PARENTS had been married!
But here we are. And there it went. Did you hear that noise? That was the faint whisper the fabric of time makes as it gently billows past your preoccupied mind. It is rarely heard in the daily hubbub, but once in a while, in the wee hours, when the house is still and you sit alone with your thoughts...you hear it. And you don't know whether to weep or to laugh at the deceitfulness of the years--all you know is how very grateful you are for the reality of the Forever at the end.