Snoodlings

(From John’s website www.www.thebeautifuldue.wordpress.com)

I met Brennan Manning at the Christian Booksellers Association Convention in New Orleans during the summer of 2000. He signed a copy of The Ragamuffin Gospel for me. I guess I spent less than five minutes in his presence and he probably only spoke a handful of soft-spoken words, but something about him greatly affected me. I think it was his eyes. I just wrote, rewrote, and deleted at least a half dozen sentences trying to describe that experience, but I can’t get it right without sounding like some crazy Brennan Manning groupie, which I’m not.

In fact, the first time I read The Ragamuffin Gospel, I struggled with its message. I felt like it let Christians off the hook too easily and didn’t demand enough from them. It made grace seem “cheap.” We can talk more about that in a little while, but the point I’m trying to make is that I didn’t stand in line to have Brennan Manning sign my book because I was one of his biggest fans. But when I left, something about him made me wish I could just be in his presence for a little while longer. When I looked in his face, I saw love, humility, but also sadness. Something about that meeting really touched my heart in a way I don’t seem to be able to explain. I don’t know if you’ve ever had an experience like that with someone you’d never met, but the experience of meeting him has never left me.

Several months ago, Meredith told me that her husband John was writing a book with Brennan about Brennan’s life and I’ve been anxiously waiting for it ever since. Brennan is in his late 70s now. His health is failing and my guess is that this book with John will be his last. The book came out a few weeks ago. I was finally able to get a copy and I finished it yesterday…while I was supposed to be finishing my laundry.

It wrecked me.

Knowing that these could very well be Brennan’s last words certainly set the tone for a heart-breaking read, but the transparency and vulnerability of the book left me undone.

This past year has been the hardest year of my spiritual life. I have drawn sharp boundaries between my everyday life on the outside and my relationship with God. One world is full of sunshine and hope. The other is a dark place. I don’t want to discuss it with you here right now, but I say it to let you know that the Amy who read The Ragamuffin Gospel is in a very different place than the one who read All is Grace. From where I stand right now, I couldn’t even afford the “cheap grace” that was afforded the Ragamuffin in his book.

Which is why Brennan’s story in All is Grace brings me to my knees.

Brennan’s story isn’t pretty. His life has been a mess. According to the way the story’s supposed to go in Christian circles, he was supposed to fight alcoholism and win and live happily ever after with lots of speaking engagements and book deals. That’s not the way this story goes. Everybody loves the story of the sinner saved by grace who lives life as a New Creation and never goes back to the old ways ever again. Those are the people God loves and uses to change the world for His glory.

Right?

But what about those who know Him and still fall short of His glory? It doesn’t make sense. How could those  of us who have known God’s grace and favor ever choose another way over His? What do you do with those of us who were on the path to do big things for God only to find ourselves sitting on the side of the wrong road questioning the whole process?  Because I’ve been there. I am there.

This book didn’t tie all loose ends up neatly at the end. I finished it with more questions than answers. But what I took away is a reminder that God doesn’t love me because I’m good enough to love. He loves me even when I don’t love Him back. He doesn’t always choose his straight A students to make His glory known to the world. He often chooses the remedial students who’ve been held back and keep having to repeat grades.

This book doesn’t glorify or make light of sin or bad choices. Brennan Manning’s life is a daily reminder of the consequences of his alcoholism. His disease has cost him so much.

I used to think that to endorse an author I had to completely agree with everything he or she wrote. I don’t think that anymore because I even disagree with myself a lot these days. I just wanted to tell you that this book touched my heart and spoke love into a dark place that hasn’t felt much of anything in awhile.

Here’s who John said was the intended audience for his book. I certainly fit the criteria. Maybe you do, too:

1. I like to camp!

You heard it here first, I not only survived, I had a great time! It had been way too long since I’d spent a chunk of uninterrupted time outside playing. Out in the woods, the air was sweeter and the stars were so much brighter. The daytime weather could not possibly have been more beautiful.  I loved watching my kids be kids. I liked being unplugged from my regular routine and plugged into my family.

2. I actually prefer cold weather for camp sleeping.

Even though our area broke a weather record for lowest temp on that date (Congratulations.), 38 degrees didn’t seem as cold as I thought it would. I actually sleep better when it’s cold, much to my husband’s chagrin. He doesn’t always enjoy my desire to have the overhead fan in our bedroom set to what he calls “propeller speed,” but I like to snuggle in warm blankets with only my face exposed to the cold. So the temperature didn’t bother me. No, my sleep challenges resulted in lesson 3:

3. Next time I’m bringing an air mattress or at least a better sleeping pad. Those paper towel-thick I rented from Outdoor Rec didn’t do a whole lot for me. I’m a side sleeper and after only a few minutes I’d lose all feeling on whatever side I was sleeping which required me to turn to the other side. Which is harder to do in a flannel sleeping liner inside a sleeping bag than I thought it would be. But I managed.

4. I’m also bringing toilet paper. Enough said about that lesson.

5. Everything tastes better outside and I’m pretty sure the calories don’t count. All that outside living made us hungry and food has never tasted better. And as I’m sure you’d all agree, nothing beats a campfire s’mores. Or several campfire s’mores.

6. Even though you know the stories your Pack Master told around the campfire about the Euchee Maniac and the purple gorilla and the Indian ancestors who pull kids through the floor of their tents aren’t true, it’s hard not think about those stories on your way to the bathroom by yourself with only a dim flashlight to light your way.

I never have to get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, but I had to get up Saturday night. I didn’t wake anyone to tell them I was going, so as I walked to the bathroom which was a little walk from our tent, I realized no one in the world knew where I was.

But I made it back to my tent safe and sound.

7. I love my bathtub and bed more than I ever have because of FamCamp. I don’t know when I’ve ever been so glad to be clean and so happy to snuggle in my own warm bed.

I have a few pictures from our phones but today is a teacher work day at my kids’ school (Woo to the hoo!) and I don’t want to miss out on spending this extra day with them, so this unedited post of lessons learned will have to suffice for today.

I hope you all enjoyed your weekend at least half as much as I enjoyed mine and I hope you have a great Monday!

Today is “Dress Like a Book Character Day” at my kids’ school. It’s written on the Spirit Week instructions I attached to my refrigerator. It’s typed on the homework assignment sheets in my second graders’ binders that I look at every single day. My fifth grader even brought home a two-page letter about it. I wrote it on my calendar in large capital letters. It’s been one of the morning announcements that my kids have heard every morning this week at school. So how none of us remembered that today is “Dress Like a Book Character Day” at my kids’ school until fifteen minutes before bedtime is still one of the great mysteries of life. Or at least one of the great mysteries of this week.

Actually, I probably wouldn’t have thought about it until this morning on the way to school if my sitter hadn’t cancelled about an hour before an event I was supposed to attend. I was sitting at the dinner table with my calendar planning my To Do list for today when I remembered and the craziness began. I hate to think how much more frenzied this morning would have been had we not remembered until today. Because this morning we reached my mind and body’s top capacity for frenzied-ness.

I think a better name for Book Character Day at our house is “Call to Mind Any Random Book Character You Can Who Might Look Like Whatever Costume We Can Throw Together Using Stuff Out of the Dress-Up Box and Other Random Stuff We Have Around the House.” But I guess that’s a little wordy. You would think we’d know to be better prepared. We had Book Character Night at my kids’ old school. But I always seem to be throwing something together and trying to make stuff fit. (Remember our shark character from a couple of years ago?)

My daughter’s outfit was the easiest. After only a couple of false starts we remembered that she was Dorothy for Halloween last year and luckily for us, Dorothy was in a book before she was in the movies, so, thanks to L. Frank Baum and ruby red slippers that we bought a little too big last year so thankfully they still fit, we were set.

We had the makings of a pirate costume so I asked my oldest what books he’d read that had pirates as characters. Luckily, he’s read Treasure Island so he’s going to school dressed like Black Dog. He wanted to be Long John Silver but we didn’t have time to rig up pants that made him look like he only had one leg. He tweaked his costume until way past his bedtime. Once we had the basic pirate look going, I was done. He, however, was looking for handkerchiefs to to stuff in the ends of his sleeves to look like frilly cuffs and a drawstring bag for his doubloons. Time constraints and stress squelch my inner Martha Stewart  tendencies but they apparently enhance his.

The quest for a costume for my youngest son was a little more challenging. He’s not a big fan of dressing up in costumes in the first place, so I was surprised at his enthusiastic brainstorming as we rummaged through our dress-up box. The boys don’t use the box much anymore so it’s become mostly a repository for my daughter’s dresses and costume jewelry so our options were limited. After we’d pulled out the too small Halloween costumes and ruled out the possibility of him going as Scarlett O’Hara (“Who’s he?”), our choices were between Tom Sawyer and Jack from the Magic Treehouse series (who could also double as Encyclopedia Brown, if so desired). My youngest son loves the Magic Treehouse series so he opted to dress like Jack, the protagonist of the series.

My oldest son had dressed as Jack for his first Book Character experience and I know that once upon a time I made the perfect Jack glasses. But that was three or four moves ago and no one has any idea where those glasses are right now. If I were a betting girl, I’d say chances are pretty good I’ll find them when I’m looking for something else next week. My son found his daddy’s  prescription reading glasses which would have been perfect except his dad actually uses those glasses. I have a collection of Dollar Tree readers (Which, for the record, I don’t actually need yet. I just like to be prepared which is so not in line with the theme of the rest of this post.) so I punched the lenses out a pair of tortoiseshell glasses and figured we were all set. Except, my son informed me, those were girl glasses and he didn’t want to look girly. Again for the record, they didn’t look girly, but he remained unconvinced. He found his dad’s spare pair of prescription, not-from-the-Dollar-Tree reading glasses and suggested since Daddy had two, we could punch the lenses out of those. I tried to explain that older people need backups of things and sometimes they even need backups of their backups and that those glasses cost way more than $1 and how they weren’t ours to destroy and we couldn’t ask Daddy right that minute because he was at the function Mama was supposed to be attending and…he could not have cared less. I told him I’d ask Dad about the glasses when he got home but to count on the tortoiseshell Dollar Tree readers to be our probable option.

He woke up first this morning and immediately wanted to know what Daddy had said. I told him, as we expected, we needed to go with the Dollar Tree readers. At which point he decided he wasn’t going to dress up. In fact, he wasn’t going to school at all. His dad suggested he felt left out because his older brother and younger sister had more elaborate outfits. I wasn’t sure the eye patch from the pirate-themed restaurant, my old jean jacket, his dad’s combat boots, his tri-cornered hat from Patriots’ Day, some chopped up pants from the dress-up box, and his Webelos’ kerchief could fall into the “elaborate” category, but I again offered up the Tom Sawyer offering. He tried it on, called it dumb, and went to sulk in his room.

By this time, I was running out of patience and time. I really needed to be able to scratch this off my list so I could attack my Camp Trip To Do list with great passion and zeal. Or at least get it done, too. Dad stepped in and we tag teamed the youngest boy and twenty tense minutes later he decided to go with his original Jack (or Encyclopedia Brown) plan.

It was a fun morning.

Their father, who has known me long enough to know when my last nerve is frayed, offered to take the literarily-dressed children to school and I jumped on the offer firmly with both feet and stuck the landing. I did, however, risk tardiness to pull them out of the truck to get a picture of them in their book regalia, because dadgumit, I wanted a pictorial memory of this day. Right this moment, the memory’s still very almost too fresh, but I just have a feeling it will be a funnier memory sometime down the road.  And since this story demonstrates how my memory isn’t really my best friend these days, I may be down the road a little sooner than I expected. So you go ahead and laugh at this picture now and I’ll catch up by next Wednesday or so.

Hopefully, barring any unforeseen bear attacks or death-by-frostbite over the weekend, I’ll be back next week. Happy Weekend!

I’ve been gathering our camping supplies.

I don’t get camping. I get spending time outside in the beautiful world that God created. I understand why people enjoy hiking and being in nature. But I don’t get sleeping on the cold, hard ground when I have a soft, comfortable bed with fluffy pillows in my house that has a thermostat to keep the temperature set to “cozy” twenty-four hours a day.

So guess who’s going camping this weekend?

Not RV camping with beds and mini-kitchens. I’m talking old school camping. With tents. No kitchens. A community bathroom that’s a good hike away from our campsite. For two nights in a row I will sleep in a sleeping bag in a tent on the hard-packed earth. With a bunch of Cub Scouts. And temperatures in the 40s.

I love being a girl, but I’m no diva. I’m not afraid of dirt. I love to try new things. I’m excited about the daytime activities we have planned and I’m looking forward to s’mores and sing-a-longs around the campfire. But no one has been able to sufficiently explain to me what we will gain from sleeping outside. Why can’t we get there early and stay late? What will we gain from lying in the dark in the cold listening to each other snore?

I went to South Africa the summer before my senior year of college. We had planned to spend a few days at a feeding station in the middle of nowhere where there was no electricity or running water. Ultimately, we had to cancel that part of our trip because rebel fighting had moved to close to the border near where we were to be, and I was crushed. I had really been looking forward to the whole experience. I didn’t mind roughing it for a purpose.

But someone please explain to me what we are accomplishing by sleeping in the dirt when we have beds at home?!

I am excited about cooking over an open fire. (Yes, this might be an appropriate place to wonder why I struggle with sleeping outside because I have a bed yet I’m eager to cook outside when I have a stove. Don’t confuse me with logic.) I’ve been looking for good campfire recipes on the Internet. I’ve been re-reading some of Jana’s posts about cooking at camp. She’s a friend of my friend Meredith and apparently her family is into the whole camping thing. I’m going to drive over to Bass Pro Shop to see if I can find one of the pie irons that she uses in a lot of recipes. And a heated sleeping bag. And a temperature-controlled tent. Or a blow-up cabin.

Honestly, I’m looking forward to sharing this camping experience with my family, I really am. I’m sure laughs will be had and memories will be made. And sleep will be lost. And new blog fodder will probably be created. It’s a win-win for everyone.

So, friends, are any of you avid campers? Any tips for this novice? Recipes we could try? Ideas on how you get all the food out there and keep it from giving us all botulism? Any and all advice is welcome here.

I’m off to look for that blow-up cabin. Wish me luck!

from www.amazon.com

It’s Spirit Week at my kids’ school aka Stretch Mom’s Stylist Skills Way Too Early in the Morning Week. Today is Wacky Wednesday. It takes longer to put together an outfit that looks like absolutely no thought went into planning it than one might think. I’m not sure why wearing mismatched socks, inside out and backwards clothes, and crazy hairstyles inspires school spirit, but it was deemed appropriate for today on the Spirit Week instruction sheet the kids brought home last Friday and we try to be team players around here.

Speaking of team players, on the way to school my son anxiously exclaimed, “Oh, no!!” and accompanied his outburst with a quick palm thrust to his head. This usually is his sign for “I forgot something” so I started looking around the car to see what we’d left at home. Band is on Tuesdays and Thursdays so I knew we didn’t need his trombone. He had his backpack and I’d seen him frantically stuff his papers into it on the way out the door (never mind that our family way is to have our backpacks ready to go the night before). I’d signed all permission slips pending for the week so I asked him, “What is it?” to which he responded, “Never mind.” This is usually his sign for “I’ve forgotten to tell you something that I don’t want to mention now because you’re probably going to be irritated and gripe at me.” Eventually after a couple of minutes of coaxing, he informed me that he’d forgotten about basketball the day before.

I did, in fact, find this news irritating and preceded to gripe because I filled out the paperwork for him to play basketball at his school the first week of school. I added my name to the email list of parents who wanted to be informed when basketball began. I had discussed with my son the importance of writing announcements and assignments in his school-required planner because “now you’re a fifth grader and people are going to expect you to begin taking responsibility for your information.” But somehow we’ve missed the start of basketball.

When we arrived at the school, I accompanied the kids to the main office (Did I mention we were late today? Our first tardy of the year, so it’s appropriate that it happened on Wacky Wednesday, I guess.) to check them in to school and I asked the secretaries if they had any more information about the start of basketball. They did not. They made a few phone calls and although we didn’t get all of the information, we found out practices/clinic/try-outs/whatever-is-going-on-with-the-basketball-in-the-gym started Monday afternoon. Sigh.

I took a big, cleansing breath, hugged my son to my side, and assured him that all was well. I sent him off to begin his school day secure in his mother’s love and confident in his ability to do better next time.

No, I didn’t. I left in a huff. I don’t think I even told him goodbye.

At least I hadn’t blown it with my two youngest kids. Except that I did. We decided to spike my youngest son’s hair which he thought was a great idea,right up until after I’d smeared hair wax all through his hair to make it stand on end. At which point he decided he didn’t want to have spiked hair. It’s hard to undo hair gel without washing hair which we didn’t have time to do. So I fussed and he whined and the mood for my morning with him was set. I gnawed on my daughter’s goodwill by reminding her she was the one who always made us late and grilling her on why she hadn’t planned her outfit the night before like I’ve told her over and over and over to do. So as they were walking down the hall to their classrooms, tardy slips clutched in their little hands, they weren’t whistling “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah.”

Neither was I as I stomped to my minivan and drove back home with my fists and jaw clenched.

Crud. I blew that one.

It’s hard teaching little people how to become responsible adults. It’s hard knowing when to step in and rescue and when to let them flounder on their own. It’s hard knowing that I haven’t heeded my own advice to “just breathe.”  It’s hard not to become overwhelmed with deadlines and responsibilities and obligations. It’s hard to remember what’s most important during weeks when every day feels like Wacky Wednesday.

We are entering the busy season. Life keeps speeding up with more and more things added to our To Do lists and it won’t slow down until after the holidays. I don’t want to look back in January and realize that I missed my favorite time of year because I was too wrapped up in all the “stuff.”

So let’s make a pact. We might not be able to keep the Wednesdays from being Wacky, but we don’t have to be whacked by them! Let’s share our wisdom with one another and talk about what we do to make sure that the main thing stays the main thing in our lives. Do you have any tidbits to help manage the scheduling craziness that happens this time of year? Any time-saving recipes? Decorating ideas to make our holiday nests cozy? Seen any good holiday ideas on Pinterest lately that we might have missed? Good gift ideas to keep us from spending too much money this holiday season? Any family traditions we might want to adopt? If you can put aside my earlier mistakes of the day, I have a few ideas to share. If you have any ideas, send them to me at snoodlings@live.com.  I’ll start posting our tips and ideas on Wednesdays.

In the meantime…

Happy Wacky Wednesday!

I had a great weekend in Arkansas. I had planned to spend  a few posts this weeks telling some stories about the weekend, just liked I’d planned to leave Arkansas bright and early Sunday morning, pick up the kids and my mom at her house in Louisiana, and drive back home. But didn’t someone somewhere once say that life’s what happens when you’re making other plans? I did leave Arkansas bright and early Sunday morning and drove to Louisiana, but instead of driving to my mom’s house, I drove to the hospital, where my mom had been admitted.

She’s been having some health problems for awhile now, and Saturday she started having some symptoms that looked a lot like a stroke. She went to the emergency room where the doctors admitted her to the hospital and proceeded to administer every test they had to administer. I even think they were making some up on the spot. She was discharged Tuesday and although we don’t know a whole lot more than we did before she was there, we were able to rule out a lot of bad and scary things, including stroke.

Remember when I told you a few weeks ago that as you get older every body part gets its own doctor? Well, I left my mom with strict orders and new boundaries and waiting for lab results and appointments with more new doctors. As soon as we can get a few appointments taken care of in Louisiana, we’re hoping to have her come stay with us for a little while.

In the meantime, I got home yesterday evening and hit the ground running with Cub Scouts, permission slips, party RSVPs and laundry. I am so thankful for a husband who can fill in the gaps and understood and supported my need to be with my mom until things leveled out a little. I am grateful for kids who have become experts at “going with the flow.” I am still touched by Louisiana friends who act like family and have mastered the act of “showing up.”

We’ll talk about Arkansas later, but today I have some catching up to do around the house. I hope your week is going even better than you planned, because that’s sometimes when the best of life happens!

Happy Thursday!

A couple of weeks ago I had a doctor’s appointment. In the course of the doctor’s interview, he asked me if I was experiencing any stress in my life. And I laughed.

Who isn’t experiencing a little stress? Life is stressful. And we’re all busy. If you’re breathing and walking around on the face of this earth, chances are you’re busy and you’re experiencing a little bit of stress.

I’m not sure when our culture decided to wear our busyness and stress as medals of honor. I get tired of the competition to try to appear the busiest. It’s certainly nothing to be particularly proud about, yet we somehow equate the lack of blank space on the blocks of our calendar with success. Maybe we think that in order to justify the space we’re occupying on the planet we have to keep moving at all times….no matter the cost.

I didn’t realize how much tension I was holding in my body until the other day. I was sitting at the computer answering some emails that I should have responded to a couple of weeks ago when I realized that my shoulders were somewhere just below my earlobes. I noticed that my teeth were sore because my jaw was clenched. The TV was off, I wasn’t playing any music, the kids were at school, and I was the only person in the house. I realized that it had been way too long since I’d listened to silence. In the quiet of that moment, I took a deep breath, unclenched my jaw, dropped my shoulders and closed my eyes. I took a minute to just be. To just breathe.

I’m taking a few more minutes to breathe and laugh and remember this weekend. My twentieth (!!) college reunion is this weekend in Arkansas. This is not a convenient time to be away. My To Do lists have sub-lists, the kids will have to miss a day of school, I’m leaving a lot of things undone…..and I’m perfectly okay with that. I have my husband’s blessing and a reserved hotel room with my best friend. All my lists and chores will be waiting when I get back, but I think some time away will be do this body good.

Maybe you can’t get away this weekend, but you can take a few minutes to just be still and quiet. Maybe you, too, need to remind yourself to just breathe.

The blog will be “just breathing” (and barely at that) until I get back, hopefully refreshed and ready to tackle my lists. I’ll see you then!

Have a great weekend!

We had a great family weekend. Full, but fun. I won’t belabor all the details, but probably the highlight of our time was probably our family bike ride yesterday afternoon.

To understand the full significance of this event you need to have a little background information. Up until a couple of weeks ago, neither of my seven-almost-eight-year olds could ride a bike without training wheels. Up until very recently (as in Saturday), one of my seven-almost-eight year olds didn’t know how to tie lace-up shoes. I don’t know if it’s my “advanced maternal age,” which is how my obstetrician classified me the last time I was pregnant (which considering the hormone factory that is a gestating mother of multiples was either a courageous or stupid thing to do), the fact that these two were not born first, or just that I tend towards Type B tendencies, but I don’t stress about milestones the way a few of my friends do. I think it has a lot to do with some wise counsel Carpool Queen gave me when my oldest seemed to be a little slow on the uptake with the whole potty training skill set.  She sagely said, “Amy, I doubt he’ll be wearing a Pull-Up to his senior prom. He’ll be ready when he’s ready.” And, as usual, she was right. He is in fifth grade and wears boxer, thank you very much. Although I doubt he’d be thrilled that I shared that information with the rest of you. Let’s just keep it ourselves, shall we?

So, anyway, the fact that one of my kids didn’t know how to tie shoes and two of them couldn’t ride a two-wheeled bike was something I thought about but not something that caused me to lose sleep.  Last weekend, my next-door neighbor taught my youngest two to ride by putting them on smaller bikes they could balance with both feet on the ground. Literally, within minutes, both kids were riding and my son was even attempting some Evel Knievel moves. So, this weekend we put them on their big bikes and they’re now training for the Tour de France. The shoe tying happened even more quickly. We bought a brand new pair of lace-up tennis shoes a couple of weeks ago that have been sitting in the box because someone didn’t want to learn to tie because it was “just too hard.” Dad took charge of the tutorial on Saturday evening and now “has velcro” is no longer the starting requirement for any future shoe selection.

Yesterday we decided to go for a quick bike ride around the neighborhood just because we could. One of my babies looked over at us as we pedaled down the street and said, “This is a big day for our family. We can all ride bikes and we can all tie our shoes.”

It was a big day indeed.

**This is where I would have inserted the picture my neighbor took of the whole fam on bikes if we could find the connector thingy that attaches Kelly’s phone to the computer. You would have loved it.***

I haven’t had a chance to blog much this week so I’m condensing the posts I would have written into little snippets for you to read today.

1. FEELING LIKE A WICKED DISNEY STEPMOM

from www.rottentomatoes.com

Kelly has been out of town a lot the last couple of weeks so I’ve been the sole disciplinarian. We’ve had a pretty good week, but for some reason we had some “issues” last night that led to me posting these status updates on Facebook and Twitter:

Reduced one child to tears because I wouldn’t let them ride bikes because they hadn’t done what I asked them to do.

Another child is crying because I won’t let her go to a drop-off, 5-hour party for a school friend whose family I’ve never met or talked to (she’s 7!).

So even though I know I’m making wise parenting choices, I feel like a Disney stepmother.

Can I get a witness? Like my friend Gretchen always says, “Parenting is NOT for sissies!” But Daddy gets home in a few hours so this “Bad Cop” will have backup. I’m so thankful for a husband who takes his parenting job just as seriously as he takes the one they pay him to do. I’m also thankful for mom friends who text, Tweet, post on my Facebook wall, and call me to express encouragement and mom solidarity support. I can’t imagine any people I’d rather be doing life with than you all.

2. BETSY ROSS WAS THE BOMB DIGGITY

www.betsyrosspizza.com

Who knew she made pizza, too?!

I had about eighteen Cub Scout badges that needed to be sewn onto uniforms. (Did I mention that Kelly and I are co-leading a Webelos group this year? I definitely didn’t see that one coming. By-the-bye, we’re selling popcorn. You can order online and have it shipped to your house! Let me know if you’re interested. My boys would rise and call you blessed.) Around here it costs $3 per patch to have it done by someone who actually knows how to sew. Eventually, I plan to buy my own sewing machine and have someone teach my daughter and I how to use it. She is fascinated with people who know how to sew, I guess since her mother has been asked not to even sew on buttons anymore after her last attempt resulted in a thread snarl so large that the button could no longer fit through the buttonhole. Her mother also has the rare ability to iron wrinkles into clothes, so she tends to avoid all things fabric-related. But my across-the-street friend assured me that she could at least teach me how to hand sew the patches. I walked over for a quick tutorial and then after the kids were in bed, I sat on the couch and sewed while I watched some of the new fall shows I’d recorded on the DVR…..until 2 a.m.  Speedy I am not. I have a new respect for Betsy Ross.  But I actually enjoyed the process! In fact, I want to learn some sort of mindless needle craft that I can do this fall. I used to love to latch hook, but I’ve never found a use for my finished products. Let’s face it: craft manufacturers are not churning out super cute latch hook patterns and  I’m long past the unicorn and rainbow stage of life. Anyone have any good ideas of an EASY handcraft to try?

3.  SOUP’S ON…..AS SOON AS I FIND A GOOD RECIPE!

from www.brooklynflea.com (which sounds like a weird place to purchase soup)

We’re supposed to get some fall-like temperatures this weekend and I’m excited. The change in the air makes me want to pull out all my fall decorations and make some soup. I was thinking one of the vegetable variety. Do any of you have the best vegetable soup recipe ever that you’d be willing to share? I’d reciprocate with a really good chili recipe that I tried last week.  I’m also jonesing to pull out some of my pumpkin recipes. ‘Tis the season! Although I’ve heard rumors that the pumpkin crop was bad again this year. I hope we don’t have a repeat of the Great Pumpkin Crisis of 2009 and part of 2010! Those were dark and scary times that I’d soon as not repeat.

4.  HAIR TODAY, GONE TOMORROW. I cut off all my hair this week. Well, that sounds scarier than it actually was. I didn’t cut my hair, I paid a trained professional to do it. I’d been trying to grow it out, but I had so much happening on the top of my head that the stylist and I agreed that the easiest thing to do might be to cut it all off and start from an even base. It looked like I had four or five different cuts going on simultaneously. I had one thing happening with the bangs with some weird mullet-looking thing in the back with some other funky wonkiness on the sides. So now it’s chin length and we’ll just see what happens from there.

I’m telling you about my haircut because I noticed something funny. I have never made a major hair decision when I was in a place of emotional calm or when it was just an everyday day. The day my family dog died, I died my hair red. When I was pregnant with my first child and preparing to move further from my family than I’d ever lived, I cut off all my hair. I did that again when we moved to Boston. Sad about a college breakup? I had my hair permed and layered, which by the way should never be attempted even during a time of emotional stability. This week? Well, it’s been a good week, but it’s had more than it’s fair share of unexpected news, changes in plans and lots of mental stuff, good and bad, that I have to eventually sort and process. So I cut off all my hair. I figure it costs about the same as a counseling appointment and at least I look different on the outside when I leave. Does anyone else do this or am I alone in my crazy ways?

5. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SISTER/COUSIN/FRIEND

It’s Albany’s birthday. I could send you to her  work page  to see a picture of her looking resplendent in her gorgeousness. Or I could direct you to this post I wrote about one of our family secrets. But instead I think I’ll show you one of the pictures that I’ve saved to keep us both humble:

We had decided to make “green” velvet cake. I’m not sure why. Maybe it was Saint Patrick’s Day. It doesn’t matter. It was as disgusting as it looks.

I love and miss you, Albany, and I hope you get to do something today especially for you. Wish I were there to be part of the party!

HAPPY WEEKEND, EVERYONE!!

My daughter’s BFF is having a birthday today. We wish we were there to celebrate with her, but since we aren’t, we decided to post a video message instead. You may not even know sweet Ruby Jane, but if you have or have ever had a BFF of your own, I think you’ll like this video.