They say what goes around comes around and that pride goes before a fall. The first one was probably said by some dude named Bill. The second one was a Holy Spirit thing, so that one is definitely true. I haven’t ever considered, though, that the fall could be so literal.

This time it was.

A plateful of literal falling, with a side dish of the metaphorical kind. Life would be nothing without metaphors, right?

Anyway, the day’s plan was to drive an hour and a half into the mountains and hang out at the ancient, charming family cabin. It comes complete with a sparkling mountain stream, a shed full of bikes to ride, and lots of sticks to form into bows, arrows, swords, and hiking sticks.

It also had one other amenity that I did not expect.

I was down at the river helping to oversee the children’s activities of mud pie baking, wading up to the waist in full-out blue jeans, and rock skipping. Not far into this, both of my girls expressed the need to use some facilities. One of them was content to use the natural facilities outdoors. The other was not. So I had to traipse back up the path to the cabin to help her find an actual bathroom. Upon finishing all of that, we walked out the back door to the porch and were met face to face with…..

….a BEAR! A full sized mama bear. And boy was I freaked out!

That did not happen. Tell me you did not buy into that.

We were actually met face to face with my oldest boy and a 14-year-old cousin of the people we are staying with out here.

“Hello, boys!” I said, as I was about to push past them to walk back to the river.

“Hi mama,” AG said, somewhat sheepishly. The other boy spoke next.

“Hey, will you play Quidditch with us? We have 3 players and we need one more.”

What? Is he talking to me? Am I awake right now?

“What?” I asked, questioning my very bad ears. “Quidditch? How do you play that?”

I mean, I’ve read a few Harry Potter books and I know what Quidditch is. But technically, it’s played with flying balls and broomsticks, so forgive me for being a little dense as to how it converts to a Colorado backyard. I felt it was a fair question.

“Come on,” he said. “We’ll show you.”  I walked around the bend and there in the middle of a green grassy lawn were two chairs, both with posts and quidditch hoops duct taped to them. Well, there you have it. A quidditch–place. Court? Field? Diamond? Not even sure the terminology. Either way, there it was. And there were the other three players just looking at me.

The teenage cousin spent 5 minutes telling me the rules. I was a chaser. My 9-year-old teammate was a seeker. Chaser meant that I got to run like a drunk gazelle trying to throw a basketball through these homemade hoops. Seeker meant that my buddy got to crawl around on his hands and knees in the grass looking for a golf ball spray painted gold. Grandma had hidden the golden snitch and man, was she good at hiding things.

Well, hmm. If you have ever known me, there are two things you already know: (1) I’m kind of an idiot. I love stupid things and I love exciting things. Sometimes I don’t know which is which. (2) I’m just a teeny, tiny bit competitive.

I didn’t go into that game wanting to sprain my ankle. I didn’t go into it feeling any danger or risk. But I did go into it wanting to win. How cool would it be for a 41-year-old lady to beat a teenager? Cool, indeed.

I was a chaser. And chase I did.

I scored on that fella quite a few times. And while I was doubled over, dry heaving, he scored on me. It was tied at 60 to 60, with the golden snitch still missing, when I got the ball back. It was mine. The goal was in sight. Find the snitch, boy, we can win it all!

And then…then, something happened. I wish I knew what. Right in the middle of a sprint for the goal, my ankle turned against me. And in one split second, I went down like a hogtied manatee. Thwummmmmp. Down on my right ankle. Down on my right wrist. The ball went flying, but did not sail through my goal thingie. It landed firmly in the hands of my worthy opponent.

My leg was pinned underneath me and I was, at that moment, in terrific pain. It was intense. I was surrounded by people I hardly knew: a 14 year old who was waiting to beat me, a grandma I had just met, a great aunt with a cane, and a talking parrot named Little Bit. Even the parrot was shocked at this turn of events.

When the searing pain of the initial injury died down, I took my shoe off to look and it was swollen. After a few minutes of deciding whether I would walk away, or limp away with a cane, my opponent spoke up.

“Um, hey. Is it okay if I just score on you now?”

Sigh.

“Yeah, sure. Go ahead,” I muttered. “Sorry, Chesley,” I said to my seeker. The game was pretty much over. Soon after that, my son found the golden snitch and it officially ended. I got up using the cane of an older, but now healthier, woman, and hobbled in to ice my ankle.

In the meantime, my friend was stuck at the river with-like-8000 children. There’s no telling what they were doing, but my 8-old-old was wet to the waist in jeans and thrashing around like someone who is intent upon drowning. The others had to be carried back to the cabin. I think she was ready to roast me over hot coals by the time she saw me sitting on the back porch. I’m sure I looked like a lemonade-sipping primadonna, but I was really just trying to hold it together. I was sweaty, sore, had just lost a quidditch match for crying stinking out loud, and felt like I had thrown the day and all my people under the bus. The last thing we needed was me to be a dead-weight with a borrowed cane.

I don’t know if it was the pain or the sweating or the humiliating loss on the quidditch field, but I actually cried a little bit. I think it was half pain, half embarrassment. I really did feel like an idiot. But I don’t think anyone knew I was acting like a 4 year old, because I had on shades. Now the worldwide web knows, though, so I guess I didn’t save any face after all.

The rest of the day was me nursing my ankle and watching things unfold around me that I could not help with. The snitch-hiding grandma led me into the family room, sat me in the nicest chair in the house, brought me ice and sat down with me to talk. This was, strangely enough, almost worth an embarrassing ankle sprain. This woman might be one of the nicest, funniest, most pleasant and nurturing people I have ever met. I was instantly at ease.

She told me she was sorry I had sprained my ankle, but she was glad I had said yes to the game. She said, “If you hadn’t said yes, you’d be feeling a lot better right now, but you wouldn’t be near as much fun.”

I told that to my friend while she was spreading peanut butter on her 16th piece of bread.

She scowled at me.

She doesn’t know what quidditch is.

We haven’t spoken since.

Not really.

To Baron Wetty of the Skate-off Fiasco I say this: My fall was both more deserved and uglier than yours. However, it was not caught on tape. Then again, you don’t have a cankle. So, this round goes to you!

I honestly didn’t get the Coke joke. Please someone explain it to the mentally deficient, because I missed that.

Your answers gave me a laugh, which I needed. Red rover was a good guess, but it wasn’t that. It wasn’t from chasing and slaughtering a chicken, but that image cracked me up and that was a great guess.

The story will follow soon.

No one will enjoy it more than the recently fallen Baron Wetty. She deserves mocking rights and I freely give them

I have a few travel stories to tell. Unfortunately, after typing a lengthy expose of the obstacles involved in trekking with four children, I lost half the blog due to a login issue. Right now I’m just too tired to recreate it. Part 1 has been saved as a draft. I’ll post it if and when it seems decent enough to do so. For now, I’ll send some postcards and leave you with a few thoughts.

No chickens were harmed in the writing of this blog. Or otherwise. Yet.

If you are offended by boys toting toy weapons, do not scroll down to the pictures.

Mama’s Boy still refuses to trust me on matters that require any adjustment. Nothing much has changed there.

I am really enjoying the total lack of traffic. And cars. And car related sounds.

The deer and antelope play here.

Sorry. It’ll be stuck in your head indefinitely. It has been in mine.

What I learned from a pair of jeans…

Tonight I went to Kohl’s with my mother-in-law. She went with me to save me 20% and to keep me from committing a crime against eyes across America.

I’ve been lying to myself about what size jeans I wear. The truth is, I haven’t worn any REAL jeans in like 8 months. Maybe a year (the lies blur the dates for me). If you were around last summer when my blog went limp and dead, you might know that I spent the summer writing the text for an iPad app which is a choose your own adventure style book thingie. (You can get it on iTunes if you want to support the arts…or the arts wannabes. Search on ebook Time Machine and it will come up. Time Machine: Age of the Emperors. It’s not as weird as it sounds.)  During that summer, I was up to all hours every night, working on some pretty stiff deadlines. Looking back, I have no idea how I did it. I guess I did it with God’s help, the help from 1000 other people, and quite a few 3 a.m. pop tarts.

Which brings me back to the jeans.

If you sit at your desk long enough and eat enough pop tarts, you will part company with your jeans.

I did.

And then I began lying to myself about what was actually going on.

Tonight, I found the truth. Even after working out like a dog for 5 days and eating like a Jenny Craig poster child, I still haven’t lost enough to go shopping. And my jeans still don’t fit. Nor do most of the pairs I tried on at Kohl’s tonight.

I did find some that fit reasonably well. They did not take 20 pounds off me, as I had hoped, or make me look like an Olympic hopeful. Rumor has it there’s no shortcut for that.

They did teach me a thing or two about self-deception, though. You can tell yourself anything you want about what size you wear. But if that isn’t actually your size, you won’t have a fighting chance of stuffing those lies into a pair of Levi’s. I tried it.

And then I left the pack of lies on the floor of the fitting room and went home with a larger sized truth.

I wish I could say that I feel really honest and noble. But I kinda just feel like I own bigger jeans.

 

This is a quick wave from a wheat farm out west. Our travels have been crazy, lengthy, and blessed. God has gone with us every phase. This post is from my phone, and i have much to say when i get the  network password.

Today I will kill and pluck and fry a chicken. I will do it because it is an adventure. It is like the bungee jumping of a farm. The chicken is the jumper. I am the cord. It can’t end well. certainly not for the chicken. Probably not for me either. 

If you were writing a blog about squeezing into too-tight jeans and I were reading it, I would want to ask the question: Why are you buying them if you aren’t happy with it, nim nim?

My mother in law said you have to cover your hiney with SOMETHING.

True. But there’s an awful lot of elastic available that people go for when dieting. So why jeans?

Well, I’ll tell you, since you didn’t ask.

I’m leaving Monday on a Wheat Farm Adventure. As in, I’m going to visit with some friends on a wheat farm. I don’t know what farmers do or what occurs on farms. I am suspecting it’s bad. Bad, bad things occur on farms…things they can’t tell you in the grocery store when they are scanning the barcode of your enriched wheat flour. I imagine walking through the wheat grasses and being bitten on the ankle by a mole hog. Or a pig. Or a coyote.

A farmer might tell you this is not an accurate imagining, but it’s my imagination and my jeans. You can’t take that away from me.

So when I asked what people wear on farms in July, I was told: WEAR JEANS.

That’s why I went shopping last night. And came face to face with the lies, then with the truth, then with the bigger sized jeans.

Also, my sister in law, inspired by my recent skating landslide victory, challenged me to a race in a local roller rink. Why do people keep torturing themselves trying to beat me?

I won. This time I beat TWO OLD PEOPLE.

I know. I may wear bigger jeans than some skaters, but I still skate like a greased vapor. She really should have known not to challenge me; I was wearing elastic pants…

There are activities that are obviously, CLEARLY age appropriate and then there are ones that are not. For example, a 10-year-old should never drive a car. A 64-year-old shouldn’t give birth. A 93-year-old shouldn’t walk unaided. Those are obvious.

There’s about a 20 year period of life, however, where everything becomes gray. When I turned 30, the number sounded shocking to me. My husband helped me ride it out by planning the second coolest surprise birthday party ever. The coolest was my 40th, but that’s not part of this blog. At any rate, I wasn’t upset by a number and in my mind I was still 19. I still felt 19. I was still pretty fit. My ears had not begun to fail me. I was living the dream. Somewhere between then and now, I got old. Older, fluffier, stiffer, a WHOLE lot deafer, and went up a size or SO in clothing. Even so, in my mind, I still almost feel 19. I can at least remember feeling 19. And often, I base my activity choices on the fact that I can still remember feeling 19. My memories are young and fit.

Another factor in my decision making is my competitive edge. I was never a champion at anything, but I was just good enough to not embarrass myself and to act quite a bit more obnoxious than my skill set could uphold.

So, when my friend, Baron Wetty, rolled up next to me in the roller rink the other night and said, “Hey, when racing starts, I’ll race you,” I was forced by my very nature to say, “yes.” It was, to a 41 year old, the equivalent of a triple dog dare.

I feel like I need to step back for just a second and address the fact that I was even skating in the first place. It isn’t my joy in life. Skating is for 12 year olds, give or take 5 years. But every Monday night, my little Christian college has a contract with a local skating rink and it is closed to the public. Only Florida College people are there. But man, are they there. There are a lot of people skating at these things. I skate mostly because I have to. Mama’s Boy and Beloved wouldn’t tolerate the evening as well if I were not on wheels.

I do the whole thing. I hokey pokey, as awkward as it is. I cha cha slide…on skates. You cannot imagine how bad that looks. No, I mean it. Try to picture it. You can’t. If you ever watched Seinfeld and if you ever saw the episode where Elaine Benis dancing, then put roller skates on her and you’ll get close.

I can’t dance.

But I can skate. Reasonably well.

So I said yes to the racing challenge.

Once the “yes” was out of my mouth, I got nervous. Just the word “race” alone indicates a pants-wetting possibility. But that’s not where this story ends. Sorry if that disappoints you.

The next thing I knew, I was standing in a sea of young girls, with two whistle-blowing skate refs ready to call the races. How did I get here?

• My first concern was that I was grotesquely out of place in this grouping of females.
• My second concern was that we were instructed to sit. Sitting meant quite possibly never getting back up, falling upon the attempt to get back up, or exposing some skin that definitely ought not be exposed.
• My third concern became the race. Was Baron fast? Could I beat her? How does one get set on a “starting block” at a roller rink? Is “Roller Rink” a phrase people still use or is that totally 1976?

Some young girls raced. As I watched each race go by, I was more and more convinced that we were morons. Finally, it was our turn: the race for 35-42 year old ladies.

When we got up to the starting line, I actually had no idea what to do with my feet. They were slipping around like I was strapped to a couple of greased pigs. I looked at Baron. She was turned at an angle and ready to go. At this point, I was pretty convinced I was going to lose. And then the whistle blew.

What unfolded during this race, I will leave for you to watch. In case you don’t know either of us too well, I am the one with the big, white man calves. Baron will be the one flailing. Wait. Did I give it away? Also, the Informinator will be the high cackler you can hear as the video closes. I’m sorry the video is so far away. I have another copy coming that highlights the flailing a little better.

Upon watching this pitiful, pitiful exhibition, you might think to yourself that falling is definitely the awkward piece here. I would agree. However, it is also excessively awkward to race around a rink by yourself, shouting like you just won the Spanish-American War. And that is what I did. You could have heard a pin drop in there. Hey, look, everyone! A too-old person is skating alone, whooping and hollering like she’s in a cattle roping contest.

Yeah.

There was no real winner there.

Oh, who am I kidding? I won. Bigtime.

Got myself a free freezer pop out of that deal.  And a firmer picture in my mind that I am not as young as I used to be.