Good Valentine’s Eve, peeps. I apologize again for the lengthy dry spell on this blog. I have found it difficult to type what I didn’t find interesting. Tonight, however, my son made me laugh pretty hard, so I thought I would do a little Ode to Mama’s Boy.

A long time ago, when Mama’s Boy was barely 4 years old, if that, and had a tiny, raspy little Linus voice, we were sitting across each other eating lunch. He was eating something ridiculous like chicken nuggets, I feel sure. I was eating a bowl of tuna. He looked up from his food and very seriously asked me, “Mama, what if everyone in the world was named Uncle Doo Doo?”

I spit out my bite and started laughing. And I didn’t stop for about 10 minutes. Because I was picturing the world he had asked me about. How very confusing. And backwards. But it was fun to imagine. He laughed, too, after a few minutes, but only because I was laughing and he got caught up in the moment. He really had no idea that what he had said was funny.

Tonight was like that.

We are about 60 pages from the end of Little House in the Big Woods. We read most of this series a long time ago, but we are re-reading it as a family and getting a whole lot more out of it this time around. Tonight’s chapter was about the dance at Grandpa’s house. Grandma was tending to the maple syrup on the stove while everyone else danced. And when the syrup was ready, people would file out into the clean snow, put some snow on their plates and file back in to have some hot syrup ladled onto the snow. The syrup would harden into candy and everyone would lap it up and go for more. There was a whole lot of description about this process that, frankly, I didn’t think they would find interesting or even listen to. But as I was finishing up this section, Mama’s Boy rolled over in his bed and said with a dreamy tone in  his voice.

“What if all that syrup was Jolly Ranchers and those people were me? I would love that.”

As we were finishing up, I told them where we were in the book and what the remaining chapters were titled. One of them is called “The New Machine.” AG thought that chapter sounded intriguing. I commented that the Ingalls were on the brink of the Industrial Revolution and that machines were starting to come into play a little bit. To this, Mama’s Boy responded, “I bet it was a peanut butter and jelly squirter. Those go good together.”

I think he went to sleep hungry.

I am thankful to live among weirdos, where I feel like just one of the gang.

If anyone wants to know how emotionally imbalanced I was at age 7, let me know and I will set up a play date for you to spend some time with Mama’s Boy. Bless his dear, fragile little heart (mine, also). He tries so hard. He is so intense about doing something perfect, immediately. Tonight we were discussing family resolutions and possibly ALL setting some goals. I always know right off when I have brought up the wrong topic. Unfortunately, by the time I realize it, it is always too late. Always.

“I can’t set resolutions!” he wailed.
“What’s a revolution?” Beloved asked.
“My teacher said we have to write out our resolutions in three areas: home, school, and personal. I can’t think of anything. I’m just going to sit there with nothing on my paper and then I’ll get in trouble!” And the wailing continued.

Wow. Great way to get 2012 started, Missy. Really.

I did my best to convince him that there was NO WAY he’d get in trouble for struggling with this assignment and to let some things go.

“I can think of one thing I really thing you ought to do for your personal goals,” I volunteered.

“What?” he asked, hopefully.

“Cut yourself some slack! You don’t have to be perfect at everything, all the time.”

“I can’t do that!” He cried again, this time smacking his own forehead in utter dismay.

Never mind. Forget goals. I think he might be better flying by the seat of his loose fitting jeans. We shall see.

Me, however, not so much. I need the goals. I need direction. I need discipline. And most of all, I need to FINISH.

So I’m working on my areas. I will pare down the list. I will not bite off more than I can chew, since that right there dictates failure. The areas for improvement are: Spiritual, Physical, Relationships, Domestic, and Creative.  The order of importance is Spiritual, Relationships, Domestic, Physical, and Creative. If creative has to go, it will go. I might just decide to blog this year. Nothing else crazy.

Part of my physical goals will be to go to bed on time and get up early. I badly need a better routine and I believe this will impact everything.

For Mama’s Boy, I have submitted the following list as a cheat sheet for him to take to school tomorrow:

Personal Goals:
Bathe daily. Try and smell like an angel.
Be perky and upbeat.
Get new hobby: laundry. Also mopping.

Home goals:
Get other new hobby: cooking dinners for the family.

School goals:
Do not make gassy noises with my mouth during school hours.
Make straight As. Mommy will not accept anything less.
Skip a grade this year.

There. That should keep him out of the hot seat tomorrow.

Happy New Year’s. Again. See ya tomorrow.

Growing up, Thanksgiving was not so much about people. It was about food. Every year, we left after school on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and drove from Tallahassee to Lakeland where my mom’s parents lived. There were no other kids–no cousins–until I was about 13, when one came along finally. So my brother and I just listened to Walkmans and tried to stay out of the way, while our mouths watered over the magic happening in that tiny little 1950s kitchen.

I’d like to say I remember conversations…or specific Thanksgiving foods. I’m sure it was all delicious. I was probably too finicky to really appreciate it all. What I do remember is the daily slow-cooked-in-bacon-grease scrambled eggs and the triple-layer, totally homemade and scrumptious chocolate cake. Oh my. Their equal has not been found. I will continue to search for the rest of my life.

But somewhere along the way, Thanksgiving began to morph into something bigger than scrambled eggs and chocolate cake, which I’m well aware are not standard Thanksgiving food staples. It began to become about the things and the people I am thankful for.

One of my fondest Thanksgiving memories was November 24, 1995. Todd’s parents were living in Concord, NC on a contract for Frank’s job. We decided to drive up to be with them and take everyone along. In a 1970s, horrible, hideously ugly, brown-striped Toyota minivan, 7 people piled in. It was my mom and dad, Todd, his sister, Kelley, my brother and his then-fiancee who is now his awesome wife. I know my parents are going to take me to task on my choice of words about that van. I only call it like I see it. They never rode in any seat but the front. They don’t know the sorrow. Actually, though I am technically complaining, that trip wouldn’t have been as funny or as memorable if we hadn’t had the knock-down, drag-out arguments over who would have to sit next to the flesh-eating mini blinds or who would sit in the middle seat of the middle row with their legs hiked up under their chin because that’s where Toyota decided the engine should go. Inside the car…with some ugly ole carpet over it. Good idea, boys. Really.

It was a 12 hour trip. We passed around a laptop, which was cutting edge in 1995, and played Links golf and Tetris. Good times. Halfway to NC, I began running a fever. I don’t remember much about the next few days. I remember being thankful we were all together. And some of what I was thankful for, I wrote down. During those early days, we kept a “thankful book” that we wrote in every year. More on that in a minute.

The next memory that stands out in my mind is Thanksgiving of 2007, when we booked a large house in north Alabama and spent the week in Joe Wheeler State Park with Todd’s parents, and Kelley’s family. The house was just one notch above haunted. It was in no way nice. It was super large and rambled on forever, giving us plenty of space to spread out and sleep everyone. But it didn’t have a fireplace, it DID come with a million house flies(think Plagues of Egypt or Alfred Hitchcock), and was old and drafty. That being said, however, it was on a river, set on a hill, and surrounded by fall color that was hanging on just for us, I believe. And we could walk out of our house and play a wild game of football in a field of crunchy yellow leaves. And when our electricity went out due to weather, there was a lodge across the park that served us a fine buffet with every color of Jello imaginable. For the toddlers among us, it was the little things. It was the Jello buffet. Those were good times.

I have more to be thankful for than you will want to read. I will probably write more on that tomorrow. On November 24, 1995, I wrote this little poem, which is kinda corny. I’m going to type it up anyway, because it reflects where I was that year and where I am now.

This year, more than any other, I am thankful.
On my knees, I am thankful.
My blessings are a mysterious November wind that swirls around me and can be breathed.
They are dried autumn leaves that carpet the earth in a mosaic of color and can be walked through.
I am thankful for the blessing of forgiveness, the providence of God, for second chances.
I thank God for the family I was given,
For family I have found,
For friendship.
I am thankful for afternoon rainstorms,
For the first, white crescent moon that hangs like a rocking chair in the sky,
For the scent of a fire.

I thank God for twilight, for quiet evenings, for hugs, for the smile of a friend, for worn pathways between familiar doorways, for laughter, for unbroken promises, for hope.

Most of all, I am thankful that as I walk across this carpet of color, surrounded by God’s gifts, I cannot see the end.

Back to 2011… That was a little too corny even for me, but it was true. And I didn’t have a single child then. I didn’t know that love. I didn’t know that gratitude.

I didn’t know what a sloppy mess i’d make when my cup ran over as it has. And I didn’t know the many ways God would hold me up over the next 16 years and keep that cup full. Always. He has never not been there. How does one say thank you for THAT?

On that note, I’m going to bed. I will post 2011’s version tomorrow.

Be thankful. There are reasons to be. Always.

The day started out rough.
Rough.
It’s hard to know sometimes who to be mad at. I’m definitely mad at the kid causing the glitch in the moment when a morning goes awry. But I’m also mad at me, because I can’t seem to get the whole process running like a well oiled machine. I don’t want to be the really funny sit-com that people laugh at because of all the things that go wrong in funny ways. I want to be the boring show where nothing really happens and it gets canceled after the first season. Well, I don’t really want that ALL the time. But there are two or three times I’d like to run smoothly: (1) the morning off-to-school routine, (2) dinnertime, and (3) bedtime.

I’d like them to pick up their toys, put their clothes in the proper hamper, use ma’ams and sirs, and brush their teeth without first bathing in the toothpaste. And I’d like them to stop spilling their drinks. I mean this. I am OVER the drink spilling. So much so that we have no drinks in the house any more. If they feel like spilling, they’ll be spilling purified water. At least that way, they’ll be improving the house when they dump it. Here, child, add some soap and go grab the mop. Now you have lather. Enjoy.

So the morning started rough and then the day got some better. It was a fine afternoon and the evening was pleasant. I dare say, even, that it was good. It was good. But then, all at once, it wasn’t. They started whining and arguing. Two of them were running like banshees through the dining room. One of the runners stepped on something and screamed like a dying animal. (Hard to imagine how it could be dangerous to run 35 mph in a house where you didn’t first pick up your sharp toy from the floor…) And then…

Then…

…the smallest little thing set me off. I didn’t even realize I was at my snapping point. Apparently, I was. It was the pencil sharpener. You’d have to know our history with pencil sharpeners to understand my frustration. We can’t keep one working. I buy a new pencil sharpener pretty much every time I go shopping. This time, I thought I had a better solution. This time I bought the crank kind from walmart. You stick the pencil in, you turn the handle, you get a sharp pencil. It isn’t complicated. Until you decide to remove the main section to remove the shavings. As a 5 year old.

So, yes. Beloved came to me and sweetly said, “Mommy, I emptied the shavings into the garbage, but I need a little help putting the top back on.”

So I got up from my position in a leather chair and went to inspect. Emptying the shavings into the garbage is a pretty generous description for what she had actually done. Flung the shavings far and wide is closer to the mark, though admittedly exaggerated. I can exaggerate after a day like this one. And I will.  Shavings were everywhere. The trashcan had been relocated to catch the shavings, but failed to do its job. And the top would not go back on.

She broke the pencil sharpener.

I bought a cool new pencil sharpener which worked really well. She went out on her own to “empty” it (in her mind, a good thing. in my mind, not so much). She broke it. And I got mad. I had to clean up the mess. I had to throw away the broken sharpener. And I no longer had a way to sharpen pencils. Small thing? Sure. But it represents a bigger picture.

So I spiraled into a mood that sent them to bed. They needed to go to bed anyway. I was done with them. There had been too much whining. Too much striking out on their own and failing. Too much.

After tooth brushing, I forgot something and had to run downstairs to get it. Upon my return to the boys’ room, I found them still and quiet and Mama’s Boy was smiling.

“Do you notice anything, Mama?” he asked. I didn’t really notice anything so much. I guess they were sort of behaving. He was under his covers. “I made a plan to make you happy again. It was my plan.” Of course it was. He’s the pleaser in the family. He does not like to step off course. He doesn’t like his Mama to be unhappy. He had gotten everyone in their beds and even Snugglemonkey was in her bed in a totally separate room.

“Thank you, B,” I said. He asked if he could tell the bedtime story and I said yes. It isn’t my favorite part of the evening. I’m happy for someone else to make up a ridiculous story about a ninja who likes milk. You know, that kind of thing…

About this time, Snugglemonkey walked back in and I asked her to sit on my lap. At that instant, Beloved jumped up and wanted to sit on my lap, too. Suddenly they were fighting. Mama’s Boy sat up in bed and pleaded with them,

“Hey, come on,” he said. “now you’re making Mama upset again. You’re giving her a headache.” The girls continued to fight over my lap, which I assure you has plenty of real estate for the both of them. And then Mama’s Boy said something that hit me.

“You’re ruining my plan!”

And they were.

It was a good plan.
It was the best way.
They were ruining it.

I immediately thought of God…my Father. How many times have I broken His pencil sharpeners by emptying them without His permission and without His help? How many plans of His have I ruined?

I do it every day.

When He set this all in motion, He created light and called it good. He created animals and called them good. Plants, trees, oceans–all good. Man and woman, good. It was all good. Genesis 1 is a rosy picture. The sharpener was still working then.

But by Genesis 6, it says that “every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time” and He regretted making them–us. He was deeply troubled. His perfect plan had been ruined.

Wow. I’m really thankful for His grace.
For His plan fix the things we break.
For His Son, who IS the fix for the things we break.
And for the fact that He is so much better a Parent than I am.

We ended our day by belting out My Favorite Things as a family. It is a known fact that you cannot remain grumpy while singing happy songs. You just can’t. So Mama’s Boy’s master plan ultimately did work. And it cheered me to know that though they did not do the things I asked them to today–and while they could not really meet my expectations today–they really do want to. And they really do love me. And with all their scattered shavings, they try.

And one of these days, we’ll just switch to presharpened pencils and call ourselves geniuses. And people will believe us.

Yes, they will.