Today we went to a trampoline arena. It was far and away better than anything in my locality. There were slides with tubes, dodge ball arenas, and lots and lots of really cool trampolines. My mother in law asked me if I was jumping. It’s like she just met me.

I jumped.

Like a fiend.

Like a middle aged woman should not jump.

I was feeling okay about myself and my decisions. It was going pretty well. About 3/4 of the way into our 2-hour stint, I lugged a tube up the ramp for my 5 year old daughter and then ran back down the ramp to the bottom. As I was jogging back down that ramp, an odd little boy–maybe 8 years old–looked straight at me and said, “You run faster than my grandma.”

Huh.

Many responses went through my head in that moment.

Thank you? Where’s your grandma, sonny, I can take her… Can your grandma do THIS??

I wonder if his grandma falls off of treadmills…

 

Well, I’ve had another pass through Louisiana. I shook my fist at the state. I double dog dared it.

And then….nothing.
Well, nothing in Lousiana anyway. My trip through Louisiana was almost pleasant. The weather was good. The roads were typical and somewhat bumpy, but in a Toyota Sienna I wasn’t half as annoyed as in the tank I drove last year. There wasn’t any fake construction or ‘merging’ (apply finger quotes in a VERY demonstrative fashion if you want to do justice to my statement) into one lane from, like, 8 lanes. There weren’t any storms or accidents or alligator spottings on the 17-mile bridge.

Huh.

After I got all the way through it, I mulled it over. How could it be? How could I have stopped and stayed the night there and traveled all the way through it over the course of two days and had NO trouble?

And then it hit me.
Then I got it.

It went in through the back door. It knew I was looking for all the normal fake construction, ‘merging’, and alligator-bridge-related problems.

Lousiana made a phone call to Florida before we left and had Florida pose as Bad Cop. Florida was Bad Cop. Lousiana was Good Cop.

I don’t even want to talk about Florida. All you really need to know is that it took me like 9 hours to get out of the state (and I did not start off in Miami…) and stopped at a rest stop and an Arby’s where I’m certain we changed a couple of lives for the worse. It was a kid. There were digestive issues.

It was bad.

Anyway, with all of that behind us (no pun intended, but it IS a good one), we had a great Day 2.

All was well until I fell off a treadmill 2 days ago. Since then, I’ve been seeing small monkeys in front of my right eye.

No. Nobody sees small monkeys.

But I did fall off the treadmill and discovered that I am unable to walk or jog to live versions of awesome U2 songs. I got WAAAAAY too into the gospel version of “Still haven’t found what I’m looking for,” I planted my right foot on a non-moving part of the treadmill while my left foot was airborn and the belt was still moving at top speed. Then, my left foot came down and everything went wonky after that. I tried to grab my poor ipod as it flew past me matrix-style (first things first people. Save the ipod!), but I missed it. It hit the belt and flew off backwards. (This might be an upsetting part of the story except for the fact that I had already dropped and stepped on the ipod in the hotel parking lot, shattering the screen.) With my right hand, I grabbed the arm of the treadmill and tried to save myself. This partially worked, as I did not break or sprain or sever anything. All I incurred were a few belt burns on my left leg.

I was able to show my children the leg and say, “There now! THIS is why we don’t mess around on treadmills.”

Indeed.

What the world really needs more of is George Zimmerman. I was hoping to watch a dude gain weight on a daily basis as I heard more about racial slurs. If his trial was shot with stop action photography, you’d be able to watch him get fatter as the trial progressed. I’m guessing jail food is not as bad as they say…

As tired as I am of George Zimmerman, I’m even more weary of racial slurs and the media blitz about them. I would go as far as to say that most of them people whining right now use the words they are whining over. I mean, the news this morning is all about Trayvon Martin calling Zimmerman a cracker before he got shot. Cracker is horrible? When did that become horrible? The answer is, yesterday. No one knows the real meaning of it or the origin. But if you use it, you’re a racist. Better go get yourself a real lawyer and start eating twinkies.

Moment of silence for the twinkie, please. Miss those things.

Call me a cracker and I’ll call you a sandwich. See how stupid this is?  I’m fine with cracker. I like to eat them. They are salty. And crunchy.

I don’t even like Paula Deen and I think what has been done to her is deplorable. We are a sick society looking to crucify the very people we idolized 5 minutes before. And the ones slaying her in the media are probably vile, vile people. More vile than Paula will ever be. Her main mistake was being too honest. I think that’s sad.

I just made my kids tacos for lunch. Fresh. It’s the only time this summer I’ll feel proud of our lunch, so I decided to post it. Of course, Squishy Knickers stuck with chicken nuggets. She is missing a few connections in her brain that link her to refined eating.

My upstairs sounds like the kids are running a saw mill from 1922. Don’t worry, they aren’t. I don’t even let them read books about sharp machinery. It’s the sound of three kids skating on very old wood floors. We inherited 3 pairs of skates and it just happened to fit the three youngest kids PERFECTLY. As I listen to the skating, watch the skating, worry over the skating, and protect my flip-flopped feet, I have waffled between “send thank you note” and “infest her house with live crickets” to the person who gave us the skates. Mostly I’m grateful. And if there is anyone to blame, it is me. I said, “YES! We’ll take them!” to a Facebook post. That’s what I get for taking a short break from Edward Snowden and getting on Facebook.

Ha.

I bet the government already knew I was getting the skates…

 

What do you get when you take a picture of a bearded David Copperfield, blow his hair out crazy like Barry Manilow in 1982, and put it in a fancy frame? You get a $179 painting of Jesus with blue eyes. The blue eyes are always a nice touch. Was there a single Jewish man 2000 years ago with blue eyes? I highly doubt this. I have recessive genes in my extended family for blue/green eyes and yet all four of mine are dark brown eyed babies.

Come on, people. Paint him for REALS.

It made me laugh, though.

I have a whole bunch of posts I wrote on a private blog a long, long time before I started a public one. Some of them are better than others. All of them record life with my wee ones and I am so very thankful I wrote down as much as I did. Tonight, getting them all into bed was more like a wrestling smackdown than a scene from Little Women. It wasn’t a big deal, but I think maybe I should loosen up a little. It’s summertime now, for the love of wrinkles. As I got to thinking about the little darlings, I read back through some old stuff. I think on days when I don’t have original thoughts, I will post something from the archives. If you want to read it, great. If not, also great. Only YOU can control your eyeballs.

In light of the fact that tomorrow is Sunday,  the Lord’s Day, I’ll dredge up this one. I hope you are all kicking back somewhere and drinking in summer.

_____________________________________

I just laid my youngest blessing down in her bed and paused to watch her sleep as the rain fell steadily outside against her window. She resides now in what was once Mama’s Boy’s room. I still have very vivid memories of rocking him to the sound of a similar rain. As I stood there, it occurred to me again how much I have…how blessed I am. It also occurred to me that it is very easy to love God with all of this around me, in my arms, in my face. Daily. If one of these children were taken from me suddenly, if my health were taken, or a friend, or a parent, what then? How much harder it would be to accept God’s decisions if I perceived that they were against me…if they disrupted the peace that I give Him credit for giving me. I take these things “for granted,” a phrase I’ve been thinking about for at least a week now. What is for granted? It indicates there is something that SHOULD be granted me…something I am owed. Is there anything in my life that I really deserved or earned? Anything I was owed? We come to expect things that come with a territory. If I am in my 20s and looking, I should be married. If I am married and financially stable, I should be able to conceive children. If I am young, I should be healthy. If my family is young, they should all be alive. The list goes on. We expect these things. We struggle when life takes a turn against the expectation…against what should be granted. Or so we think.

I now believe that nothing is truly for granted. Nothing is a given. Everything is a miracle on loan and nothing should cause me to leave Him if it were suddenly removed from me. This has made me think, because as I stated, it is easy to love Him on top of the blessings He has given me. It is easy to love Him alongside what I have. The trick is to love Him more than all of that. The trick is to be closer to the Giver than I am to the gifts. He has to be my ultimate relationship, because the ones He has given me here for my own comfort and strength are just on loan. They are granted me for now, but are not to be taken for granted.

Sometimes things sneak up on you. A pound or two becomes 20. A couple of pesky sunburns becomes the skin of a decomposing body.

Etc.

You don’t get there overnight…which is really the problem. Of course if we could SEE ourselves rotting in the grave we would wear sunscreen. If we could envision how terribly painful it was going to be to try on bathing suits in TJMaxx, we would put down the poptart and pick up the banana. Surely I’m not the only one who lacks this type of vision.

Tonight I had one of those moments. I had Todd take a picture of it, and I need to tell you that his reaction to being asked to take the picture was actually funnier than the object he was photographing. He attached it to an email with the subject “Disgusting.”

This moment of clarity came as I was packing my beach attire tonight. I naturally reached for my brown leather flip flops and was about to throw them in the duffle bag when I turned them over and saw this:

The picture doesn’t really do it justice. It’s feathers. And stuff. And poop.  All stuck together.

Pretty bad.

There are so many things wrong with this picture that it’s hard to know exactly where to go with it. It’s hard to say what is worse…the fact that there are feathers and poop within a short walk of my back door  or the fact that I chose these particular flip flops to go into the chicken coop and  didn’t notice I had stepped in it. Or is it worse that I came in the house after that and almost packed them many months later in this condition.

Actually, probably the worst thing is that I had Todd take a picture and now I’m talking about it on the internet.

That’s messed up.

 

Knock knock jokes wear me out.
Seriously.

What percentage of them are actually funny? And aren’t there just 14 that circulate the planet and have been doing so since 1941?

My youngest tries them out on me all the time.

Knock knock.
Who’s there?

Human.
Human who?
Human BEEEEE-ing.

I furrowed my brow and then forced up some canned laughter from a dark section of my brain.

hahahahahahaha. That was a good one, I said.

No it wasn’t. That was horrible. Human being? What does that even mean? At what point does it become lying? When do I become the mom who chuckles just enough so that Tone Deaf Tillie tries out for American Idol thinking she sings like an angel?

Fortunately Fox does not have a Knock Knock Joke reality show. I bet if they read this blog they’d produce one. But I wonder what their focus would be…kids telling terrible knock knock jokes about human beings and interrupting cows or the moms that enable them…

The Real Liars of Knock Knock Joke Households.

Today felt like the first time I have exhaled in 3 months. It was the first day my baby was not in preschool on a different schedule. This meant that I didn’t not have an extra dropoff at 8:45 and pick up at 12:45. This further meant we could eat breakfast and tidy up the family room and feed the chickens and suffer through Jillian Michaels and forget to throw the wet clothes into the dryer.

We could actually stop into the library branch and pay our fines. It’s hard to accumulate the kind of fines I paid today. It was all on Beloved’s card, but let’s be honest…it’s always the parent’s fault. All I will say about this topic is that it feels really good to be back in good standing with the public library system. There’s something very uncomfortable about having a librarian look down on you. To celebrate, we checked out 424 books and 1 DVD. Actually, just 14 books. Just enough to accrue some more fines when we forget to return them.

I will not do that again.

Right.

So, the chickens.  I know people are struggling to sleep at night as they wonder what precisely is our chicken update. It’s been a weird go of things lately. The morning I was scheduled to fly to New York, I went out to feed them and discovered a hen dead inside the coop. The others–being the smart, concerned animals they are–were stepping on their friend as they wandered from the coop into the run and back into the coop.  We took care of that one right as we were leaving for the airport and stapled down a couple of places in the coop. What happened exactly? Did they turn on it? Was it an accidental pecking? Does a Florida Python live in the coop and come out at night? Why did whatever killed it not eat it? It looked like an inside job, but couldn’t be.

I didn’t have time to think about it. I was flying to NYC where the only chickens are the ones who can’t jaywalk successfully.

Apparently we didn’t solve the problem, because that night another one turned up dead. This one was one of our favorites: Phantom. And she was a good layer also. Don’t let the name fool you.  My parents-in-law dealt with that death in our absence. The next night, another one disappeared. This one was just gone…and was still another beloved favored laying hen. Silver. The fat fluffy gray one.  Well, for the love of creamed corn. This had to stop.

The following night, my father in law set a live trap using cat food as bait. He anchored it down with tent stakes. We arrived in town late that same night. The next morning, an ugly, sinister beastly raccoon was pacing back and forth inside that cage. Oh, yeah, buddy. No chicken parmigiana for you last night, eh? Mama’s Boy tried to talk us into releasing it. No way. That thing had been eating my chickens.  I didn’t even sugarcoat my answer to him. Step off, boy. It’s shootin’ time.  I’ll spare you the details of the rest of the story. All I will say is that it made it a whole lot easier to do what was necessary when the beast lunged at me twice from  inside his cage. Game on, fella. Game on.

We haven’t had any more trouble with our chickens.

Well, except for the two roosters. And the water problem. And the fact that they are seriously too dumb to find the door to the coop.

Except for that.

I have one somewhat self-deprecating story to share and one more serious thought. Unfortunately for you, the funny story will wait until tomorrow. It will take longer to type and I’m not in such a funny mood right now. Tonight I am mulling over the meaning of life, noticing the old-age, worked-in-the-yard-all-day ache in my knees, and feeling thoughtful.

I had an almost epiphany today. And almost aha moment. I say almost, because I think I tried to push it away and I’m not sure it has settled inside as deeply as it needs to. I don’t like to feel pain. I guess maybe none of us do, but I think I resist the truth when it becomes too difficult to manage. I think I saw it, and waffled too long between running toward it and running away from it.

I don’t like big, ugly things. (This is a metaphor, for all you math majors out there. I’m not calling you OR me fat and hideous.) Big, but not ugly is okay. Or small and REALLY ugly…also okay. But big and ugly? Not okay. The moment you look at yourself in a mirror and realize you have too much to change is a moment that you either decide to do the hard, HARD work or the moment you decide to walk away and live with big and ugly.

Today I decided it’s time to be a better person all around. It’s time for some discipline. Time for taking stock. Time to stop being tired over the fourth child being born, for crying out Lee-oud. Time to be who I’m supposed to be.  Time to be who my kids deserve. Time to be a better helper to the man of the house. Time to become someone who can live without large regrets.

It’s time.

More on that…and the “Rooster Incident”…tomorrow.

My oldest child turns 12 today. Twelve. Wow. For his birthday he asked for 8000 Pokemon items. Pokemon. Really? I mean, 1992 wasn’t enough? They had to relaunch and make 20 billion MORE DOLLARS on creepy Japanese creatures?

He also asked for a slumber party.  Oh man.

So we did that on Friday night. 5 of his best friends spent the night. As if that weren’t enough short males in one house, we allowed one sibling buddy to sleep over also, making seven short males and 2 short females in one house.

Two tall adults is not enough.

It went fine, actually, and they had so much fun. I survived at least 556 “Your Mama” jokes. But I kept coming down the stairs to them and saying, “HEY! Whose mama are we talking about here…?”

It matters, you know. Cuz, sometimes I’m the mama.

Twelve years ago this moment, I was not yet a mama. The boy had been born but he wasn’t yet mine. I know I do this every year, but for me, it never gets old. For me, every single year I experience the amazement all over again.

Except to search and pray, I had nothing to do with this sweet soul. All I really did was hold out my arms and catch him as he fell from Heaven. I thank God, the Giver, every day.

Last year, I wrote him this letter. I can’t top it, so I’m re-posting it.

Dearest Boy,
Eleven years ago this night you were on the brink of being born. I didn’t know my missing piece was about to be placed into the wedge nothing else could fill. I didn’t even know you existed. I certainly didn’t know you were about to be mine. I get weepy just typing this note to you. You cannot know how much love was sewn into your life’s garment. It’s baffling, really. It took almost 4 years of thinking I knew exactly how God was going to bring my children to me–and failing utterly–to bring me to a quiet, humble place where I could grow into your mom. Without those years, without the emptiness, without my casting around in desperation, I would not have been ready. I wasn’t ready before you. I didn’t know this.

God knew.

Four years of powerful aching was pacified by a wriggling 7 pound baby with big red lips and a deep, beautiful dimple.

Four years of pain now buried under 11 years of the greatest joy your dad and I have ever known.

You were the perfect baby for us–hand-picked by your Creator.
You were perfect.
You are perfect.

Perfect.

Happy birthday, sweet son.