If you don’t like Skittles, you may not want to borrow your daughter’s Skittles 2-in-1 shampoo. It smells like Skittles. You will be wearing Skittles on your head. The good news is that one chlorine bath takes you right back to your pre-skittled hair. I much prefer the smell of summer bleach.

If you are me, you will attract the strangest people on the beach. They will come to you and sit down by you and engage you in strange, strange conversations. And they will not leave. For 5 days.

Since you are not me, because I am me, this will not likely happen to you. But if you are you, and you like strange people and conversations, you can hang out with me and then it will be like you are me. Except at the end of the day you can go home and be you. And that might be better.

I know how to pack a summer. I packed this one full of awesomeness. I am thankful.

I have learned a whole lot about what’s important in the last few weeks. Sometimes life seems normal and nonchalant. And while it might go smoothly some of the time, it is never something to just be passed through. It’s urgent that I focus on the right things. Always. Because at any given point, the normal nonchalantness might become a thing I don’t recognize. I can’t afford to be shuffling along in my flip-flops watching Spongebob. And not that this solves everything, but I have decided to memorize the book of Colossians. There’s so much good stuff in there about how I need to live and about my Savior. I decided to go backwards. Memorizing from back to front. It’s a little awkward because I’m currently memorizing the last half of chapter 4. It’s all the closing stuff. But I think I’m going to be able to retain it better this way. At any rate, I am determined not to get off track this year.

This is my year. It may not be perfect. It may not be pretty. But for as many days as I have this year, I’m living them. And I’m going to give it my best.

To do this, I will continue memorizing. I have a goal of running in town (remember…people do not run in the country) or hitting the gym while the kids are in school. I’m going to work my tail off at the kids’ school and have loved every minute of that so far. I really never thought I’d be that person, but I am now that person. I’m going to keep the house clean and cook like I’m not a poser.

And also, because it’s important…I will buy some adult shampoo.

Because if you get all the other stuff right, and you smell like a Skittle, you still have a problem.

I just read this quote from an author in 1944.

“The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they’re okay, then it’s you.”

 Rita Mae Brown quotes (American Writer, b.1944)

Uh oh.

Do you subscribe, as I do, to one million discount sites that offer bowling deals you will never use and online scrapbook coupons you will never redeem? I don’t know why I do this. I must promise myself not to buy another one until I have bowled the old ones, laser tagged myself out, and bought the cool new forks I just got a deal for. If I buy the forks first, I can take them bowling with me. That would be fun for everyone. And the forks bowl free.

Well.

In a world that doesn’t always protect us from the ugly stuff, do I really want to pay $147 for two days (16 hours) of scuba diving classes? Do I? I’m looking at the deal and wondering: Can they guarantee my safety?

I love the water. Love it. I grew up spending my summers at a private beach where there were no obnoxious college parties, not that many flailing, over-tanned body parts that I didn’t want to see, and a bunch of friends and family that were always there when I was. I loved water skiing, fishing, swimming, and splashing around. ABOVE the surface of the water and in water that was less than 6 feet deep. I distinctly remember being out in the Gulf with my friend one afternoon with those old canvas rafts that had rope strings attached. We were sharing a raft and drifting along in a relaxed manner. When we looked back to shore, we were so far out you could hardly see it. We were 13. So we both grabbed the rope and went under to see if we could go down and touch bottom. Nope. No bottom touching there. We were in over our heads. And we didn’t like it.The water wasn’t the clear blue-green of Panama City fame. It was dark brown, due to a natural reef out a couple of miles. You couldn’t see anything. Anything could have been lurking there. So we got on one side of the raft together and we kicked until we could kick no more. Until we were back in water we recognized. Until our toes skimmed a sandy bottom.

Pheww.

I didn’t often do that. I didn’t often allow myself to drift beyond the point of safety. I don’t prefer dark and murky places. So when I opened my email this morning to find that Eversave had offered my 16 hours of scuba diving classes for $147, I thought that over for a moment. They say, “Come, explore an underwater frontier. Adventure with us! Bring your own equipment or rent ours! We’ll teach you. We’ll certify you. At the end of this, you’ll have fins and gills and grins and thrills.”

I say: Can you guarantee my safety?

A REAL offer would include an armored wet suit. A wet suit that when touched by a tooth’s enamel immediately springs forth with sharp killing spikes. My Safety Guarantee Suit would be triggered by tooth enamel, with several panic buttons strategically placed, and would automatically kill anything in the shark, whale, or giant squid family.

Why hasn’t anyone thought this up? My blog is my patent. Don’t you dare try to develop the Safety Suit. It’s trademarked already.

In a world where there are no guarantees, my suit is an extra layer of Stay Out of My Face.

But if you dive with me, don’t get cutesie and try to bite my arm. That’s instant death, my friends. The suit does not discriminate.

I cannot guarantee your safety.

And here they are:

If you make plans to be gone from home for 22 days straight, do not leave a half-full bag of red potatoes in your pantry with your air turned up to 80. Just don’t.
Do NOT.
I am so dead serious about this.

If the above scenario does indeed occur, just go ahead and set your pantry on fire, stand aside with the fire extinguisher, and never eat another thing that was near those potatoes.
I hope you are really paying attention…

Before you pass the night, 12-6 a.m. might possibly seem like a short six hours. When one kid wakes up wailing at 12:30, 6 a.m. is like the Hope Diamond: you can’t afford it, you’ll never see it, and you should give up completely.

Hugo is a good, calming movie choice for 3:30 a.m. The children will go back to sleep after watching it.

Taking 14 naps that are 15-18 minutes each is not as satisfying as a 6 hour stretch in your bed. This one is free of charge.

Todd is probably the biggest trooper ever. I’ve never seen someone rock a 19 hour trip like he did. I drove for maybe 2 hours.

Kicking your dashboard many times can sometimes cause your AC to start running again in your car. Your feet will smart from the kicking, but that’s a heap better than sitting gamey in 19-hour-old jeans. Jeans.

Don’t wear jeans on a 19-hour road trip in August. How dumb can you be?

Louisiana is a whole lot easier to take when there are only 5 other cars on the road. I mean a WHOLE lot easier. In fact, this is the first trip EVER where I didn’t suffer in this state on either leg of the trip. We must have snuck by them because it was dark and rainy.

This is boring.

Don’t try to go to subway after driving all night. The toppings appear blurry and become very confusing. Also, the subway sandwich artist will not understand why you are so dumb.

If you leave an exhausted child alone in a room, you might come back in to find a scene like this one…

That was 5:10 p.m. I carried her to bed. We’ll see how that goes…

Another fantastic adventure carried through safely with God’s help. I have pretty much only kind things to say about the short people in the car, too.

More stories at another time. If I can’t order a proper sandwich, I shouldn’t try to regale you with stories from the road. You can thank me later. Or now.
Whatever.

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…