Category: Uncategorized

Thinking

As predicted, you have not heard from me for awhile. Last night I chose to read some of the blogs in my RSS reader and not watch commercials. The night before that I took a hot bath with lavender oil and read a book. During the day I’m trying to stay busy doing the things I’m supposed to be doing, rather than distracting myself with writing posts, reading blogs, or not watching
commercials.

I’ve also been in a very poor head space, having lost my temper twice with Ruthie this week, and having launched into a volatile, all-caps, IM argument with Bryan on Tuesday. All of this required some serious garden therapy to clear my mind, and I was able to put new perennials in one whole section of my yard and re-route some of the drip hoses my dad installed for me.

Piling It On (And Taking It Off)

I finally made it back to the gym today after a short hiatus for puking children and yearly check-ups. I was encouraged to see I had lost another pound. At this rate – a pound a week – it will take me nearly a year to hit my goal weight. But my new doctor encouraged me that taking it off slow and keeping it off is far better than taking it off fast and gaining it back.

I wanted to tell her to shut up, but I like her too much for that.

Listening to the Good Voices

While working out on the monotonous machinery of sweat I spent some time in prayer, and I felt the Lord reminding me of the man who sat by the pool of Bethesda in John 5. Though he could be healed by the waters of the pool, he had by lying there, lame, for 38 years.

6When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”
7″Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”

This is how I’m beginning to feel about my current state of mind – like I’m just sitting around wallowing in my anger and depression waiting for something miraculous to happen in me that will make it all different. And since it hasn’t happened yet, it must be somebody else’s fault that I’m still a bitter mess. But while I was on the monotonous machinery of sweat this morning I clearly heard God ask me the big DUH question: “Do you want to get well?”

So that’s what I’ve spent my morning chewing on. Do I want to get well.

Lovely Words

I only have a couple minutes to post because the season finale of The Shield is about to start. Last week when Bryan was gone, I had a particularly lonely and depressed-ish afternoon. I sent Bryan a quick email that said something like, ‘Can you write me a lovely note? I need to hear something encouraging from you. Kind of an overwhelming day.’ His response was to write me this poem, and I just want you all to remember that HE’S MINE and you can’t have him!

Grace sneaks in
——————–

Every hour, on the hour
I think of you and
All that we are building together
In the midst of
Screaming children
The barking dog
Spilling milk
And I think to myself
These dents are adding up in
The way that hugging you
Tightly in our kitchen
(amidst those stressful moments)
Adds up to a something that
Is bigger than both you and I
Like those times when,
Seemingly undone,
We hug,
Only to find
Ruthie climbing to join us
In a third way

This is how Grace sneaks in

IM Conversation

Me: I was always disappointed my mom was a fashion nerd…
there was NO WAY I wanted to share her clothes like all my friends did with their moms

Her: yep. my mom always dressed like a teacher (which shouldn’t be shocking) but I was always embarrassed

Me: ooo, good point. my mom is a teacher, too.

Her: there you go. I think it is a prerequisite – vests, pins, the whole nine yards

Me: YES!!!!!
I WAS JUST ABOUT TO SAY SHE ALWAYS HAD A VEST ON!

This Is What Lazy Parenting Gets Me

You know it’s going to be a bad day when you enter your child’s room first thing in the morning and are greeted by the stench of the Overnight Poop. You know what I’m talking about: the poop that is thinned by the acidic pee that accumulated over a twelve hour night which then seeps into the blankets, the sheets, and onto the pillow your child is sitting upon when she greets you with a cheery, “Morning mom, I POOPED!”

I didn’t help the situation when I allowed Ruthie to drink two full sippy cups of water around ten o’clock last night when she woke up and came into my bed for a snuggle. I pretty much flushed out her system and we had our very own septic flood because of it.

At the time it was happening, when I was listening to her guzzle the water down as if she’d sealed her mouth over the nozzle of an open fire hydrant, I thought How ingenious of her to adapt to her environment by storing up water like a desert camel because her mother fails to hydrate her all day long.

I also thought she smelled like poop, but as I dozed in and out of sleep I decided I was too tired for her to be poopy since her diapers were all the way downstairs and she was OBVIOUSLY comfortable keeping her daddy’s side of the bed warm until he got home so she must not really be poopy or she would have said something.

And then we both fell asleep.

So after paragraph #1 happened my morning derailed and I juggled breakfast and laundry and nursing and laundry and showering and laundry all before 10:00 because we had to be out the door for Ruthie’s first dentist appointment.

As I was grabbing children and shoes and heading to the stroller for our walk to the dentist I realized I was about to pass out from not eating my own breakfast so I channeled my inner Napoleon Dynamite and stuffed a handful of Wheat Thins into the side pocket of my cargo pants.

This was how my day started.