A Little Bit of Grace

We had a horrible accident at our house yesterday. It was both gruesome and tragic. We've been able to keep a low profile so there are not dozens of news vans outside our house, though I did spot Telemundo sneaking around our backyard. The carnage was unspeakable; half of his face torn off, his eyeball ripped out of its socket, a large gaping hole where his right cheek used to be. We were not able to shield our youngest two children from this tragedy. They witnessed it first hand. Our middle son tried to stop the senseless mutilation, but he was too late. The damage had been done and there was no going back. Eugene lay there on the ground, three quarters of the bear he used to be with his innards strewn about the floor. Star, our 7 1/2 month old puppy, sat there next to her victim with foam still stuck in her teeth looking guilty, but satisfied.

My son and daughter, realizing the sensless injustice of it all, cried out in anguish. How could this be happening to them? They have been careful. They have taken the necessary precautions to avoid similar stuffed animal deaths. But now it was happening to them and with not just any stuffed animal, but with my bear, their mother's bear. The sacred bear that I have had for most of my 40 years. Psychological pathology aside (how many grown women still have their childhood stuffed animals on their beds?), this toy has significance. Everyone knows that you don't mess with Eugene. He is special. He is important. This dog is a relative newcomer to our family and with utter disdain, she completely disregards our code of honor and she actually turns on one of us.

Needless to say, Lee and I had to immediately launch our PR blitz and put a spin on the whole mauling incident. "Look, it's merely a flesh wound!" I explain to them, lightheartedly. "The 6" hole in his head isn't that bad. Look we can just scoop up all this stuffing and shove it back into the hole. With a little reconstructive surgery he'll be as good as new! A little disfigured and missing an eyeball, but practically just like new." Lee offers, much like the French woman with the facial transplant, perhaps we can graft another stuffed animal's face onto the missing part of the bear's right skull. Eventually we are able to coax some reluctant half smiles onto their faces, but they remained resentful to their canine sibling for the rest of the day. Sometime this week either Lee or I are going to have to smuggle home some 5-0 prolene, needles and needle driver home from the hospital to perform Eugene's microsurgery.

I think my middle son must have been harboring anger towards the dog all day long, because later that evening while she had her shock collar on, he shocked her with the dial amped up all the way to 10. He could offer no explanation for doing this other than, "I just wanted to see what would happen." Normally, we don't even shock the dog, we just push the button that emits an obnoxious tone and she stops doing whatever undesirable behavior in which she is engaged. Initially Lee and I were concerned that this might be an early indication of antisocial personality disorder, but luckily, our middle son doesn't exhibit a pattern of cruelty to animals. He just has a pattern of poor impulse control. It has been a source of frustration for me lately and I am feeling like a bad mother for being frustrated and angry about my kid's behavior.

By themselves, none of the incidents are that alarming, but when I lump them together, I get ahead of myself and worry that we are raising a derelict. Don't get me wrong, I love my son and he is incredibly cute and charming and mostly well-behaved, etc, etc but...I'm just frustrated. As your kids get older you realize what little control you have over them. They make their own choices, good or bad and our job is to instruct them as to how to make good choices. I've always had pretty good impulse control and my other two, for the most part, are pretty rule oriented. So, this one is challenging me and I don't like it and quite honestly, sometimes I don't like him for making my job difficult. If he would just do exactly what he was supposed to do all of the time, then I wouldn't have to be perplexed and I wouldn't have to worry. Which leads to a deeper consideration; am I more concerned about his welfare or how I look as a mother? Tricky. I know that I am concerned about him, but I also want a good grade in the mother department. This parenting expedition is more than I bargained for, at times.

I don't know, I guess I just need un poco de gracia. Actually, I need a whole lot of grace, which is what God demonstrates to me all of the time. It's much easier to be the recipient of that grace than to exhibit it to others. Paradoxically, it frequently easier to extend grace to complete strangers than to those that you love the most.

Well, it's first thing in the morning on Sunday morning and we are trying to rally our troops out of bed to go to the early church service before we cut down our tree. And the little guy about whom I have been talking has just hobbled out of bed and into my lap.

I had intended on writing about how my middle son didn't realize that I was funny ("You're funny mom?" he asked me one day when I wanted to know who they thought was funnier, me or their dad). I was going to parlay that whole bear mauling incident into how funny I really am, but I must have needed to discuss my feelings of inadequacy as a mother. Thank God for his grace and mercy which he bestows upon us each new day, regardless of whether or not we deserve it. Now if only I can learn to do that with my own children and those that I love...

Mice and Tadpoles and Dogs Better Scurry...

Everyone breathe a collective sigh of relief...Snowflake has been found. Apparently in her small mouse mind, she was never lost in the first place. She was doing quite well living in the freedom of the open range of our home. Saturday morning as I sat quietly reading my bible and saying my prayers she scampered across the floor of the sun room. Within moments, everyone in our family was on high alert (even if that meant we were alert in various stages of dress-anywhere from underwear to nightgowns) with brooms and mops and buckets in hand. After a prolonged game of cat and mouse, we finally cornered her behind the refrigerator and as Lee pulled the fridge away from the wall, I trapped her underneath a tupperwear bowl. We got her back into the cage and within minutes she was back out again. Even after reenforcing the sides of her wire cage with plastic cable ties, she still pulled a Houdini and was running around the kitchen counter, but unable to find her way to the floor. Lee put her back into the tupperwear container and we called U-haul and relocated the Snowflake and her life partner, Piggy into the flat previously occupied by our tadpoles, Jupiter Flash 1 & 2.

I don't have time to go through their entire biographies, so I'll just provide a brief character sketch of the Jupiter Flash series. If my memory is correct, there were actually 3 of them (kind of like Lassie-we kept replacing them). The first 2 were mail order tadpoles and the last one was your run of the mill creek tadpole. After the first 2 died, Lee decided the reason the tadpoles were not living was due to inadequate housing and filtration/oxygenation systems. To house the pond tadpole Lee went and bought the Cadillac version of aquariums with the XL3000 filtration system. About 15 minutes after he put the tadpole in the water it could no longer fight the current that was sucking it into the filtration system and it died. The first two tadpoles had been given a very proper ceremony and aquatic burial (down the commode, of course). The 3rd tadpole was too big to flush, so I decided to bury it outside, but I didn't want to bury it in our yard. I thought it might bring us bad juju...so, I decided to bury it in our neighbors flower bed. It was about 10 pm and I was between our 2 houses, digging furiously before anyone walked outside and realized what I was doing. Well, fast forward about 2 weeks and I am getting out of the shower and I am standing in the middle of the bathroom wet and completely naked. We have a window in our bathroom, but the privacy fence prevents my neighbors (the neighbors with the dead tadpole in their zinnias) from being able to look in, so I never really worry about modesty. But this time, when I look out the window as I am completely naked, I see my neighbor on his roof staring into my bathroom...at me. The sight of me without clothes, while might have been something to stare at 20 years ago, could turn a grown man into stone now. Luckily, the poor old guy didn't fall off his roof and quickly averted his eyes and turned away. Later, I thought about it and decided that since I turned his flower bed into a tadpole burial ground, I was probably getting what I deserved (by making him an unwilling peeping tom)...bad juju.

It's a good thing that Star can't read. If she could she might decide that she'd be better off living somewhere else because most animals don't have a fighting chance in our house. But she's proving to be a pretty sturdy dog, so odds are, she'll survive us...

Life Lessons

Lesson 1: Have fun with your kids.
The boys and I were talking politics the other day. This was their take on the President Elect;

Oldest boy (age 8, 2nd grade): "Nathan Freeman (not real name) told me that if Obama is elected president (this was the day of the election) then he is going to make a law saying you can hunt animals all year round."

My reply: "Hhmmm! That is interesting. Is that good or bad?"

Younger son (age 6 1/2, 1st grade): "I heard Obama hates dogs and always says bad things about dogs."

I can see that this is turning into a witch hunt so I decide to have a little fun with it.

My reply: "I heard that Barack Obama eats live human babies every morning for breakfast."

Both boys, with a mixture of fascination and disbelief: "Really!?! Are you kidding mom? Where does he get the babies? Really?!?"

Me: "REALLY! I heard it. Someone told me. It must be true."

Both boys: "You're kidding mom, aren't you? Does he really eat human babies for breakfast?"

Me: "It's true. Someone told me, so it has to be true."

Boys: "We can see you smiling mom. We get it!"

This was our first lesson in 'don't believe everything that you hear'.

Lesson 2: What's mine is mine and it's not yours!
Our next lesson, on sharing, occured the next morning.

Oldest son (to younger brother): "Give that back to me! It's mine!" (He's normally not too surly, but he was having an especially difficult morning and he yanked a pencil with photos of all the American Presidents away from his little brother).

Younger brother sits there stunned, still too dazed from having just woken up to put up much of a fight.

Lee: "I let him look at it. Give it back to him so I can explain something to him."

Oldest boy: "But it's MINE!"

Lee: "I told you to let him look at it."

Oldest boy: "But, I got it. My teacher gave it to me. He might mess it up."

Lee: "I'm trying to explain something to him."

After about 5 minutes of this, I couldn't take it anymore and my award winning mothering skills took over. I decided that I needed to provide oldest boy with an illustrative lesson and I took away the plate, but left him his toast.

"Give me that plate. It's mine! You know what, give me that cereal bowl. It's mine too."

This is where I officially lost it. I dumped his cereal on the counter and took away the bowl. My son started laughing at me and bent over and started eating the cereal like a dog off the counter. So, at this point, I decided to use my hand to push the cereal off the counter into the sink saying, "You know what? Give me that cereal too because it is also mine."

Both boys and my husband stare at me like I've lost it. The lesson in sharing quickly devolved into yet another example of how suddenly and seemingly little provocation mom can go from normal person to stark raving lunatic in just moments.

Lesson 3: Don't ever have rodents as pets.

Snowflake escaped. She plotted and planned and she succeeded. When the mice moved from our daughter's room to the boys' room they started escaping from their cage. The boys claim that they had never assisted the mice in their flight to freedom, but I don't believe them. Lee moved the mice to our spare bedroom thinking that this might solve the problem, but when he went to check on them this morning, Snowflake was gone. Coincidentally, there is a stange odor in our backyard. It smells remarkably like a dead animal. But, I don't think Snowflake could decompose that quickly and after a pretty thorough search, we couldn't find any escaped mice, dead or alive. My solution to the problem was to let the other mouse (Piggy) go in the backyard and then in a couple of days tell the kids that both mice had escaped and we would be free of our mouse responsibilities (because I REFUSE to buy any more rodents), but Lee, suddenly getting all moral on me said he wouldn't participate in any mouse genocide. He told me that I could do it, but he wouldn't be a part of it and he didn't want to know about it. When I reminded him that my mom made my brother and I set our mice free in the back yard when we were little he said my mom had been a sad and sick woman and obviously I was still suffering the effects of my childhood. To make matters worse, when I went to check on Piggy, she looked lonely and depressed. When I told Lee that I thought Piggy was depressed he said, "Of course she's depressed." Then I thought he was just shitting me, but he assured me that mice can definitely experience feelings of loss and sorrow. Now I feel bad for the poor mouse that her girlfriend (I'm not sure if Piggy and Snowflake were lesbians. They might have just been girlfriends in the sense that they are/were both female and roommates) is gone and I'm feeling like I should go out and get a replacement mouse. So, now I'm depressed because I'm never going to stop having pet mice because they keep dying or running away. In the mean time, Snowflake is going to start stinking soon.

Mrs Bean the Crazy Meandering Machine

We have a elderly neighbor who likes to wander into everyone else's yard. It's kind of like "Where's Waldo", because no one knows who's yard she will be in next. Today she might be investigating our garbage, but tomorrow she might be peeping into your front window. Until recently, she was on the architectural review committee of our neighborhood association, but her term either finally expired (after 48 consecutive years) or her Sanford and Son landscaping and yard art didn't appeal to the committee. As frightening as it seems, she still drives and she is a firm believer in the "I'll take my half in the middle" school of automobile lane changing (as evidenced by witnessing her turn left from the right hand lane the other day). Most days she can be found cruising the streets in her white Ford Focus far, far from her own home. She has managed to vex just about everyone on the street with her intense scrutiny of all of our lives. Though she might be wearing yesterday's breakfast on her pajamas today, she isn't the least bit hesistant to knock on your door and tell you that your garbage cans are exceeding their capacity or your recycling is out too early.

Lee and I have created a story line with her as the lead character. Because she is so odd, it's only fair that she should have a fictional villian fashioned after her. By day, our protagonist, who we will call Mrs Bean, ambles up and down the street in her inside out pajama top with her long stringy grey hair in a pony tail off to the side. As she walks, stuporously, she runs her fingers through her pony tail over and over and over again. By night she lurks high in the trees in her leather cat suit, stroking her whiskers and listening to the details of other peoples' lives. As she jumps from tree to tree gathering information she purrs with satisfaction. She is a spy, really, and with this evidence, she will damn people. 2710 leaves the water on while they brush their teeth. 2738 has not converted to LED lighting. 2800 drinks organic milk, but they throw their aluminum cans in the garbage.

I've decided that I need to institute a "Mrs Bean Alert" for my neighbors. Whenever she is in one of their yards sifting through the shrubbery at 8:46 am or driving dangerously close to someone's grass (who remembers the term, "trenching your yard"), an APB must be sent out to all who are within earshot. Instead of an "Amber Alert" it is an "Old Woman Alert". My next step is to install lights in the trees so when she is perched up on a branch in her leather cat suit, the floodlights will shine on her directly.

So, if you see someone in your trees late at nite, remember Mrs Bean's Ford Focus can wander far from home!

First Your Right Hand...Now Your Left

I had to get fingerprinted yesterday so I can volunteer to teach Spanish at my daughter's preschool. Do not be lulled into a false sense of security thinking that your children are safe from predators because all potential employees or volunteers have to go through a fingerprinting process. The system is only as good as least common denominator. I'm here to tell you that there are many weak or missing links in the operation. I don't even know where to begin...These fingerprinting agencies are set up in spare rooms of low budget businesses. If you have an extra bedroom, you can set up shop. I felt like I was on the set of some bad BBC comedy. I was fingerprinted in a real estate school which was inside a standard office building. The actual real estate school didn't look very credible. Having been inside a 'real estate school' I am much more likely to check any future real estate agents' credentials. This place was essentially The Sally Struthers School of Home Selling. The whole premise of selling a home is based on first impressions and curb appeal. The place could be in shambles structurally, but if looks pretty, then you are more likely to get a bite. It reminded me of the doctor's office where my cousin had her sinus surgery. One walk into the waiting room and I knew that she should have walked right back out and found another doctor. The ripped plastic covers on the seats, the bad flourescent lighting and the dingy sea foam blue painted walls in the waiting room told you everything you needed to know about how much time was spent giving attention to detail. You want your surgeon to pay attention to detail. I felt like I was walking into the waiting room of a sketchy plastic surgeon on the other side of the border in Mexico. The kind that you see as expose's on the 6 o'clock news. This particular real estate school/fingerprinting office gave off this vibe.

The first person to greet me was a doughy faced boy with glassy eyes and unfortunate pock marks and an expressionless stare. "May I help you?" "No, but maybe I can help you", I thought to myself. He was able to hand me an application and I sat down on the cleanest looking piece of furniture I could find, a dining room chair with a plastic cover. All of the furniture appeared as though it had been purchased at the Holiday Inn on the axis road. You know the one, the one that has the commericals on TV saying "everything must go; all artwork, all desks, all lamps. Final Liquidation". Nothing was a matched set and it all had dings on it. There were fingerprints and smudge marks all over the glass top of the dining room table (the set had an Asian motif). I'm sure that if you ran a blue light (the kind used in crime scene investigations to find blood or semen) over the sofa the whole thing would have lit up flourescent blue. One doesn't normally come across window treatments inside an office building. Maybe mini-blinds, but certainly not antebellum era curtains and valences, the kind you might expect to see on a plantation down south, like Tara (these probably wouldn't have passed the blue light test either). So, I sat there, with my daughter (home from school due to illness) trying not to touch anything till my name was called.

As I waited, the proprieter of the school came out into the lobby. She was tall and really skinny and the kind of person who flirted with everyone, man or woman; the kind who talks to loud, winks at you inappropriately, glances at you for approval when she's not even talking to you, half laughs after every statement that she makes-as though everyone is interested in what she is saying or doing. All I could think was, "Why don't you stop talking, put down the Starbucks cup that you are clutching with both hands and get a vacuum cleaner and some Windex." Everything was inappropriate in this place, the furniture, her decorum and her dress. Though she was late 40's to early 50's, she wore skin tight jeans (the kind that are worn by metal band groupies) with a patch of an angel on her left cheek tucked into high heel boots, a sleeveless cowl neck sweater with a cleavage revealing tank top underneath and a big silver ring on her left index finger. You could tell she had a membership to a tanning salon and she had not seen her natural hair color in decades. The current overly treated blond that she wore was so brittle that it probably snapped off every time she brushed her hair. It was probably her idea to run the fingerprinting operation out of the extra room. This would allow her to be subsidized for all the time she spent doing nothing. Maybe she had an ex boyfriend who had been a cop who told her about the scam. "Listen, you don't have to do anything and you get paid $XXX for it a month. They just send you checks. You hang a sign in your window, have a spare room with some low budget computer system and you are listed on the registry of state sponsored fingerprinters." She probably broke up with him after he came home drunk too many times, but at least he got her set up with her little cash cow.

I was escorted back to an room about 5' x 8' to get fingerprinted. There was a sign on the door that said "Secure Room. Enter only with authorized personnel. Everything beyond this door is recorded." It was supposed to make it look official, but the scotch tape holding it up and the poor grade computer paper that was crumpled on one edge made it loose effect. If you have ever seen the show "To Catch a Predator" you could imagine what this 'secure' room looked like. It was the room behind the 2 way mirror that the guy with the headphones, tape recorder, video camera and computer with voice matching capabilities was hiding out in while the bad guy sat on the other side not knowing he was about to get caught. ("I really thought she was 19. That's what she told me in the chatroom. I know I'm not a 15 year old choir boy, but I was gonna tell her that when I met her in person"). No one had bothered to wire this room appropriately. I guess if they needed to quickly close up shop (like when the real estate school accreditors came around) they could pull all the wires down and make it look like just another classroom. The wires poked out of a white tile in the ceiling and hung along the wall. There were 2 computers with a digital camera set up on a tripod attached to them. Along with getting fingerprinted, you had to have your picture taken-a mug shot. The fingerprinting machine was wired directly to the computer and it was like a mini photo copier. I stood in front of the fingerprint copy machine and the junior helper wiped each of my prints with a damp washcloth that had probably been used on the previous 12 fingerprintees and had probably been brought from home by the tall, blond lady. He did each finger on both hands and then all 4 fingers together. I showed my daughter the fingerprints on the computer and told her that no 2 people had the same fingerprints. "And no 2 fingers are the same either" added helper jr. "They are like a snowflake" I explained. To which she responded, "Like Snowflake's (the mouse)." "No" I said, "Animals don't have fingerprints". "What about Star (our dog)". "No, not even dogs" (even though I wasn't not completely sure about that one-maybe they do have dog-prints?).

I paid my $44.20 (which will be deducted from next month's tuition), got my receipt and we left. I guess the fingerprints will be uploaded into some national database to make sure I am not some criminal or creep. All, so I can go into my 4 year old daughter's preschool class and count from uno to diez once a week for 20 minutes. I didn't mind doing it. It's not like I had anything else to do. But, I did learn something. Nothing is probably as secure as you think it is. I have more confidence in my ability to judge a character than the official fingerprinting process. Know your kids' teachers and who they hang out with because this is a far better indicator of what is going on in their lives than some guarentee afforded to you by a beaurocratic institution...

Animal Obituaries

I just finished reading one of the best books I've ever read, Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. She received the Pulitzer Prize for this book of short stories, so I guess I'm stating the obvious by saying that it was good; she doesn't really need my endorsement. With my newly reduced work schedule I can do things like read. I've read more books in the past couple of months than in the past 10 years. Anyway, because her prose was so haunting and poetic and touched me so deeply, it's making me want to exercise my literary muscles. Rather than struggle to come up with new material, I'm pulling from my stock pile of old stuff...

September 11, 2005

"I loved him. He was my best friend!" The first time we heard this sentiment it was at the untimely demise of a tick that had been extracted from our eldest son's scalp. His younger brother was mourning the loss of the first family pet. His brother had fed that tick and nurtured it with his own blood. As the tick circled the dark watery tunnel of the commode, we bade him farewell. And then he was gone. Our middle son knew he'd never find another friend quite like this tick, a blood brother in the truest sense of the word. We prayed for the tick, thanked Jesus for the tick's presence in our lives, we told stories of how the tick would be happily reunited with it's mother and father and all of its tick siblings. Nothing could console our middle son. Something special happened that day between that tick and our middle son. A bond was formed and our 2 year old son was forever changed (or, even though he wasn't the one with the blood sucking tick-he was manifesting early symptoms of Lyme's disease).

Recently our middle son found a grub worm in the back yard. This was his new best friend. No matter that he had caused a near fatal crush injury to its dorsal half. His soul mate had been resurrected in the form of the common grub worm. As he rushed to show me his new discovery, I could see the joy in his eyes and his plans for their future together; They would take up residence together. Our middle son in his bed and the grub worm in a plastic cup sitting on his shelf above him. The worm would accompany our son to bath time, ride shotgun next to his carseat in the minivan. They'd be together forever, or at least until his dessicated carcass found its way to the dustpan and out to Monday morning trash pick-up. Our son eagerly waited to show his father his new invertebrate friend. His father was not keen to give free room and board to the grub worm and obviously was oblivious to the complexity of their, middle son and worm's, relationship. Lee had no compassion towards displaced grubworms, but acquiesed and allowed the worm to reside in a non-disposable drinking cup. He even put some water in the cup, at our son's request. As middle son ran across the yard to show his new worm habitat to his brother and sister, the worm was catapulted out of his new home. Just like that, in the flash of a moment, life was forever changed and the grub worm was gone. This time, middle son was able to reach deep within himself and pull through, launching the cup full of water, the former worm abode, into the air and baptizing his brother and sister.

This past Friday the kids and I drove north of town to an orchard. Lee was at home with a bad case of the shits that he had acquired subsequent to helping Hurricane Katrina evacuees. Along with Toby, a yellow lab, and a flock of guineas, we were the only people at the orchard. Before we could pick persimons and jujube's, my oldest son insisted on discussing a dog's life span and the neutrality of Toby's gender based on his lack of testicles. Finally his mind was able to wrap around the concept of involuntary emasculinization and we set out to harvest bounty. After about 15 minutes of intense gathering, it was time to break for lunch. While eating, a hummingbird landed near where we sat for our picnic. The bird was not quick enough to escape Toby and I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to instruct the kids on the theory of 'Survival of the Fittest'. In the best Marlon Perkins voice I could muster I began my narration, "Watch children as the dog grips the bird in his teeth. See the bird's fragile bones shatter in the dog's teeth." Just before, "Look at how the bird glides down the dog's throat", in a miraculous twist of fate, the bird hopped out of Toby's mouth and onto a plastic chair. While the oldest son, youngest daughter and I went to go shake more jujubes out of the trees, middle son decided he needed to stand vigil at the bird's side. Daughter was scared to death of the dog. She knew that after all those years on a chain with those guineas just beyond his reach, Toby had finally tasted blood and if you put a few feathers on her, she might well be a guinea in the dog's mind. As middle son stood shiva, he decided to construct an altar for the bird; 2 towels were wrapped around it. But this configuration was not quite sacred enough, a 3rd towel needed to be draped on top of the bird and pressure, ever so slight, needed to be applied to the bird. As the bird entered into its afterlife (with middle son's assistance), daughter, believing the supernatural to be possible, lifted the bird by its bloody wings in the hope that it would take flight. And we all appreciated the moment for bringing new meaning and clarity to the circle of life."

This reminds me of the most recent loss in our household...Dottie...she was a victim of the aftermath of Hurricane Ike. Dottie had been left in the care of my husband while the kids and I headed out of town after the storm. My mother in law offered to house the mouse in our evacuation (and we did have an emergency mouse evacuation plan-she was to be loaded up into a tupperwear container with holes), but since the urgency of the moment had passed and truthfully, because 3 kids, a dog and a mouse for 5 hours in the car was more than I could handle, I opted to leave the mouse in the capable hands of my husband. The day that we are to return home he calls and says, "You're never gonna believe this (when ever anyone starts a statement like this, you know they are lying about something), but when I went to check on Dottie this morning, she was stiff as a board. She was fine just yesterday. I don't know what happened. I fed her and gave her water." Long story short, a replacement mouse was purchased before we returned home. The replacement mouse was a male and smelled like urine and had red eyes (original Dottie had black eyes), but the kids didn't seem to notice. Dottie #2 lasted a day and a half before my daughter assasinated her. If it is possible to be stunned to death, this is how Dottie #2 came to his demise. Either that or it was a crush injury (inside the vise grip of a 4 year old girl's hand). Upon learning that Dottie #2 (which the kids still thought was Dottie #1) was dead and gone, there was a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth. Misery. That pretty sums up the collective emotion. Or maybe it was heartache. Much time was spent eulogizing Dottie. Sometimes something will happen and all of the sudden Dottie will be remembered, "I remember when Dottie used to eat her food" or "I remember when Dottie used to sleep in her plastic cup" or everyone's favorite memory, "I remember when Dottie used to run on her wheel". Such bittersweet memories...all the more precious now that we have 2 new mice, Piggy and Snowflake.

Holiday's Over

I've been on holiday (that's the way the British say it-they leave out the article 'a'. Like, they 'go to hospital', not 'the hospital'). Though it really hasn't been much of a holiday. Unless you've had your head under a rock, then you know that Ike rolled through Galveston and Houston. The actual storm itself wasn't too bad-very noisy and at times a little scary. But, our house remained intact with only a blown-over fence and a couple of broken tree limbs. The aftermath of the storm was fun for about a day and a half while everyone was in their front yards helping each other clean up and grilling all the food from the fridge so it wouldn't spoil. Precisely 36 hours after the power went out, it officially got old. It was not intended for me to be a pioneer. The kids and I loaded up and went to my in-laws' lake house for about 7 days and then came home with the pipe dream that our power would come back on and the kids would get to go back to school, but that didn't happen for another 8 days (15 days after the storm). But, considering the amount of damage that occurred in other places, we came out if it unscathed.

Lee and I took our internal medicine recertification exam today. I flew through 180 questions in about 3 hours. The speed with which I completed the exam is not any indication of my results-my fate hangs in the balance and I won't find out whether I passed or failed for another 2-3 months. Because all of my pride (not to mention my board certification) is riding on this, I really hope that I passed. I hate public humiliation. My mother graciously watched our kids last week so we could study and I crammed as much knowledge as I possibly could into that one week. It was actually fun returning to student life when your biggest concern was how many hours of studying you could get done in one day. Since Lee and I didn't meet till I was in medical school and he was in residency we never had the opportunity to study together and it was a great experience hanging out in different coffee shops and university campuses (Lee quite enjoyed the scenery on campus, though he could have been the father of most of the girls there). I did learn a lot; I really like internal medicine andI really like my husband.

While you are preparing for an exam this big, especially when it is crunch time-the last 2-3 weeks before the test, you have this perception that every waking moment of the day needs to be spent reviewing material. "Sorry kids, I can't make you dinner, I have to study. You've seen me get the gas burners started. Make yourself some mac and cheese." "No, you don't have any clean underwear. Laundry isn't a topic in my review book." So, needless to say, my mom was a lifesaver. Who knows what our kids would have had to resort to (selling plasma for food, maybe) if she hadn't agreed to intervene. I explained to my son that this test was like all of the spelling tests in the whole world multiplied by a thousand. I still don't think he got it.

You don't have to take # 2 pencils and bubble in scan trons during standardized testing these days. The 'modern' process is completely computerized and you go to a testing center where the person next to you might be getting his certification as a radiology technician or taking defensive driving, for all you know. We had to arrive at 7:30 am and we arrived about 10 minutes early. Precisely at 7:30 am the test center proctor opened the door and immediately started barking out orders. She was the drill sargent equivalent of a shopping center rent a cop. You could tell she had aspirations, dreams of someday, somewhere being able to really tell people to do things that really mattered. But, for now she was content to make us stand in a single file line and take a number and sit down till our number was called. Every once in a while she would show us her soft side and be personable or make an attempt at humor, but if you tried to reciprocate, she was all business. During my break, I was standing by my locker eating a granola bar and drinking some bottled water and she says, "I'm sorry mam, but you can't eat or drink in here. I'll have to ask you to step into the hallway." "Okay, no big deal", I think to myself. When I walk back in, she is stuffing a candy bar down her gullet. After she got us all signed in and fingerprinted (literally, we were fingerprinted) she didn't have anything to do except surf the net and enforce protocol when one of us would wander out for a break. "No we don't have any water here. Remember, if you take longer than your ten minute break, you will not get extra time to take the test." I think she might have had a flask under her desk. Either that or she was a rapid cycler.

Yesterday we had 2 insurance adjusters come out to look at our master bathroom which has a water leak (pre storm problem). We learned that these guys were not actual employees of the insurance company, but individual private contractors. They were storm chasers of sorts. They were from Florida and were experts in hurricane damage. These guys could have been a band of traveling minstrels dressed as insurance guys-they had the shirts with the company logo, but that was about it. I mean, they were very convincing in their knowledge of house structure and construction. However, the most impressive thing about these 2 guys was their schtick. They were like the McKenzie Brothers or the Smothers Brothers of the insurance adjuster world.

Guy 1, "Hey, did you say you had a water leak, aye?"

Guy 2 "Yeah, she said she had a water leak. Didn't you hear her, she said she had a water leak."

Guy 1 "We're gonna have to go in your attic to look at your pipes, aye."

Guy 2 "Like he said, we're gonna be looking at the pipes in your attic, aye. Your pipes need looking at."

Guy 1 "It could be coming thru the roof and going thru the eaves and it works like capillary action, the water aye, it wicks you know."

Guy 2 "It sucks the water right up, aye. The wicking and the capillary action. Sometimes it comes through the roof, right through the eaves. The water could be coming from there, aye."

Guy 1 "Now what we have to do here is take out all this sheetrock and then you get your mix of grain alcohol and you spray it on the sheetrock to get rid of the mold, aye. The grain alcohol, that's what you need to get. What's that stuff called, you want to get your 151 Everclear, your moonshine-that stuff is what the professionals use. You want to use it aye"

Guy 2 "Now your moonshine, the 151 Everclear-now you might want to drink it, but just take a sip, aye, you want to save it for your mold, aye. Spray her right on there."

Guy 1 "That pipe up in the attic, right where the joint is, aye. What you have there is copper oxide. You see it in that picture there. That's copper oxide. Now it might be a leak, or it might be your standard pinhole, aye."

Guy 2 "Your pinhole, aye, that's what I'm talking about. The pinhole could be causing all yer problems aye. Ya see that copper oxide. Could be that pinhole."

Guy 1 "Now you got yourself a real good insurance company here, but they aren't gonna pay for this, aye. This'll eat your deductable right up, but won't be anymore than that, aye. Yer standard job here, spraying that Everclear and putting up the sheetrock, aye. You won't get a penny from the insurance company, aye."

Guy 2 "Hell no they're not gonna pay fer this, aye. Ya got yer deductable aye. Damn good insurance company. The best there is, aye. That food yer cooking sher does smell good, aye"

Me, "Thanks, your welcome to have some, but my husband told me it tastes like horse shit, aye".

I couldn't have paid for better entertainment. Lee told me that he thought Guy 2 was sweet on me. I think it was the "my husband thinks my cooking is equivalent to horse crap" statement that charmed him the most. But, if flirting gets my bathroom fixed, then I'm all for it, aye.

Final note, I'm on an "eating clean" kick-barley, oats, kashi, etc...So, my recipe, polenta with salmon, bombed yesterday. I believe that right after Lee told me "this tastes like horseshit" he told me that he was going out to get a double at Wendy's. I paid him back by reading about all of the evils of processed foods, refined sugars and saturated fats while he ate his 2 chimichangas. I ruined it for him so bad that he couldn't even eat his refried beans. This morning he reminded me of why I was so smitten with him from the get-go. We were on our way to the test and he was complimenting me on my choice of apparel, black sweats, white t-shirt, black and white hankerchief tied up, 'Aunt-Jemima' like in my hair, glasses with the black and white frames. "You look kind of cute this morning in your headband and matching glasses. Kind of a dalmation look, like you might be riding on the side of a firetruck." He'd better watch out...someone out there might like me, aye!

It's a Comin....Ike's a Comin!

This may be a repeat for some of you, but it is a recap of our experience with Hurricane Rita in Sept 2005:

“Evacuating Rita” 10-5-5

To all our concerned friends and family, thank you for your generous offers of help and support surrounding the events of Hurricane Rita. I’m happy to report that we escaped unscathed and that our house remains intact. In the profound words of Oprah Winfrey to the individuals affected by Hurricane Katrina “[We] are not refugees, [we] are not victims, [we] are survivors!” And as Tom Petty so poignantly sings “You don’t have to live like a refugee.” A sentiment that we took quite literally. With that in mind, so starts our journey…

It was a day like any other, children screaming, chaos predominating, clothes needing washing, then the chief meteorologist of a major network and who is endorsed by the National Weather Association, proclaims that Hurricane Rita is headed towards the Gulf Coast with the coast south of us as the bull’s eye. With no time wasted, city officials decide that certain areas need to be evacuated. No one wanted to suffer the same fate as those poor fools in New Orleans. No one in our town was going to be plucked off a roof top or be left sitting on the interstate going to the bathroom on the frontage road or waiting for a yellow school bus to pick us up and carry us off to some sports dome slated for demolition only to sleep on a cot next to 5000 other people. Instead we’d choose to sit on the interstate in our cars without gas or air conditioning with a heat index of 110 for 28 hours. So we packed the essential items as itemized by the news media; important documents, wedding photos, non-perishable items, then we boarded up the house, packed up the 3 kids plus 4 bonus neighbor kids and like 2 million other city dwellers, we quickly headed for dry land.

Before we could begin our trek we had one important stop to make. We weaved through the neighborhoods to my brother house and gathered him, his wife, my nephew, my mom, the 12 year old Rottweiler named Isaac and about a dozen undocumented Mexicans (I’m Mexican too, so I can say that) and headed west. We were like pioneers in their covered wagons (but in our minivans, pick-ups and SUV’s). We didn’t know where we were going, but we had enough peanut butter, canned ravioli and batteries to last us till Armageddon.

Thinking I could outsmart the masses, I decided to take the ‘backroads’. The first 20 minutes were smooth sailing. Then we hit traffic. Obviously, I wasn’t the only clever one in the metropolitan area. About every 45 minutes (equal to 3 miles) we’d accelerate to about 25 mph for 3 miles. Every gas station we passed was like a ghost town. It was very eerie, like a scene out of a Mad Max movie. Occasionally we’d see a line of cars waiting at a gas station for a pump to open once it received fuel. The only problem was that a gas tanker would have to have been air lifted into the gas station to by pass the traffic.

About 4 hours into the odyssey, we stopped on the side of the road to let the 8 + kids run around and to stretch our legs. More accurately, I had pulled into a gravel road and intentionally ignored a sign that read ‘Private Property.’ I figured it didn’t say ‘keep out’ so it was more like a proclamation than a warning. Besides, it was a dirt road for as far as the eye could see, so I thought any chances of human life were fairly far removed. As you will later learn, I figured wrong. In the meantime, a few people found some bushes that looked dry and discretely watered them. We hoisted Isaac out of the back of the car and let him sniff the fresh country air. While we were busy eating our PB & J’s and drinking our bottled water (the stock piling actually did come in handy!) a pick-up came driving up the dirt road. It stopped in front of us and out stepped two very disgruntled country gentlemen, Pops and Jr. Pops claims that Isaac (as you recall, the geriatric dog with an artificial hip and cataracts so thick you can see your reflection) spooked their horse. Needless to say, we packed up our happy picnic and got the hell out of Dodge!

About 4 hrs later, at midnight, (8 hours from the start of our journey and 120 miles later) we came crawling into small town USA. Our original destination, some 350 miles north of us had long been abandoned. We would have gotten there long after Rita had made landfall or the DPS would have found our desiccated carcasses on the side of the road. So at the last minute we made a call to some friends in the small town and made a desperate plea; would they be willing to house some 30 odd people (mostly complete strangers) and one beast? How could they resist such a request? Foolishly, they said yes!

Well, our kind hosts, who, to preserve their privacy and anonymity, I will call Howard Johnson and his wife La Quinta, live on about 35 acres with livestock, tractors, a fishing hole, a jungle gym better than most playground’s, a swimming pool and a 5’ flat screen TV. Suddenly this was no longer a flight for personal safety, this was vacation at a 5 star bed and breakfast! Even Isaac was in dog heaven, acres and acres of territory to mark and as a special bonus, all the cow dung a dog could eat (apparently cow excrement is a delicacy). The highlight of our stay was grilling grain fed cattle raised by our hosts and feasting on it in the form of burgers, sausages and steaks (sorry all you PETA people, but Daisy and her pals tasted good)! Basically, by the time Sunday rolled around, Howard and La Quinta had to pack our bags for us and push us out the door!

So, all in all, we faired quite nicely. Even the trip home was a breeze. It took the people at Sonic Burger longer to bring us our order than it did to drive home. When we finally pulled into our driveway, our house was still standing and no trees had fallen over. As a matter of fact, our house never even lost power. So, we took the boards off the windows, returned the neighbor kids to their mother and dug a shelter to store our provisions.

So, once again, thank you to all of our friends and family who were so concerned about us and who made offers to house us. We know who our true friends are! So, the next time you all have to evacuate and you need somewhere to stay, remember you have friends, Howard Johnson and his wife La Quinta who would love to have you come and stay at the official Hurricane Rita Evacuation Center!

Still dry,

The Family

So, this time, as Ike approaches, we are hunkering down and hoping for the best. I'll let you all know how we fare on the other side!

Tribute to Uncle La

When my mom walked up to the door, I could tell something was not right. "What's wrong?" I asked her. "Uncle La died," she said. Though she said the words, they didn't register in my mind. It was like someone telling me that 1 + 1 = 3. I could hear it, but it just didn't make sense. Perhaps what didn't make sense the most was that I never got to say good bye. When I was in Atlanta this past June I didn't get to see him. Usually a visit with Uncle La is a priority whenever I go to Atlanta. I didn't stress about not getting to see him because I figured I would just visit him next year. It never crossed my mind that there wouldn't be a next year.

My kids don't understand the significance of my relationship with Uncle La. This is the man to whom, in addition to my own dad, I sent a father's day card almost every year. Flamboyantly and true to his previous life as a majorette, Uncle La came marching into our lives when I was about 15 years old (what else might you expect from a former male baton twirler?). My parents were divorced (or they might have just been separated) and my mom was a mess. A 'hot mess' as Chelsea Handler might describe her. She was uneducated and away from her family and she had 2 kids to raise without the help of her ex (or soon to be ex) husband. After bouncing around churches for a couple of years, we landed on the steps of First Baptist Church of Atlanta and my mom found her sanctuary. She joined a bible study with a motley crew for members, but this motley crew became our family and our rock for the next several years. Mainly, they were my mom's rock, but mine and my brother's by proxy. Had it not been for this unlikely assortment of God's children, I am quite certain that a) my mother would have been institutionalized and/or b) my brother and I would have been placed in foster care.

I don't remember all the people, but everyone in her bible study was like a character in a play. There was the older, conservative white couple who were the mom & pop of the outfit. Before moving to Africa to become missionaries, they led the group, opened their hearts and home and centered everyone. They kept the compass pointed in the right direction. There were some musicians and street performers, their son and his girlfriend (a bi-racial couple; still a pretty big statement in Atlanta, GA in the mid to late 80's), my mom (the single mom hanging on by a thread) and a medley of born-again, reformed gay men. Larry fell into this latter category. These men were no longer 'living in the life-style'. One was a hair-dresser who was HIV positive, the other lived with his grandmother and was on disability for 'chronic fatigue', the young guy who had just been starting to experiment with his new, gay identity, a married 'heterosexual' florist and then there was Uncle La.

Uncle La had grown up in a conservative Christian home in North Carolina. He had 2 sisters and one brother and I think his daddy might have been a baptist preacher (even if he wasn't ordained). I'm not sure when Uncle La came out of the closet (though I don't think they make closets big enough to have held Uncle La), but the whole world, especially the part of the world that includes bible belt North Carolina, had to have been mighty suspicious when in high school Larry started throwing the baton for the marching band. Sometime after college he moved to Atlanta and began his career as a female impersonator. Legend has it that Larry was the best female impersonator in Atlanta in the late 70's/early 80's with a pretty lucrative career. Gays and straights alike would come to see his show. When he had his first heart attack at age 35, Larry suddenly called up his old friend Jesus and left the bright lights of transgender entertainment. He hung up his dress and his tights, shelved his heels, feather boa and wig and grabbed a bible and never looked back. That's how he got to the bible study. His first near death experience caused him to reevaluate his entire life.

If my mom could have had a second husband, I would have wanted it to be Uncle La. But, b/c my mom was a 'hot mess' and more likely, b/c Larry didn't suddenly become attracted to women, they never wed. However, they were always as close as husband and wife or brother and sister. La called my mom, Tia. He knew her weaknesses and frailties like no other. He was the first person that I remember teasing my mother and her actually laughing. He made her laugh at herself. A thing that she had not been able to do. It was like a valve on a pressure steamer. He came along and started telling a few jokes and the situation was no longer as intense as it had once been. I don't know what my brother and I would have done without Uncle La. He taught us how to love her despite her blemishes and to actually love the spots that we had once found to be unsightly. He brought us laughter when there wasn't a whole lot about which to laugh. Every Sunday after church we'd go eat at Mick's. He introduced us to Oreo Cheesecake. There was a whole host of restaurants we'd go to and in each and every one, they all knew Larry. He was loved everywhere he went. It was like walking into a place with a celebritey. "Oh hey Larry! Glad to see you. Who do you have with you today?" And, I don't think I am looking at everything through rose-colored glasses, but it always seemed like he payed the tab.

Larry was a big man. Well over 6 feet tall and probably some 300+ lbs, physically, he took up a lot of space when he entered a room. But, even if he had been a wee little man, his personality could have filled a mansion. It was not possible to stop laughing when you were in his presence. I'm not talking about giggles, but gut-busting, pee your pants, laugh until you are crying and it hurts kind-of laugher. Though he had left his life on the stage, he was still always an entertainer. He was there through so many milestones in my life (and if a recovered homosexual can be a positive male role model, then that is precisely what he was for my brother); prom, high-school graduation, going off for my junior year of college in London (he bought me a box of Godiva chocolates which I exchanged for a red plaid robe that I still have today and I preferentially wear over all others in my closet), medical school graduation and my wedding (he did a reading). Though we never could get him to come visit after our wedding, we always visited him when we were in Atlanta. When I was interviewing for a residency spot at Emory, I went swimming and took a nap at his apartment. When I was pregnant with my oldest son he took us to his favorite Chinese restaurant. He drove out to my dad and step-mom's house when my boys were young to celebrate my oldest's 2nd birthday. I still remember the Bob-the-Builder outfit he bought my son. That same trip, we crashed in his apartment again, this time with the boys (one of my favorite pictures of the boys is on Uncle La's chair). He always met us out; Mick's, McDonald's, Cudzew Cafe, Mexican restaurants, Cumberland Mall (Larry's one bedroom apartment was full of crystal frames and figurines, but his refrigerator was empty except for some bottled water and Haagen-Dazs Ice Cream). Once he went with us to the Chattahoochee River and waded into the water with the kids. Then he took us to Target to buy Crocs for all 3 of my kids. The last time I saw him was last summer(2007) at his favorite Mexican restaurant. He took my kids to eat ice cream at Baskin Robbins afterward. When my 5 year old (at the time) decided to take a leak in the potted plant outside the shop, Larry told him that someone was going to cut off his weiner. This made my son cry b/c he didn't grow up with Uncle La. I remember feeling a little bit angry with him b/c he made my son cry.

I didn't get to see him on this most recent visit because I was crunched for time and I got lazy. I could have driven out to see him the nite that I arrived into town, but I hadn't seem my dad yet and my dad didn't want to drive into town to have dinner with Larry after a long day at work. God, what I would do to go back and change that decision. He left town to go see his mom in North Carolina the 2nd or 3rd day I was in Atlanta. For the first time, our paths didn't converge. I should have known something was going to happen. Larry was a big man and he enjoyed life. Sure he had heart disease and high cholesterol and high blood pressure and sure he took his medication, but there was no 'lifestyle modification'. If he wasn't having sex, he sure was going to eat. Eating was the one carnal desire that he could satisfy. Even after some cardiac surgery and additional hospitalizations, he still kept on eating exactly what he wanted to eat. I don't think it was a death wish so much as a lack of concern for things of this world. Even though Larry didn't necessarily take care of the his 'temple' (his body), he loved Jesus like no one's tomorrow. Jesus had walked him down some roads and Jesus was Larry's best friend. Larry walked the talk. He was almost always singing some Baptist hymn. That's about the only thing that makes this whole thing bearable; knowing that Larry is in heaven loving every minute of it and making the angles fall down and bust their wings with laughter and Jesus himself is probably wiping away tears from laughing so hard. I know that when it's my turn to go, he is going to run and greet me at those pearly gates and there is no one else (other than God himself) that I'd rather have greet me as I am enter into Glory. I'm going to miss the hell out of you Uncle La and Atlanta is never going to be the same, but save me some Oreo cheesecake and save me some good jokes. And if I forgot to tell you how much I love you the last time I saw you, maybe only now, when you are up in heaven, you can fully comprehend how much I loved you and how much your love meant to me. Take care of all the people down here who need it. Good bye Uncle La, good bye.

Clickin'

Wow, I've been lazy lately! I've been spending far too much time making those bead designs that require ironing. It's completely addictive and has consumed just about my every waking moment for the past 3 weeks. I sit there like an idiot or a trained chimp picking out tiny beads and putting them on a peg board. It's about as mentally stimulating as watching static on the tv, but I just can't take my hands off those tiny beads.

When I was in Pennsylvania, my 10 year old niece and I went to Michael's to buy more of these beads and it was though we had landed in wonderland. It was almost too much to bear; aisles and aisles of crafts that needed to be purchased and completed. We filled our cart up to the rim and then I came to my senses as I approached the cash register, realizing that there was absolutely no justification in spending 3 digits on shit that I was just going to throw away or that would sit in my spare bedroom (like my scrapbooking stuff, knitting yarn/needles and pictures to be framed). I'm becoming frighteningly similar to my grandmother and her nursing home posse and I'm skirting dangerously close to applying jewels and rhinestones to my jeans and putting angels on sweatshirts and sending them to everyone I know as Christmas presents.

Today my 4 year old daughter told me that she just couldn't control herself and that she needed to be trained. This was in reference to our new puppy. Puppies are small and cute and she wants to rub their cold, wet noses. I think she might be right. The dog needs to be trained, but so does she. We hired a dog trainer to come over to the house and show us the correct way to get the dog house-trained but we might need to hire a girl-trainer that can show us how to manage our daughter.

My husband and his sister are watching the movie Hostel. I think the basic premise of the movie is college graduates get murdered for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. They love to watch slasher flicks. I don't have the stomach for it and I'm a huge chicken. I can hear them complaining because no one has gotten dismembered and they are already 10 minutes into the movie. "This movie sucks! Didn't people get killed right away in Saw?" They opted for this over the Olympics. Lee is in a bad mood and nothing makes him feel better than watching people suffer, especially if it is particularly violent and people are being tortured.

He (Lee) has been working in the ER this month. Working there can make you a sadistic person. When you are taking care of the dregs of society you start to view everyone with disdain; the grocery store clerk, the person who won't let you merge into traffic, your wife and children. Sleep deprivation intensifies your emotions so something that might seem mildly irritating on a normal day, on a sleep deprived day might push you to become justifiably homicidal. The other nite, while the rest of us slumbered, he took care of 29 acutely ill patients in a 12 hour period. We are talking about heart attacks, strokes, altered mental status. It was him, one 3rd year medical resident and a first year medical resident. You leave there, the hospital, at 7 am (or more realistically, at 7:30-8 am) and you are supposed to immediately mainstream yourself. You might have just finished intubating (putting a breathing tube into) someone with pneumonia so bad that he can't breath for himself, sent someone with a possible stroke to the CT scanner, or taken care of the same drunken bum for the 118th time, but you have to walk out of there and act like the world is a balanced place. Last Wednesday nite he had a patient that would only talk to him and agree to medical treatment after conferring with the Holy Spirit. "Holy Spirit, is it okay if I get an IV?" "The Holy Spirit said no, you can't draw my blood or put an IV in my arm." "Sir if you don't let me put an IV in your arm, we are going to have to call security and they will tie you down so we can put an IV in your arm, so you might want to check with the Holy Spirit again." "Alright, I checked again and this time the Holy Spirit said it was okay."

Last month, Lee was taking care of the patients on the in-patient service in the hospital. These are the patients who have been hospitalized for various and sundry reasons. He was making rounds by himself one day and he asked a guy with AIDS why he stopped taking his HIV medications. "Well, I was at work and these people kept messing with me and then I started clickin' and theys started clickin' and then they was clickin' and I was clickin' and we was all clickin'. Click, click, click, clickin'. You know what I mean? We was clickin'." I wonder if he wrote in the patient's chart. Diagnosis: clickin'. And I wonder what the treatment might be.

I've been having a hard time the past couple of days because I don't know how to handle disapproval. Judgment is damaging. We all do it, judge. "How can she let her kids watch that movie, play that video game, listen to that music, etc..." It is so much easier to condemn someone elses actions/intentions than to analyze our own lives. It gives us this weird sense of superiority. By devaluing someone else, we somehow feel validated. "If they are wrong, then I must be right." I think we are the harshest with our own families, our siblings & parents or our spouse's siblings and parents. Then we feel like we have to rally our cause and talk to other family members to get them onto "our side." "Can you believe what so and so is doing (or can you believe what they did)? What are they thinking?" When you become the one who is being judged then all of the sudden you realize that it is a bad idea. Suddenly you want them to walk in your shoes, to see the world from your perspective. I have to admit that when someone I love judges me, I don't know what to do. It has taken me a while to go to God about this one, to finally realize that the only thing that really matters is His judgment of me. And as sad as I might feel about someone's disapproval of me or my actions, I still need to choose to love them and realize that God will take care of the rest. And if I go to Him first, if I honor Him, then nothing else really matters. It all goes back to keeping my eyes on Him. If my eyes are on Him, then the waves won't overpower me and drown me. But the minute I take my eyes off of Him, then I start to drown. If I keep my eyes on Him then there is no reason for me to keep 'clickin' with everyone around me.

The In-Laws

We're up in Western PA on vacation. The kids love it up here because it is a total departure from their reality. They can play in the creek, swim in the pond, pick blackberries, shoot b-b guns, stay up as late as they want, harrass their older cousins...Basically it's utopia. Bathing is pretty much optional. The place uses well water and my mother-in-law polices water usage like the Kremlin policed free speech. My kids have no concept of conservation. You turn on the tap, water comes out. To them, it's like cash at the ATM machine-there is always an endless source-if you want some, you can get some. Trying to explain the differences in modern water delivery sources was more than they cared to know. I wasn't about to start a conversation about septic tanks. Plumbing is not a topic of interest to them.

Many people might consider a two week vacation with your in-laws to be a lapse in better judgement. Before I left home, one of my friends asked me, "Are you sure you want to spend that much time with your husband's family?" These people, Lee's family, are delightful. Where else could Lee have gotten his charm? There isn't a single conversation without the use of 4 letter words (by granny and grandchild alike). Besides, these people know all of my husband's most embarrasing and humiliating moments in life and share these stories freely. I know that I am accepted and loved by these people because any story that involves me they begin with the statement, "Remember when Michelle used to be nice..." My sister-in-law is convinced that with my first pregnancy there was come trans-placental transfer of blood causing a transformation that changed me into the beautifully ruthless woman that they love and admire today. While the kids might look forward to all of the woodsy/outdoor activities, Lee and I get all giddy at the prospect of playing Scrabble day after day with his sister and various other family members. It's pretty cut-throat and I have to admit that I can't really run with the big dogs, but I give a fairly good show.

We spent some time in the DC area with Lee's brother and his family. Lee and his brother are about as tight as two grown men can be. However, you'd never realize that the two of them left adolescence, at least not mentally. They are complete idiots around each other and my two boys are just like them. It's heartwarming. (It actually is-to see them-Lee and his big brother-simultaneously change diapers/give baths and make up foul stories to make the other one laugh). It makes me smile to think about our collective 5 children playing together. The biggest dilemma of our 7 days together was that my eldest boy couldn't understand how his 3 year old girl cousin wanted to incorporate princesses into their spy game. This caused him endless frustration because why would anyone want to desicrate a perfectly good spy game with girl stuff? It almost overloaded his system for me to tell him that perhaps she could stun the bad guy with her princessly beauty or karate chop them with her ballet moves. Begrudgingly, he acquiesed. My daughter, at age 4, was the cool, older cousin to her 3 year old cousin. "Why does she copy everything I do, Mom?" Hmmm...sounds familiar, but the other way around usually...And of course, everyone loved the baby. None of it could have been any better.

We were able to go to DC one day and see some of the sights. My oldest son never stopped asking questions from the moment we parked the car till the second we arrived back to his aunt and uncle's house. These weren't your usual 'I need some factual information' questions. These were the 'torture your parents till there brain throbs' kind of questions. "What if we saw the President?" "What if he invited us to his house to eat?" "Why is there a gate around the White House?" "How did that squirrel get inside the gate?" "I can't see any of the security cameras." "What if I climbed over the fence?" "Where does the Vice-President live?" "What does he do?" "Why hasn't their ever been a woman President?" "Will we ever have a woman President?" "What if we stole the Hope Diamond?" "It's not really that big. I've seen bigger."

We took our 10 year old niece with us and I think she was the perfect age to see DC. She knew enough history for it to be pertinent (as opposed to our kids who will likely only remember the popsicles that we bought from the street vendor). Taking her, our niece, reminded me of when my aunts and uncles used to take me with them on trips. Going somewhere with your aunts and uncles, when you are little, opens a whole different window to the world. These are grown adults, in many ways like your parents, but completely different from them. It's a whole different set of rules with aunts and uncles. They listen to different music, eat different food, watch different shows, laugh at different jokes. It's the first time you are able to see the world in a context other than the one presented to you by your parents and it's done with complete safety. Who better to show you an alternate view of reality than your own parents' siblings? They aren't trying to corrupt you and they have only your best interest in mind and they completely love you. I think back to my own childhood and the impact that my aunts and uncles had on my upbringing and I can't imagine not doing this for my own nieces and nephews. These are the people that you turn to when your own parents are being absolute shits for not letting you stay out all night on prom-nite. They aren't your parents so you don't see their flaws with the intensity that you see your own parents' flaws and they tolerate your irritating personality traits much more than your own parents do. Aunts and uncles (even those unrelated "aunts and uncles") are God's emissaries of good will. They are the angels that help us through some of life's most difficult moments. I take my job as aunt very seriously and I am much more sensitive to my nieces and nephews judgement of me than my own children (my kids are stuck with me, they have no choice).

I guess that is why these trips to see my husband's family are so important to me. I'm not really doing it for my own enjoyment. That's a fringe benefit. It's for my kids and my nieces and nephews; the next generation. I'm hoping and praying that Lee and I are building a legacy that my kids and my nieces and nephews can pass on to their kids and their kids' cousins. There is not much that matters more than family. My kids have the luxury of being in the same town as my mom and my brother and his family. They don't have that benefit with Lee's family and how could I ever deprive them of the opportunity to be around the people that made their father the man that he is. They need this to help put together the puzzle of who they are. Especially since my kids have characteristics of their father's family poking all through their personalities. And I am proud that they do.

Turning Christian

Need to clean the mouse's cage. I say that to myself everyday with earnest intentions of doing so. It doesn't smell-not yet. In her cage, there is a mezzanine, an area for relaxation and there are little mouse turds on it. This is what tells me that I can't keep waiting one more day. When the mouse turds are visible to the naked eye, it is creeping into the realm of public health concerns. I can ask my housekeeper/nanny to do a lot of things, but that is probably crossing the line.

I am at the mercy of my housekeeper/nanny. This morning when she walked into our house I thought she was in a bad mood and immediately I felt guilty. I know this is a very egocentric view of my nanny's world, but I was convinced I had done something injurious to her-like asking her to come in early. I tip-toed around till I was sure that she was in a good mood. You must understand, this woman, she completes me. As a matter of fact, in the diad that is myself and my babysitter, I am a very small component. It's mostly all her. I'm almost unnecessary in our home. Even the kids know this. They know to go to her for most household queries. I'm mearly window dressing. Because my world would come crashing down around me if she were to suddenly leave me, I'm constantly trying to keep the fire burning with little enticements and gestures of affection, like heating her a slice of left over pizza for lunch or sending left-overs home with her. How could she ever leave me? No one else would ever treat her so well...

Middle son "turned Christian" this week at vacation bible school. He announced this at our evening meal while he was saying grace. "And God, thank you for letting me turn Christian today..." He is all okay with Jesus. Oldest son is slightly more concrete than middle son. When asked about the condition of his eternal soul, he told his father and I that he just couldn't do it. Meaning he could not have the same conversion experience that his younger brother had just had, "because I waited and nothing happened. I didn't feel any different. It's just not going to happen for me." He had so quickly and easily resolved himself to eternal brimstone and damnation as though he had decided to take a pass on the gravy. Christ's salvation was meant for some people, but not for him and he was a-okay with that. He tried once in that gospel tent at vbs, but it was a no-go for him. As we talked to him, we realized his teacher had told him that she had felt something emotional when she "turned Christian". I guess he kept waiting for this rush of wind or the song of a thousand angels or Christ himself to come marching down the aisle with his big brass band and when it didn't happen he just shrugged his shoulders.

I don't expect my kids to completely get it about salvation right now-I mean while they are this young. We talk about it all the time. Christ's redemptive love, his salvation, his death on the cross, our sins, etc, etc...Not in a frightening, legalistic, authoritarian kind of way, but in a "hey, this is really cool & you're never going to believe this" kind of way. Eventually they will have to make up their own minds. Our job is exposure. And dialogue. And modeling. This last one is the most important one. God himself knows that I am a pretty feable stand-in for him, but he still nominated me (and Lee) for the job. We are the first people to reflect Christ's grace and mercy and love to our children. How we live our lives, especially in these early years, tells them everything about God's love. We have a few short years before other peoples' opinions matter more than ours do. Whenever I have to take a deep breath and pause so I don't completely loose it, this is what I remember. Time passes by quickly.

Oldest son had some hope that salvation was also for him after we explained that as Brad Delp, lead singer of 70's band Boston, so aptly stated, "It's more than a feeling..." (though I don't think he was referring to salvation, but to some girl named Marianne). Middle son, realizing for once in his life he had something his older brother did not have (even though we all have it-the ability to open the door from the inside), immediately became the spiritual and moral compass for that moment at the dinner table. With his 4 year old younger sister sitting to his left, he looked at her out of the corner of his eyes, raised his eyebrows and asked out of the side of his mouth, "What about her?" As though we might be able to sift her out once and for all. She was happily oblivious with her rice and squash. For her, vbs is something that her mother is forcing her to attend and she barely tolerates. But, I guess all a mother can do is pray. That is what my mother did for many, many years and she still does. I know I am where I am today because of my mother's prayers. I pray for my children; that they would know (and know early) and experience God's love and mercy and grace that he gives to all of us, free of charge. Hopefully someday they will all "turn Christian".

Ephesians 3:14-19

14 When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father,[e] 15 the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth.[f] 16 I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. 17 Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. 18 And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. 19 May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.

Consider It All Joy

Today has been a rough day. There has been the usual parenting stuff-kids vomiting, whining, arguing. The cousins spent the night last nite as part of my elaborate plan to make life easier for myself and my sister in law. But the plans were foiled when middle son started vomiting at 4 am and one by one all of the kids started waking up. Then we just had one sick kid, one caffeine deficient mother, a sleeping father and 4 extra kids. However, I will say that for a few brief moments, while I had my daughter, my niece and my middle son all hunkered in bed with me and my nephew and oldest son asleep in the other room (Lee exiled himself to the guest room) I felt like I was doing something right. Even though we had everyone rambling around different beds (girls on floor, girls on bed, boys on floor, boys on bed, husband on bed, husband in guest room, niece in bed with cousins, niece on floor with aunt, everyone awake by 5:30 am), this is how summer should be, spending the night with your cousins and staying up late (or in this case, getting up early).

By 9 am I was ready for a nap and lucky for me, our babysitter was here, but that's when the scream-fest began. My niece, who is 2 yrs old, had been up since 4:30 am and her usual cheery disposition was overshadowed by sleep deprivation. My daughter was hell bent on doing her best Sybil impersonation and when my sister in law tried to take her and her cousin for a walk, she began shreaking so loudly that I thought she was being abducted. Erroneously, I had thought that I would be able to get some sleep while my sick kid was sleeping. I was jolted out of my pre-slumber state by my daughter's howls and I reluctantly got out of bed to try to do some damage control. With the TV tuned to Sponge Bob (with nearly 300 channels, we can always find a channel showing Sponge Bob) I tried to sleep on the sofa while my daughter watched TV, but like clockwork, she would poke me in the ribs just as I was about to drift out of consciousness. When my oldest son called me from swim practice to tell me he missed me (he had been taken by a neighbor) and could I please come and stay with him at the pool (this was 5 minutes after the practice began) I realized that it was not meant to be. The gods did not ordain sleep as part of my destiny.

Because middle kid fell of our tread mill yesterday, husband and I were concerned about his complaints of headache and his persistent vomiting. Seventeen years of combined medical training and nineteen years of combined practice has made us nothing if not overly neurotic when it comes to our kids' health. Since neither one of us are pediatricians, our kids might as well be donkeys when it comes to diagnosing their ailments. We know as much about pediatrics as we do veterinary medicine. So, mid day was punctuated with a trip to the kids' doctor just so she could tell us that it was indeed a viral illness and not some traumatic brain injury that we had feared. Thankfully she gave us a pass on the judgement call of allowing a six year old on a treadmill (it's not our fault that he increased the speed to 7 miles/hour when we weren't looking).

As I am writing this I am watching Dottie, the newest member of our family, do her damnest to try to escape the cage in which she is imprisoned. I finally relented to my daughter's pleas and I bought her a rodent. It's a little mouse and even I've got to admit that it's kind of cute. Dottie, realizing that her tormentors are no where in sight, has decided that now is the time to make a quick get-away. Unsuccessfully, she has tried to chew her way through every corner of the cage. I can see her over there training. Trying to get bigger, stronger, faster by racing on her little wheel and doing drills in her little tunnel. She is determined to have her persistance pay off because I think she knows the alternative-one of her youthful caretakers will unwittingly assasinate her.

The worst part of the day was learning that a breast cancer acquaintence died in May. She was 40 years old and she is survived by her husband and 2 daughters, 13 and 7 years old. I've spent a good part of the day mourning her death and quite honestly, mourning my inclusion in this unfortunate club. This woman was such a lovely person and a true angel when I was first diagnosed. She never failed to send me encouraging notes and she brought me holy water from a cathedral in NYC and a worry/prayer cross. The last time she and I talked I knew that her death was not too far in the distant future. I think that she had hoped that I might be able to help her in some way due to my profession. I think I wanted her to be a window into my future, but a window that did not include death. In the end I think I was a coward. I think I pulled away from her because I couldn't handle the fact that she was going to die. Breast cancer sucks. Everyone should be able to live happily ever after or at the very least until their children are out of college. Children shouldn't be left motherless, especially not 13 and 7 year old children. For as much as I kvetch about motherhood on this blog, every moment with my family is a priviledge and I don't want to be short-changed one single second. I would like to rescind my membership in this club. The dues are too steep and there really aren't too many perks. Pray for me and pray for the women and the families who are affected by this disease.

James 1:2-4 "Dear brothers and sisters, whenever trouble comes your way, let it be an opportunity for joy. For when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be strong in character and ready for anything."

Grace Needed....

I'm wrapping up my week in Atlanta. I think my kids have had a good time. I've had a good time. I've gotten to hang out with my dad and see a bunch of friends. I've tried my best to be a good mom, but I've lost my patience on quite a few occasions. I feel really awful when I get impatient with my kids. Everything is going along just fine and everyone is in a good mood and then someone does something to push one of my many buttons. It's hard being in the deep South and yelling at your kids in public. I guess everyone does it behind closed doors, because I got some looks in Blockbuster today for reprimanding my middle son after he pulled about 3 dozen glow-sticks of a shelf (I don't know why a movie store is selling glow sticks). We are deep in the heart of Dixie and these folks around here do not seem to share my parenting style. When I got back to my dad's house he could tell that I needed a cold one and immediately put a beer in the freezer for me. I question my mothering abilities at times. I wish that I didn't loose my temper.

The kids and I watched a double feature tonite; Nacho Libre and Blades of Glory. The oldest one especially seems to get the subtle humor. Earlier this week we camped out in my dad's yard. Otherwise we've done some swimming and the kids have ridden their scooters on my dad's driveway. The boys had a blast earlier this week by crushing rocks in my dad's vice (spelling?) in his work shop. They were convinced that they had found gold and collected the rock dust into ziplock bags. My daughter has had a field day tormenting my dad's 3 dogs and she has decided that she wants a chinchilla. Every couple of days I make the kids write in their journals and despite all of the activities that we have done, my eldest chose to write about the meal he had eaten at Cracker Barrel the nite before and my middle wrote about some plastic toy he wanted to buy. My daughter has immunity from journal writing, but has to do dot to dots.

What I hate the most is when my kids argue with each other and when they pick on each other. Generally they get along well, but they do get on each others' nerves. I don't know how to handle it. I think I try to remain rationale, but after awhile I am driven beyond reason (because my gentle pleas to them to get along don't work) and then I start yelling like a crazy woman. I'm no better than they are and I'm certainly not setting a very good example. The tactic I used tonite exploded in my face-when I tried to tell them that after their father and I were gone they would only have each other (so they better learn to love and appreciate each other). All 3of them burst into tears at the thought of a future that didn't include Lee and I. Earlier today, I was sitting in the van with them as my mom ran into a store and they started up with each other and I put them "on silence". No one could talk for a good 5 minutes and then I made them each come up with 5 things they liked about their other siblings. Each one of them has their own tactic that they use in battle with the other two. The oldest always has to be in charge and always has to be right. He exasperates the younger two because he always corrects them and he almost always has the other two under his thumb. The middle one is a cry baby. He has learned that the quickest way to get people to do what he wants is to start screaming and pitching fits. Literally, his sister can look at him wrong and he will start yelling and crying. We are all kind of scared of him because he tends to make everyone else miserable when he is miserable, so we all cave into his ploys (b/c no one wants to deal with his meltdowns). The youngest just has no concern or regard for consequences so she does whatever she wants to do and generally doesn't listen if you are trying to reprimand her. I wish I knew what I was doing. God needs to infuse me with his grace and patience.

How to Torture Your Brother, Part 2 (and give your Grandmother an ulcer too)

I'm not sure Martha is going to make it. Someone is going to be victorious in the battle of wills and I'm wagering on my kids. Hearing her scream brings back all sorts of childhood memories. My kids have never heard their grandmother use her 'mean' voice. She's already made two thirds of them cry today and we're only on day two of our journey. She is not sympathetic to middle son's footwear issues nor his inability to keep a pair of shoes on his feet or within a 500 yard radius of his person. After I let him walk barefoot thru the streets of New Orleans, she made us stop at an outlet mall so she could buy him flip-flops (the crocs were rubbing blisters).

Female child continues to engage in psychological warfare against her older brothers. Everytime a song comes on the radio that one of them wants to hear, she suddenly has a question for me. Brothers beg her to be quiet so they can listen to the Jonas Brothers for the 862nd time. Grandmother has little patience for the bickering and for girl child's tactics. Not sure if grandmother will ever choose to vacation with us again. She has issued all sorts of proclamations today; "We must never unload the car again!" and "If you loose your shoes again, I will spank you!" and "If you bother your brother one more time, you will sleep on the sofa."

Walking around New Orleans today was akin to walking on the surface of the sun. It was 800 thousand degrees in the shade at 9 am. As we walked down Bourban Street the smell of urine and warm beer permeated the air. My oldest has a penchant for endless questions so the scenery provided him with a well-spring of intrigue. "Why do people drink so much beer?" and "Why are there naked ladies that dance for people?" and "Why do homeless men pee on the side of the road in broad daylight?" and "Why are there so many poor people?" and "Why is this place so dirty?" I was able to take a walk down memory lane and that was fun and satisfied that urge for the next 15 years, especially since very little has changed since I started college in New Orleans 22 years ago.

Gotta love Americana! Ain't nothing quite like it. What a glorious day!

How to Torture Your Brother, Part 1

The kids and I are on our latest trek. This time we have my mom as our travel companion. God bless her. The first leg of the journey has been largly uneventful. My hotel choice has been a huge disappointment to the children because there is no pool nor does the TV have Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network. They could care less that it is on the historic registry and that I got it for a rock bottom bid on Priceline. I have failed in their eyes. They are harsh critics. I promised that I would take them to the McDonalds that I used to eat at when I was in college(it has 2 stories), so that is a bright spot on the itinerary for tomorrow.

My daughter has taken great pleasure in keeping her older brother awake. She invents all sorts of ways to irritate him while passing it off as routine behavior. It is very sly and underhanded and it drives him to the brink of sanity. Of course she loves it because he is such an easy target and every time he shreaks her face lights up with glee. Just a slight stretch of the foot to the right barely touching his leg sparks a litany of whines, protests and complaints from his half of the bed. My mom suggests putting a pillow between them but she has a whole artillary of ammunition. If she scissor-kicks her legs up and down just a half inch above the bed, but with a high enough frequency, this causes the sheets and the covers to move up and down like waves on the ocean and can knock her big brother out of that pre-REM state to wakefulness. It's almost as fun as Christmas morning and brings as much satisfaction as watching your lab rat go through the maze correctly to get to the cheese. Once she has completed that task on her agenda (big-brother torturing) she moves on to grandmother mocking. My mom, her grandmother, has fallen asleep much faster than the target-brother. She lets out occasional snores and my daugher, knowing what this sound is, keeps asking, "What is that?" and then laughs hysterically. Whether she bores of her sadistic activities or just tires out, she finally falls asleep.

Once again I've stayed up much later than I intented to just to have some time to myself. Huddled over the computer in the dark at nearly midnite, this is about the only way I can have a small little slice of time that is just my own. I can be alone with my own thoughts without any interruption and I so cherish that luxury. This is my way of recharging and the sleeplessness is nothing that can't be fixed in the morning by a Grande Latte from Starbucks. Even though this is the mental equivalent of channel surfing, it's like eating the last bite of something really yummy that you've waited for all day. I'm savoring every morsel before I turn out the lights and hug my little bed bugs (who are huddled together as tightly as they were trying to stay apart).

"Sing a Song" by Third Day

verse: I want to sing a song for You, Lord
Lord, for You I want to sing a song
And I want to lift my voice to Heaven
And listen to the angels sing along

chorus: A song of Your faithfulness
A song of Your grace
And of Your loving kindness
To the glory of Your name
With everything that's in me, Lord
Listen to me say
I want to sing a song for You
I want to sing a song

verse: I want to live my life for You, Lord
Lord, for You I want to live my life
And I want to praise the name of Jesus
And Pray above all things You're glorified

go to chorus

And I sing about Your mercy
And I sing about Your love
Your goodness, Lord
Your righteousness
I want to sing...
go to chorus

And we'll sing holy, holy, holy
We'll sing holy, holy, holy
We'll shout holy, holy
Are You Lord almighty

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

I've been thinking about publishing lately and I have to admit that there is a lot of ego involved in that thought process. Writing on this blog and my previous blog has mainly been like an on-line journal allowing me to air my thoughts. It brings clarity to my mind and it is a way to chronicle the lives of my children. I don't know why I think anyone might want to read (on a grander scale) the schlock I write. Actually, I do know why; because someone else just published a book about their breast cancer experience and I'm horridly jealous. Certainly this person can't be funnier or more clever than me? Are we all like that or is it just me? Petty and insecure? I am a supremely competitive individual and mostly it has served me well in life, but sometimes I am obnoxious to even myself and this is one of those times. At least I can recognize it, right?

I worked in the emergency room today and I almost came unglued on one of my colleagues. The fact that he is a supreme asshole was my justification for wanting to snap off his head. His lack of compassion was truly mind boggling and makes me wonder why he still practices medicine. I was able to keep a level head throughout our entire interaction though hot molten lava was simmering just below the surface. I think when you start considering your fellow man to be the scourge of the earth it might be time to take a step back to do some introspection. He didn't want to admit (to the hospital) some poor, young guy who almost certainly had a malignancy to prove a point regardless of whether or not it was in the patient's best interest. Unfortunately that is how it gets in the emergency room. People argue just to argue. I'm no patron saint of the poor and uninsured, but you would have had to have a heart of stone and a ridiculously guilt-free conscience to sit in my colleagues's judgement seat. He basically said that people who don't have insurance don't deserve to get diagnosed or treated for cancer. Resources need to be limited to those people who have a third party payor. Those were almost his exact words. Though it was extremely unprofessional, I told the residents that I thought he was an asshole. Apparently I'm not the first to think this about him.

My middle son told my husband that he (middle son) is a professional butt-wiper. When Lee asked whether he needed checking (after doing his business) this is when middle son informed Lee of his new title; "No dad, I'm a professional. I was in a butt-wiping contest and I won first place." This is the same kid who told us the itsy bitsy spider lived in his bottom and demonstrated by bending over and pulling his butt cheeks apart. I think he intends on going the whole summer without putting on a pair of shoes (which gets rid of the sock issues). Literally we can not find a pair of his shoes and if they allowed him to go barefoot at school, I would rejoice. Today he was at a friend's house and they were riding bikes on a newly paved street (but still blocked off) and he told the friend's mother, "I prefer not to ride bikes on roads that are under construction. I think I'll go inside now."

The aftermath of breast cancer comes at you in waves. I've compartmentalized and closed off that part of my brain-the part with all the memories from last year. I have a couple of friends and acquaintences who are going through treatment and diagnosis and it is difficult for me to relive a lot of that stuff. For instance, I haven't gone back to read what I wrote last year. I don't think I'm ready to do that (yet I want to publish it in a book?). I started this blog with the intention of it being my spiritual journey and I haven't really written too much about my relationship with God. All I can say is that I have to keep the line of vision perfectly clear because the moment I loose sight, I falter.

"I Have Decided to Follow Jesus"
(Folk Melody from India)

I have decided, to follow Jesus,
I have decided, to follow Jesus,
I have decided, to follow Jesus,
No turning back, no turning back.


VERSE 2

Though I may wonder, I still will follow,
Though I may wonder, I still will follow,
Though I may wonder, I still will follow,
No turning back, no turning back.


VERSE 3

Though none go with me, still I will follow,
Though none go with me, still I will follow,
Though none go with me, still I will follow,
No turning back, no turning back!


VERSE 4

The world behind me, the cross before me,
The world behind me, the cross before me,
The world behind me, the cross before me,
No turning back, no turning back!


VERSE 5

Will you decide now, to follow Jesus,
Will you decide now, to follow Jesus,,
Will you decide now, to follow Jesus,,
No turning back, no turning back!

The Pachanga, Part II

Once again I have to withdraw my nomination for mother-of-the-year award. When you are a graduate of the Joan Crawford School of Mothering, you're not gonna get a lot of accolades. The kids did well during Mass. On the way in I used bribery to entice them to behave. We've set up a reward system at home-dried pinto beans in a plastic cup. Proper behavior earns you more beans-the more beans you have, the quicker you fill up your cup. Once you've filled up your cup you get to do fun stuff (I haven't figured that part out yet-what they actually get to do). It's like dangling a carrot in front of their nose. On the way into the church I told them if they acted properly and didn't embarrass me they would each get 10 beans. My oldest wanted 19 beans. "No way" I told him. The Mass was in Spanish. They got 19 beans. Seven kids all under the age of 7 sat thru 45 minutes of liturgy en espanol. God himself must have orchestrated that one for Fina. When the Mass was over I told my eldest that now we had to do the most important part; go give Fina a kiss. Without the proper salutation she would have never known we were there and our trip to the church would have been pointless, I explained. With the kiss, we got brownie points. It's not just me who follows this protocol. Everyone understands the manipulation that is involved. As we walked over to Fina's wheelchair I overheard my aunt tell her 5 year old granddaughter the same thing.

After almost getting thrown out of the church (Apparently you can't stand up where the priest stands-pulpit?- to get a better angle for your group photo-even after the Mass is over. The priest yelled at my cousin's wife, who was taking the picture, to get down. It was less important to him that one of his elderly parishoners had 30 plus family members gathered around her for photodocumentation of some milestone in her life than it was to ensure the sanctity of his little man-made platform. I'm most certain that God could see the irony in the situation), we headed back to our cars. This is where the situation starts to unravel. My middle son has a propensity to mischief-making. As we were walking out he saw some lady bless herself with some holy water, so he thought it would be appropriate to do the same and to tell his cousin about it also. Sticking to our family motto of "If some is good, more is better", he opted for the large-volume blessing practically bathing in the holy water as he attempted to do his version of the sign of the cross. No problem, I could roll with that one-Jesus himself had a soft spot for young children. Certainly he would be watching and smiling even if the humorless priest was scowling as he caught a glimpse of the 2 boys splashing in the holy water. Forty-five minutes of Spanish Mass and 10 minutes of posing for pictures, a little spillage of some holy water wasn't going to hurt anything.

My Mommy Dearest impersonation happened as we approached our cars. My eldest asked to ride with his grandmother after his cousin had asked to ride in our car. Hind-site tells me I should have said 'no' since his cousin was going with us, but he caught me in a moment of weakness when I had my guard down. As soon as middle son found out oldest son was going with the grandmother, middle son had an old-fashioned melt down. Once middle son gets going, no one can talk him down off that ledge. This is precisely the way to raise my irritation levels to threat level red. He wouldn't stop boo-hooing. He went on and on about missing his big brother and wanting to be with his grandmother and no amount of rationalization, bribery or ultimatum-making was going to get him to stop. Making matters worse, my mom drives up and offers to take him in her car. When I say 'no' she looks at me as though I've just told him that there is no Santa Clause and he can see the look of injustice she is giving me. She doesn't know anything about the whole cousin scenario, all she knows is that I am being horribly unjust to her grandson. At this point, because he won't stop throwing a fit, I tell my oldest son to get out of his grandmother's car b/c otherwise middle son will have to be dragged away from the grandmother's car or I will have to cave and let him go with the grandmother and leave the cousin all alone without my 2 sons in my car. My kids love to do this. None of them want something until one of the other ones has it. If one of them is going in the car with the grandmother, suddenly the other wants to go also, but the first doesn't want the second to go with him and they argue about it to the death. Meanwhile all I can think is "You ungrateful little shits. There are people in this world with real problems." Compassion is not one of my better qualities. So, back to the situation-because middle son is being a royal pain in the ass, I have to play my wild card and have the older, more compliant child pay the price and he sacrifices his seat in the grandmothers car b/c his younger brother is not able to deal. Still, even after the older brother gets out of the car (with absolutely NO argument I might add. At this point he could see the crazy, rabid dog look in my eye and he could hear the tone in my voice. He just said, "Yes mam" and got out. Not even my own mother argued with me). The middle son is still pitching a fit. At this point, he just wants his own way and he is going to hold his breath until he gets it. So, I do exactly what I had been hoping to avoid. I pick him up, kicking and screaming, and carry him to my car while he is crying for his grandmother as though I were about to exile him to Guantanamo Bay. This is were I do my very best Joan Crawford imitation in front of God and my whole family. I believe my exact quote was, "Shut-up and get in the f_cking car before I beat you." Alec Baldwin eat your heart out. Shockingly (not) this has the effect that I was going trying to achieve. He immediately stops crying (for the moment) and gets in the car. My cousin, who has been helping me with the kids, asks, "Did you just drop the F bomb?" She knows the situation has reached critical levels and knows the solution. "I'm getting you a drink as soon as we get back to the hotel!"

As quickly as the situation erupts, it calms back down again. Two minutes into the ride, middle son, oldest son and cousin are talking and playing in the backseat as though nothing has happened and I am gripping the stearing wheel so tightly that I'm leaving imprints of my hands. Middle son and I get back to the hotel, have a pow-wow, I apologize for blowing my stack and we make a deal that he's not going to boo-hoo anymore and I'm not going to loose my temper. Now, middle son, oldest son and cousin are all sleeping in my hotel room b/c they all wanted to spend the night with each other. Daughter, cleverly, flew the coop and is staying with her grandmother. Somehow she managed to avoid the conflict and still get the prize; staying the nite in the grandmother's hotel room.

The rest of the nite was good. Dinner at a restaurant (again, well-behaved children) and then back to Fina's house for more food (dessert), charades and watching the kids play. No I must go to bed b/c tomorrow it is shampoo, rinse and repeat...


Proverbs 30:17

The eye that mocks a father and despises a mother’s instructions will be plucked out by ravens of the valley and eaten by vultures.


Ephesians 6:1-4

1 Children, obey your parents because you belong to the Lord, for this is the right thing to do. 2 “Honor your father and mother.” This is the first commandment with a promise: 3 If you honor your father and mother, “things will go well for you, and you will have a long life on the earth.” 4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger by the way you treat them. Rather, bring them up with the discipline and instruction that comes from the Lord.