Ordinary Days

So...what was I saying?

2011-11-17T20:12:00.002-07:00

Hey Dear Reader! How are you?
Do you remember me?
It's your long lost Bell.

It's been a while, hasn't it?
Hmmm....let me see, what have you missed?
Well...nothing much. I mean, we don't call it
ordinary days
here for nothing. And don't let yourself believe
that I was UNable to write because I was having
extraordinary days. No, nothing like that. I mean,
I have extraordinary moments in each and every one
of my ordinary days (as do you). But I was not out
living the high life, jet setting around the world.
None of that.

I was just kind of in a funk.
Have you ever gotten that way?
I have been in a major funk.
And I don't know that I am out of it yet.
But I'm trying to be out of it.
I think I have changed. And we'll see if there are
any contents of my head worth spilling on here
any more. I don't think we'll have a vote or anything.
This is not a democracy and besides,
there's 1.5 of you and only 1 of me.
I'd hate to face some sort of
mutiny situation.

So I'll get my bearings.
See what I need to catch you up on.
We'll get reacquainted and we'll go from there.
How does that sound?

2011-11-16T16:38:00.004-07:00

I'm thinking about coming back.
I know this is just earth shattering new. lol But I am.
I think I need to walk around in blogland again.
I've been walking around just in my head
and I gotta tell you,
BORING.

So you've been warned.
If you don't want to hear new ridiculous stuff
from my fingertips,
stay away.

p.s.
I apologize for that music.
If I can remember my password,
I will make it stop.
I hope you haven't made a voodoo doll of either me
or Johnny Rivers. I'm sure you haven't been checking
often enough to get sick of that song....and you probably
aren't even the type to make voodoo dolls.
But if you are,
did you make mine cute?

No News Is Good News

2011-03-28T19:39:00.002-06:00

My grandmother always had all these sayings.
Some little quote about every thing under the sun.
"If a task is once begun, never leave it 'til it's done.
Be the labor great or small, do it well or not at all."
That's a classic from Grandma.
And my mother has taken on the job of throwing out
these jewels since my grandmother is
no longer on the scene.
"Early to bed, early to rise,
makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise."
(I know that's a Ben Franklin quote
---I didn't say these quips were originals)

So another one that they sometimes said is
"No News Is Good News." I realize that it's been
a week since I told you about my little medical situation.
Those of you who know me know what happened so
I know that you haven't been over there on pins and
needles. For the rest of you, I will tell you where we
stand now. First of all let me just tell you that it
was indeed good news. The nerf ball was not
the bad kind of nerf ball. It was actually a
hemorrhagic ovarian cyst. Here is an article you can read
explaining it if you are interested. But the thing
about mine is that it was in that small percentage
that they mention. Mine was extremely large for
one of these things. Too large for laparoscopy surgery.
I had to have the big cut.
About 7 inch incision. So much fun.
And it says they rarely rupture. Well, mine had ruptured
causing a lot of bleeding. The doctor seemed
surprised to find that when he cut into me.
But the thing is, it wasn't cancer.
And it's gone.
And now I just have to heal and get back to normal
and we can just forget this little thing ever happened.

I am so thankful for the results, the good news.
It's a very interesting thing to be the one sitting there
on the table, faced with the possibility that no one
wants to even admit. That first day....when the
"mystery mass" (AKA my nerf ball) was discovered,
I remember sitting there talking to my doctor and he kept
telling me all this information and I was just taking
it all in, trying to get a grasp on everything....and then
when the words "ovarian cancer" were said aloud
....it was just like somebody turned the light on in my head.
I hadn't understood that day all the concern and
the gentle treatment everyone at the various doctor's offices
and hospital offices showed me.
Then it clicked.
"Oh. This could actually be bad."
I didn't freak out.
I have to say, that "peace that passes understanding" is
good stuff. I didn't like the idea. I kept replaying in my
mind visits I had with my lovely friend who died of
ovarian cancer when I was pregnant with Baby J,
kept thinking of her and how strong and beautiful she was.
I wondered if God thought I was up to dealing with
something like that. It makes you stop and look
around at your life. Or it did me anyway.
I have to tell you, I don't know what God has been up to
in my life for several months now. And this whole
situation is just another layer of that.
I know something is going on.
I feel like in many ways I am becoming a different person,
I am changing on such a deep level.
It's hard to explain.
I am discovering things about myself that I never knew.
But even the day of the surgery, when I was
laying there getting the shot of "I don't care" medicine
(as the anesthetist called it-- he must like to use precise
medical terminology like I do), I had the most honest
conversation with God. Why ever lie to Him or pretend
to be something you are not? He knows.
He already knows. But I just prayed so honestly
to Him and I have to say, my heavenly Father's
unconditional love is a beautiful thing
to experience. I hope you have
had the joy of feeling that security.

So...I'm sorry I disappointed those of you who wanted
me to get on here with a handful of pills coursing through
my veins and a lamp shade on my head.
Really though---am I not a big enough goof ball for you
in my natural state? I know my family has gotten to
experience the joys of life with the Bell on drugs this week.
I haven't done big crazy things, just little ones.
We had a death in the family, a very close, sweet relative
and I was able to go to the funeral home visitation and
funeral (thanks to those lovely drugs) this weekend.
But I was, apparently, a very amusing conversationalist
at these times. I always have to be the joker anyway.
(Mrs. JP, can I get a witness?)
So don't you wish you'd been with me at the funeral home
this weekend? My brother and I literal cried
a time or too---and not the sad cry.
Although I did that several times too.
You gotta love a family who doesn't set their humor aside
during a time of loss. That's my family.
Oh, how I love those people.

So...I will try to get back on track here and start writing
regularly again. I have been over dosing on movies
and you tube and listening to Kings of Leon
until Lloyd Dobbler's head is about to explode.
My MIL has been here doing EVERYTHING for me.
Everything.
Literally everything.
How can I ever thank her enough?

To recap: good news on the medical front.
Your faithful Bell does not have an expiration date
penciled in on her medical charts.
She remains a spoiled rotten child of God.
And so happy to be that.
She is still rocking out and singing into wooden spoons
with the babes. She's still the one to make the joke
at the funeral home. She is also the first one to hug the
spouse of the deceased and tell him how much she
loves him. What a package, this Bell.
I hope you weren't thinking these ordinary days
were going to come to a screeching halt.
Not yet anyway.

Much love to you, Dear Reader.
Thanks for your concern for me.

under the knife

2011-03-21T06:18:00.002-06:00

Today is the big day, Dear Reader.
I just want to get this over with.
I am NOT good at waiting and it has seemed
like forever. I realize it's been little over
a week. And I also realize I have nothing in the world
to be complaining about. I should be happy
that I've had good news so far. I am anticipating
more good news later today when I wake up
looking like I traded stomachs with Frankenstein.

So say a prayer for me.

Life just does unexpected things
to us, doesn't it?
I know that God has me safely
in the palm of His hand no matter what.
So....I'll be sure to come running back here
when I'm drugged and making less sense than ever.
Maybe I'll reveal all my deep dark secrets.
Or put songs that you actually like on the juke box.
You know, crazy stuff like that.
See ya later, Hubble.

Lent Free Blogging

2011-03-19T19:58:00.003-06:00

I have actually had a couple of people
to ask your faithful Bell
what has happened to her. And I just have to
tell you, Dear Reader, I have been so distracted.
I would never forget you.
And no, I haven't given up blogging for lent.
To tell you the truth about that, I never knew
what lent was until the last few years. The churches
that I attended don't do that and the only lent I knew
was in connection with my clothes dryer.
So, no, there's no real reason for my absence.
I've just had my thoughts elsewhere.

But there has been a ripple in the usually smooth surface
of my ordinary days. I thought I should tell you
about it before I got trotting off to take care of the matter.
Just in case the path I am on
takes a different route.

So...here's the deal: I'm having surgery Monday.
Last week I went to my doctor after I'd had an
evening of pain. They discovered a 10-12 cm mass
on my right ovary. Further testing shows that it
is most likely not cancer---that was a relief to hear.
It'll be nice to have that confirmed.
So Monday they are taking it out, whatever it is.
My lovely friend called it a nerf ball, so that is what
I keep wanting to say:
I'm having my nerf ball taken out.

Here's the thing: I am dreading this.
I'm not afraid of the cancer bit. I know that it already is
whatever it is and God is in control of all of that.
I trust Him. I mean, I won't be HAPPY if they say,
"Hey, what do you know? It is cancer after all."
No, that's not what I want.
And I hate the wait.
Oh me....if you know me, waiting for anything
is not my strong suite.
I snoop for presents (and nothing can stop me!!!)
and I can't just wait and be patient.
I hate car trips.
I'm just not good in this area.
So these few days have been lovely for everyone
around me, I am sure. I have just wanted to play
really loud music and dance and be happy and
avoid the subject all together.
And don't listen to what people say. Denial is under-rated.
I find it to be the most pleasant way to pass the time.

Despite my skillful, musically charged denial,
I keep thinking of what lays ahead of me.
The surgery.
I hate surgery.
I mean, I've only had the one experience and it was an
emergency situation and all that. This might
be better. But there's still going to be the
big slice and the pain and the whole recovery mess.
Restrictions.
Pain.
Inconvenience.
And life has to go on.
All the stuff that is already on my plate is still there.
I am so thankful for my mother-in-law.
Let me just say that loud and clear right now.
She's coming like she did when I was put on bed rest
and when Baby J was born. She just comes
and does everything here plus takes care of me.
She is amazing in that. What a servants heart.
And I should never ever complain about her ever again.
Don't hold me to that, but just know that I love her
dearly and am so very, very thankful for her.

So...this is what is going on with me.
It's not anything really scary.
I mean, it might actually be a nerf ball.
Or something way less significant than that.
And they'll take it out and I'll get a couple of weeks
to walk slowly and take drugs----and listen up,
I am not nursing not caring for a new born baby this
time around. I am going to take whatever drugs
they offer me. Just knock me out for a few days.
Put me on some kind of a drip.
Just bring it on.
I will be in my happy place.
As much as possible.
I am not planning on talking to you lovely Dear Readers
until I am back from all of that and in my right mind.
But if somebody gets on here singing
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
.....it could be me.
Don't be alarmed.

I am sorry I've been out of touch
(or just absent for the most part).
Not that I haven't thought of you.
I just haven't had anything to say.
But I love you guys and I thank you for peeping through
my windows into my ordinary days.

May they remain blissfully ordinary.

Faking It

2011-02-26T12:55:00.003-07:00

In case anyone was wondering
what in the world happened to that UNfaithful Bell
who has not had much to say lately,
here I am.
I've started several posts and then half way through
it was like that moment in Seinfeld where George and Jerry
decided to be men. I would look at what I wrote
and think, "What is the point of this?"
And I'd just let it go.
So you haven't missed anything.
Not that stuff I wrote before was captivating.
But you really can't say that I mislead you.
The name of the blog is not Bell's Glamorous Life.
No, that will be my next blog.
Right now I am knee deep in the ordinary.

Funny thing happened yesterday
at our home school co-op. I had to
teach the knitting class. Me, your one true Bell,
who cannot knit, had to teach the class.
The teacher and the other helper were out sick.
Thankfully, I am a pretty good faker.
We "practiced" what they had already learned.
If there was something that I couldn't remember..
...like that pretzel thing she showed them to start off,
then I just made it like I was testing the kids.
Who can remember how to do the pretzel correctly?
And then one of them is very proud of them self
and no body really knows that Mrs. Bell
can't remember how to do it.

When I worked at a doctor's office (pre-children),
sometimes I would have to fake being a nurse.
If one of the RNs was out for whatever reason,
they would put me in her place.
Me---who knows NOTHING medical at all.
But I faked it. I guess if you have on scrubs,
people just assume you know something.
If they only knew....

Right now I am faking being a blogger.
You had no idea, did you?

I hope everything is lovely with you, Dear Reader.
Just wanted to pop in and say hi.
And this concern I am showing for you
is not fake.

Come to me now and rest your head for just five minutes.

2011-02-20T20:04:00.004-07:00

Greetings, my lovely Dear Reader.
I hope you are hearing Crosby, Stills and Nash singing
softly right now---"You place the flowers in the vase
that you bought today...." I love that song. Turn on
the juke box if you have it off and listen to that sweetie
pie song. It always just seems to be a verbal painting
of a peaceful home. End of day, everything done,
everyone sitting around adoring each other in peaceful,
musical softness. The ideal, you know.
And that's what I am always trying to recreate here
at the homestead. Have we accomplished that?
Are you new here? No. Not at all.
We have moments, but it's not the same picture
that is painted in that song. It's more like happy
children and their dancing mother in the kitchen,
everyone in jammies singing into wooden spoons
while the baby rolls around our feet on
a Batman big wheel.
But it's a nice goal to have out there, isn't it?
It's more like the empty nester's end of the day scene
painted in that song. And could I please continue to talk
some more about that song? For crying out loud,
you have better things to do.
I know. I'm sorry.

So let me move onto a new topic
and begin to brag about the lovely weekend I have had.
First of all let me say: healthy. We are back at work
and we have our health cards. We do have lingering coughs,
but they will eventually dry up and blow away if I continue
to ignore them. That's my plan. So that's the best
possible foundation to build upon for a good weekend:
not being sick.
Add to that a layer of visiting in-laws who do laundry,
cook meals, fix things around the house, encourage you to go
out on a date two days in a row while they watch the kids.
I'm not making this up.
It has been like a mini vacation for me.
And I have needed a mini vacation, so it's been lovely.
So the house is generally cleaned up.
The ironing is done (MIL did it all, and you know how I pile
up the ironing basket higher than my head).
It's all good. I'm sitting up here in my jammies ready to
go to bed early and get a good night's rest.
Because tomorrow we have go to hit
the educational ground running. We have got to get back
on track with the school. Did I mention that our
spring break was a flu break?
We did NOTHING last week. No school at all.
Except going to our co-op on Friday.
So that was our spring break.
We sicked it away.
I hope they enjoyed it. I don't see another day off in
our future. I'm just going to bulldoze through it.
But I'm kind of getting that excited thing where I want to
count up the days and see how few are left to do. I know
we are not near the end, but I think if I put this chair
on the table and climb up on it and strained my neck,
I can almost see the end from here.
Is that it? Over there on that sunny day in May?
Is that the end of this school year?
I think it is! Oh my!
I knew it would come.
I just knew it.

So that's what has been going on here.
Also? Sunshine. And warmth.
And what have I been doing?
Loving every minute of it?
You know I have.
I hope you have had a lovely weekend too, Dear Reader.

Pour Some Sugar On Me

2011-02-16T20:48:00.002-07:00

Sick days are sort of empty days.
Don't get me wrong. There's been no lack of things to do.
And hopefully tomorrow everyone here will be well enough
that I will be able to beginning cleaning up this garbage can
we call home. I did a little jig this morning when no one
had a fever and the sun was shining. I thought this
might be the first day of the rest of our lives.
I was wrong.
It was still a sick day. Another "empty" day.
Big E was the one who fell back into the sickness today
with another dance with the high fever and aches. And then
Baby J had the nerve to run a bit of temperature again
this evening. Lovely K is mending, but she was really sick
yesterday. She was in recovery mode today.
Sweet T keeps flirting with it, but not really getting sick.
He'll probably wait until everyone else is well and try to start
a third wave of this heartless epidemic.
Are they not listening to me when I say
that I am banning sickness from
this household? Do they not think I am serious?
Are they enjoying this? These messed up, empty days?

I am not enjoying them.
We have wasted so much school time, it's ridiculous.
I've had too much idle time, laying in bed sick myself and
then sitting around holding or tending to sick children.
I've spent a sad amount of time looking at stuff on Youtube.
I have listened to my favorite bunch of songs on playlist
until I think that list is just playing in my head now. I don't
even need the computer on. I could have been doing
profitable things (not that tending to the sick is not profitable,
but the rest of the time, when I was googling and youtubing),
but wouldn't that be a little bit out of character?

I have been dreaming.
Dreaming of a smaller house where I can keep things
under control, dreaming of having money
to have fun with, dreaming of what I'll do when
my babes are older,
dreaming of having lunch with rock stars...

I have read the same chapter in Jeremiah about three
mornings in a row....and it's not until I get to the very
last couple of verses that I realize that I read the same
thing again. I don't know if that's the sickness
or just my addled brain.
But it was a good chapter,
worth multiple reads.

One good thing about this sickness: I lost a few pounds.
I have been thinking about that this week too. I read an
article somewhere about famous women saying how much
they really weighed and what size dress they really wore.
I am always so torn about this whole weight issue.
I absolutely do not want to become one of these women
who is obsessed about my weight, my looks, my diet.
That happens so easily. It seems to be this trap that
women my age fall into. Are they trying to recapture
their youth? Is this how Christian women have
a midlife crisis? I don't want that. I just want to be
healthy and balanced.

I have also been thinking about
whether or not I would be able to
cut sugar out of my life.
I have been friends with sugar since.....probably since
before I was born. We go way back. And we've always
gotten along so well. But if I could cut that out of
my life...that would be a major thing.
I don't even mean in the the weight loss area.
Just health.

There's just so many things that I have to be doing,
that I need to be doing,
things that take precedence.
And then there's the things I am interested in
and the things I want to do.
They don't often make the same list.
I hope its not always that way.
I want to take steps in the direction of making the life
I am living one that I want to be a part of.
I want to cut the negative things out of my life,
however painful that may be.
I want to quit worrying about what other people think.
I want to just please God and be happy.
I don't want a lot.
I have very simple tastes, very simple desires,
very simple dreams.
Except for maybe the lunch with a rock star dream.

See what happens
when I have these empty days?

House of the Rising Temperatures

2011-02-14T10:43:00.003-07:00

Well, friends and neighbors and Dear Readers everywhere...
I feel like we should be singing that old "I Will Survive" song
after the crazy weekend that I have had.
What happened to you, Dear Bell? you ask.
Well, since you asked, I will tell you: I was sick.
Make that Sick, with a capital S.
Oh my word. It was one of those where you just hope some
other responsible adult can take care of the babes because
it's not even an option for you at the moment.

Of course whenever I say something like that,
I always think of concentration camp survivors or
some other extreme situation and realize that
I am just being a big baby when I complain about
anything in my life.

But I was sick.
And it wasn't pretty.
But don't compare it to a true tragedy.

I think things get harder on you as you get older.
Kids have stuff and while they may have the
same complaints, same symptoms
as you (the adult), they also have the desire
to play Mario Kart or watch a movie. I had no desire
to do anything but drink water with my eyes closed.
And I just wanted to be alone while I waited
for a meteor to fall on top of me.

Just since the fever left me, I have felt better in my
frame of mind. That makes such a difference. If you know
you're on the down side and that the worst is behind you,
that's just a little encouragement. There's a world of
difference in the state of mind between the person who is
waiting for the meteor and the person who is getting up
to take a shower and put on clean jammies.

And let's hear a big cheer for Lloyd Dobbler and my mom
for taking care of all of us while I was
out of commission. What would we do without out
lovely loved ones around to take care of us in our
times of need? What indeed.
I am so thankful for them,
so thankful that this illness was not any worse than it was,
so thankful that it is on its way out with me,
and I am so thankful that the sun is shining.
Both literally outside and figuratively.

Tomorrow's going to be another day.

The Sun, The Moon, and the Guest Bathroom

2011-02-09T06:10:00.003-07:00

Greetings, Dear Reader. How art thou?
I hope you have had a good week so far. I have.
I mean, it has just been a regular week with nothing
exceptional happening, but it's been good. I don't know
if you recall this or not, but the days I love are
the ordinary ones.
The peaceful, regular, routine days.

Last night I discovered as I went upstairs to check
on the sleeping babes that it is that time again when
the moon sits so prettily right outside our large front
window--perfectly centered as though we were looking
at it through the lens of a camera.
It is artistically framed in that huge window over the
front door and when you are upstairs you are right across
from it. Last night was just a crescent moon, like
the Cheshire Cat's smile in the winter sky, but it
was still lovely. I prefer a full moon myself
---BIG fan of the full moon and all its beauty
(I can't tell you the times that Lloyd Dobbler has called
me over the years to say "Go outside and look at
the moon; you'll love it."
And he's right. I do.).

Then this morning I actually got up like I was supposed to
for a change (I have gotten really bad about this
since the days of sickness) and when I got out of
the shower, the window behind me was the most beautiful
shades of pink and purple because of the sunrise on the
other side of it. That window has that foggy glass that you
can't see through because it's right there by the bathtub
and the last thing anybody in the world needs
to see when they're driving by is a naked person standing
up to get out of the bathtub. (Why would somebody
be driving by in my back yard anyway? And I just realized
that I typed bathTUBE every time in this paragraph
---but I'll change that before you see it.)
Anyway, I got downstairs in time to see
the lovely sunrise
from the kitchen windows while I was making
my cappuccino (don't get excited, it's hot water
and powder stirred together, but it's what I reach for
first in the mornings). With all this noticing of the sky
and nature around me, one might think I could chart
their course across the oceans if we
were in 1492 going for a sail with Chris Columbus.
But no. Your faithful Bell has never been Nature Girl.
I'm not that type. I've never even been camping
(and we've covered this before, but for those of you
keeping score at home, let me make it clear that it's not
that I am opposed to camping,
I've just never been).
I've never had to use the great outdoors as a toilet
(I did once have to use an authentic outhouse
on a school field trip--and I always wondered if
outhouse users ever got splinters
in their behinds...).
I'm not going to put into practice much of the
knowledge gained in Worst Case Scenario. But this
doesn't mean that I can't admire a beautiful moon or a
glorious sunrise....from my air conditioned home...
with a cup of coffee fresh from the microwave....

In other news:
I am coughing like a smoker for some unknown reason.
I'm not sick. My body just decided to try on a cough
yesterday and hasn't gotten tired of it yet.
I'm tired of it. It kind of makes me feel like
I have battery acid in my chest.

People are coming to stay with us tomorrow night
(if the much threatened snow doesn't prevent them).
They are old friends of Lloyd Dobblers and they are
coming to town for a funeral, a quick trip. They have
stayed with us before. The hubby won't be with them
this time, just the mom and the four kids.
You know how somebody can do something weird
at your house and then every time you think of them,
you think of that weird thing.
One time the dad of this same family came and stayed
here one night by himself and even though I keep nice
big fluffy bath towels in the guest room bathroom,
he dried off after showering with a hand towel.
This struck me as really odd.
But just now I had the thought:
maybe he didn't shower.
Maybe that's why he didn't need the big towel.
It seems like I knew he had showered though.
I don't know how I would have known that.
I don't keep surveillance video of the guest room.
I just always think of him as someone drying off after
a shower with the smallest piece of terry cloth
he can get his hands on.

Not me.
I want a towel for my body and a towel for my hair
and a towel-strewn path for my feet to trod upon.

But I need to get things ready for the visitors today.
Not that I am putting on the dog or anything. I mainly need
to get all my junk out of the guest room.
The guest room is my favorite room.
It's where I park when I want to do stuff.
I'm there right now in my pink comfy chair.
I have a small table on either side of me where
I pile the books I am reading and the 49 notebooks
and journals that I write stuff in. Peter Walsh would
be so uncomfortable in this chair.

Dang Dang Dang

2011-02-07T15:45:00.002-07:00

Well, Dear Reader, I warned you.
I told you that I would be first in line
if it was to start snowing again and I just have to say
---mutter mutter mumble blech.
Stupid snow.
And this is not even the big snow that they
threatening us with; that's later in the week.
Yesterday was like Spring.
Fifty something degrees
(and Mrs. JP, I can't do the symbol for degrees on my lap top.
Does the hubby know why this is?).
It was gorgeous.
Spring-like.
Just lovely.
Even this morning, when I went out to run errands
with the babes, I didn't even wear a jacket.
It hAIled a little while we were out, much to the
delight of the babes. We were in the Walmart
parking lot, just about to unload and run into the
store when Lovely K said "Hell! Oh boy, it's hell!"
I always find myself emphasizing the AI in that word
and sometimes even spelling it for the kids.
They nod and tell me they are aware of how it is
spelled, but it still sounds like they say
"hell" instead of "hail."

In other news:
I bought a wad of yard and knitting needles today.
I bought knitting needles for Lovely K too.
I tried to follow this sheet of diagrams for about
42 seconds and decided to wait until I am in a better
frame of mind. I have to switch everything around in
my head (since everything in the whole entire world
is designed for right handed people---due to the stupid snow,
I am sure) and my head is just not able to do that right now.
I'm trying to get a little boy to figure out what he is doing
wrong on a Math test so he can correct it and I'm trying to
cook supper and I'm trying to tune out a baby who has decided
to fuss and cry until I stop everything and sit in the floor with him
in my lap. He has been Mama's boy in OVERDRIVE ever since
he was sick. He thinks he can just cry and get what he wants.
Oh my, he really hasn't been paying attention these last
13 months, has he? That's not the way we roll here
on the homestead.

Okay.
So roasted chicken, potato salad, baked beans,
corn, and salad for supper.
Basketball practice was canceled due to the stupid snow.
So we're just home for a night of laundry
and Math test correction.
I think I should go find the Excedrin now
before I grow horns out of my skull and turn into
an actual monster.

I blame this headache on the snow too.
Just FYI.

And I keep forgetting to tell Mrs. JP
that she had on the cutest shoes when I last saw her.
So there. She can just read it here
and you can all wonder about her shoes.

Super Bell XLV

2011-02-07T12:29:00.003-07:00

Did you have a super Super Bowl?
Do you get into the Super Bowl, Dear Reader?
Here's what I love about the Super Bowl
(and also any other occasion that merits
the making of this item I love):
Spinach Dip.
Sometimes the only reason you go to a friend's
31/Tupperware/Jewelry party is the Spinach Dip.
And I do think that Spinach Dip should be capitalized.
To show respect.
Spinach Dip should be made at every holiday, because
it's too dangerous to have around the house on ordinary
days. But I love Spinach Dip. And to those who say
you love people, not things, they need to eat some
Spinach Dip so they can get a fuller understanding
of what it is to love things.
I do love Spinach Dip.
You have to make it with the Knorr soup seasonings though.
That's the best ever in the whole wide world. Don't be
fooled by whatever they use in Romania for their
Spinach Dip. It's not as good as the Knorr recipe.

There have been times that I have cared about the
Super Bowl a little bit. Not this year. Not even
when I watched the last three minutes of the game.
I just didn't care.
I was glad for that Rodgers guy when I heard his
back story, but I didn't even hear that until after
the game. I was too busy with
my Spinach Dip rendezvous.

What Super Bowl was it?
#315?
I saw those Roman numerals there and pondered
this during the three minutes of the game that I did watch,
but I wasn't sure. Guess who is not good with the
Roman numerals? Guess who is glad Roman numerals
were thoroughly taught in the Horizon's math curriculum
that we used to use? Guess who asks her daughter
"What number is that?" And then I pretend that
I'm just testing her knowledge. As though I would
know if she got it wrong.
(We're not talking about the easy ones, like Chapter IV
in a book. But I've never read a book
that had XLCDV chapters.)
At times like these, when I think about
the multitude of information that never found
a resting place in my brain, I just blame it on
my quality public education.
I was not a bad student. I got good grades.
But you can do that without actually
learning things.
Scary, isn't it?

Speaking of my quality public education,
today I went to the house of a teacher I had in high school.
She taught in the home economics department.
(I don't think they have those classes anymore, do they?)
I had to pick up something from her. I took her
a little bag of those pecan sandies cookies that I made
last week (do you think people who pop in to visit
their old shop teachers take them a tie rack they just happened
to make the week before?). She came over to the
van and looked over all my children. I was so pleased
that they didn't act like MANIACS when she came
to give them the once over.
You know how kids can do that sometimes.

Did I ever tell you about the time one of my kids
said the most hilarious, out-of-character thing
in front of a person from my past?
The person I ran into in the grocery store was
a guy I used to date. In fact, I don't think I had seen
him since we broke up---and that would have been
like 15 years at the time. So I'm stand there with
my three babes (this was before Baby J) making polite
chit chat, but we really had nothing to say to each other.
In a moment of awkward silence, Big E
(who never speaks to strangers and was way
more shy then than he is now)
this child steps out in front of this man and
just as loud and clear as possible says to him,
"Our father has died."
The old boyfriend looked at me in shock,
and I was shocked at Big E saying this.
And how funny to have your child say this
to an old boyfriend.
Like he was trying to help his
widowed mother get a date or something.
It was just so funny to me.
And I burst into a laugh.
It still makes me laugh.
You just never know what these kids
are going to come out with.

That's why I was glad that they weren't
taking off their clothes or picking their noses
or telling family secrets when my old teacher
came to check them out.

The bullets are back, baby!

2011-02-04T19:02:00.002-07:00

Maybe I think better in bullet form on Fridays (when co-op is going on) because my brain is fried by the end of that day. It certainly is fried today. Is it bedtime yet? Please?
I have been making potato salad since we got home this afternoon. I am making potato salad for 60 to 100 people for a party tomorrow. And here's what I am thinking: these people at this party are going to eat this potato salad if I have to cram it down their throats myself. My kitchen is a wreck. I'm only 2/3 of the way done. I would like to find the person who invented potato salad and give them a good swift kick.
Lovely K told me I should just make enough potato salad for 59 to 99 people because she won't be eating any. Thank you, sweet girl.
Speaking of Lovely K, she won 2nd place in an art expressions contest at our home school co-op today. They passed out this same picture for anyone under junior high to color and that's what she did. She got 2nd in that. They also had a category where you could enter whatever art you wanted (so I entered the Mona Lisa---no, not whatever art you wanted, your own original art). My little knitting buddy won first place with her painting of a snow man. This child has some artistic talent, I tell you. I am so proud of her. And she is a very special girl.
My parents' new kitchen is almost done. I have been so excited about this remodeling project. Today they finished installing the new cabinets and counter tops. I saw them 3/4 of the way done with that yesterday, but they didn't have the counter tops on them yet so I didn't get the full effect. Monday the new flooring goes down and then it will be finished. I am so excited about this new kitchen for them. It has just improved their house so much. And my mom will really enjoy it. She is a good cook and spends most of her time in the kitchen. I think she will be just tickled pink when it is all done.
In my quest to reach enlightenment.....(giggle), yeah right. Whatever. As I try to keep the last few brain cells I have from fading into oblivion, I am going to learn to knit. I'm watching these little kids in this class learn to do this and surely if they can do it, I can. It's kind of funny that I am a helper in this beginning knitting class since I know NOTHING about knitting. I can't emphasize NOTHING enough. Well, it's not totally nothing now. You might be impressed (ha!) to know that I have learned that knitting uses two sticks and crochet uses only one. You might wonder why I am still calling those things they use "sticks," but perhaps that should help you to understand what a true help I am to the high school student who is teaching these little kids to knit. I feel badly that I am so NOT a help to her. Today I was joking that I should also be helping in guitar and Latin and small engine repair since I would be similarly helpful in those classes.
My 13 month old son comes and stands beside me when he fills his diaper. I just thought I would share that with you. Why does he do this? What in his little baby brain makes him think "this would be a good time to go stand by Mama"? I do not know.
I think we may escape the winter wonderland they've threatened. I sure hope so.
Have a lovely weekend, Dear Reader!

Pavlov's Baby

2011-02-03T19:50:00.002-07:00

I'm sure you know about the whole Pavlov concept.
The dogs. The bell (not me, that's a lower case "b").
The response.
And I don't know if I've ever told you about this or not,
but I've had this on-going Pavlovian experiment with my
own Baby J. Yes, you heard me.
I'm messing with the child's mind.
It boils down to this musical thing that used to be part of a
mobile that hung over his bed. There are choices on the
little musical thing, like a juke box for the babes.

Only the choices are not as fabulous and pertinent as
the juke box provided for you, Dear Reader.

There is some kind of toy beside choice #1 showing
that this is slightly peppy music for playtime. There are
waves beside choice #2 to let you know that the
second button will play the sound of ocean waves.
Beside button #3 there is a rocking chair to signify
that this is the lullaby, sleepy time music.
I always press button #3 and let that music play when
I put Baby J down to sleep. Always.
For 13 months anyway.
Even now if he's not exactly in the sleep mode and I bring
him into his room to change him and put him down,
I will press that button as soon as we go into the room
and it lets him know that it's time to settle down.
It does have that effect that
I was hoping to have on him.
It's the signal for sleep.
You ring the bell and the dogs want to be fed.
You play that music and the baby settles down.
It's a great thing.

Until the batteries just die in the middle of the day
and you have only two C cell batteries
when three are needed.

And then you leave your house twice and forget
to buy any silly batteries. And so every nap time
and bedtime, this child is not hearing Pavlov's lullaby
as he is accustomed to. I don't know if this is
the only reason that we have hit a bumpy spot
in the sleeping road. I realize the child was very sick
and up at night because of that sickness last week.
So maybe his internal clock has some alarm going off
at weird times. He's out of his sleep pattern.
Or he's just not settling down for bed like he should.
But I would be willing to lay down money that if I had
that third battery right now
and popped it into that musical thing
(I have no idea what to call it,
so be satisfied with my word choice, okay?
It is a THING.)
that he would roll over on his side and ride off
on the Sleepytime Express.
And if you think I am coming home tomorrow
without a C cell battery,
you better think again, my friend.

Bahama Mama?

2011-02-03T12:46:00.007-07:00

Thursday is like my Friday, because Fridays
are not normal days for us. We get up Friday morning
and run out the door to our home school co-op. We don't
get home until in the afternoon when we are all tired.
Then Friday nights are pizza and movie and that has become
carved in stone. But I don't mind it being carved in stone.
It's like the one night I don't have to wonder about.
Some Fridays I make the pizza (because I'm thrifty like that),
some Fridays I order it. I don't have to remember to
get a movie anymore since Netflix came into our life.
(I love Netflix. Have I told you that?)

So it's Thursday and Thursday feels like the end of the week
to me. We take spelling tests on Thursday. We make
sure the bathrooms are clean by Thursday (I did them
yesterday, all four of them by myself---I like for the kids
to be learning how to clean them, but after sickness or
just every now and then for the sake of thoroughness,
they need to be cleaned by a professional--but I do them
since we have no professionals around here).

This has been a good week.
I have thought that all week long, and even while I have
been thinking it, I have been wondering why.

Maybe one large reason is that no one has been
sick this week. That's something I am appreciating greatly.

Another reason might be this: I have chilled out.
What does this mean?
I am trying to have realistic expectations.
I am not trying to build Rome in a day.
I am not comparing myself to others.
I am not going to worry if my kids ever do a craft or not
(and the chance of you NOT doing a craft profoundly
increases when you are around me).
I have remembered to have the kids
go over The Lord's Prayer
which they are supposed to be memorizing.
I am trying to look at the big picture.
I'm trying to remember what is really important.

I made those yummy Pecan Sandies (cookies) one night.
I watched a new favorite show with Lloyd Dobbler
after the kids went to bed (we love English humor).
I accidentally slept late two mornings--
and didn't let it ruin my entire day
which would be my normal reaction.
We started reading a biography of Jim Elliot.
I started making a list of curriculum
to purchase for next school year.
(Heads up: next school year is going to be expensive.)
I spent an entire day listening to
John Piper and Mark Driscoll on youtube.
I started making plans to go to a home school convention
with a friend this spring; I'm going to leave my family
for a few days. When is the last time I have done that?
Have I ever done that? I don't think so.
I'm kind of looking forward to it. Not to mention
the great speakers I am going to get to hear.

These are some of the things
I have done this week.

I have not done everything.
There's still a pile of stuff on the floor behind the curtain
in the living room. There are empty boxes in the dining
room I was supposed to already have filled with items
I am parting with. The Christmas wreath is still on
the front door. Sweet T has only written one thank
you note from his birthday.

It helps that my in-laws were here this weekend
and that my MIL did laundry like there was no tomorrow.
She even ironed most of the ironing pile. So I haven't
done any laundry until today. Not that I couldn't have,
but I just didn't. You know how laundry is a never-ending
thing that you can multiply times 10 for every living being
wearing clothes under your roof.

I saw a card today that said
"I love you more than cheese."
Please don't send me this card.

I hope you aren't covered up
in snow somewhere, Dear Reader.
I know some of you are not. Some of you are wearing
tank tops in California at this very moment.
(I'd like to, as your Blogland Neighbor, borrow a cup of warmth.)
But you might be in a snow drift somewhere in the Midwest.
I know that some people are. I hope you,
my lovely Dear Reader,
are not having to read this by candle light while you
burn encyclopedia pages for warmth. I hope you are
safe and warm and well.
They are threatening us with more ridiculous winter weather
this weekend. Ugh. I could say a lot more about that,
but I will just say "ugh."
Am I going to complain about snow and cold?
I shouldn't, but if it starts happening, you know
I'll be first in line. Maybe I should move to the Bahamas
and look up my old college room mate Gina from there.
I'd love to find her again anyway. We used to just
laugh our heads off. She was such fun.
And that accent. I loved to hear her talk.
More than cheese.
Anybody know a Gina Fergeson from Nassau?
I think she came from a large family. I think he father
was a pastor and her mother wore those kind of dresses
with the matching hats that you see older
black ladies wear in movies.
One of her brothers called me years ago on Christmas Day
and that was funny. I bet she is somewhere
in the island sunshine laughing with her brother today.
Yes, I think if it snows I should fly down to the Bahamas
and start looking for her, just going door to door.
You can come with me and help.

Input/Output

2011-02-01T21:20:00.004-07:00

I've listened to a lot of John Piper today.
Filled my head with a lot of thoughts.
Filled my heart too.
Here's one I listened to a minute ago.
Just thought I'd share with you.

I'm also very interested
in getting the book Radical by David Platt.
Anybody read this?

Zero Calories

2011-01-31T20:55:00.002-07:00

Was this just Monday?
Man, this day seemed long.
I thought surely we'd be half way through this week
by now. I am waiting for the last of the cookies to
come dancing out of the oven so that I can go to bed.
I am tired (please sleep all night tonight, Baby J!). I felt
like my kids were all out of their ever-loving minds
today. Two out of three of them got a privilege taken
away today (one for a week, the other for two weeks).
And it won't be fun while they are doing without.
But I am going to start cracking down. I need to be
much more consistent.
And much much more fierce.

What kind of cookies did I make?
Well, since you asked, I will tell you.
I made some more of those yummy yummy and
yummy again Pecan Sandies that I made around
Christmas. Those cookies have got to be the best
thing to ever fall into the dessert category
without having any chocolate in them,
on them, or near them. Yes, I will admit it.
I love a chocolate-less dessert.
Is this a first for me?

In other news, I have started sniffing around plans for
our next school year. I am determined to order my
curriculum (and etc.) this spring so that I am not
sitting there at the end of the summer, ready and
willing to start school but without the needed loot to
do so. I found a grammar program today that really
struck a chord with me. I am excited about trying
it out. It made such sense to me. And so many
grammar programs don't make sense. Or they make
kids do exercises until their eyes cross and at the end
of the day you just want to say "What did all that
accomplish?" But it's a different approach and, well,
I am the kind of person who gets excited about a well
designed grammar program. I also found that I can get
next school year's planner cheaper if I order it
before the end of February. Imagine how well-planned
out our school year could be if I would order than thing
in February and actually start working on it, laying
out the days ahead of us, smoking my cigar and just
waiting for the day when I could slap Mr. T on the
back and say "I love it when a plan
comes together."

Not long ago I saw Mr. T on television.
It must have been on one of the Christian channels.
You know we scaled our cable back to the smallest package
possible, which means all we have are shopping channels
and religious networks. Anyway, Mr. T was on there
and he was preaching. Not like standing at a pulpit
and wearing a suit. He was dressed like normal
(normal for him, I should clarify that)
and just sitting there being interviewed and he
whipped out these papers where he'd written all these
notes. And he just got to preaching.
It was interesting.
You could tell that he had put a lot of work into it
and it meant a lot to him. What he said was sound.
It was like a basic gospel message. I thought that
was great. He will be able to minister to people that
I could never reach.
And vice versa. I hope.

Well, the cookies have danced their way out of the oven
and I am going to dance my way into the bed.
Don't try to stop me.

Oh, I thought of one Dear Reader in particular
(of the 1.5 of you that are out there) and I thought
I'd tell you that these cookies have 135 calories
in each cookie. That seems like a lot of calories
in one cookie. No wonder cookies are bad.
Don't ask me how many I ate.
I should let you in on my take on the point system.
If it's in the shape of a zero, it's zero points.
That's my theory.
And these cookies are like
a whole tray full of zeros.

I'll keep telling myself that.

Bell is full of something.

2011-01-30T20:36:00.005-07:00

This beautiful weekend
has been like a gift, has it not?
After all that ridiculous snow and cold weather,
this little piece of spring wedged into the winter
has been wonderful. Such a blessing.
I am trying to give verbal thanks for things more often.
It's one thing to be thankful in my heart, but I think
I don't express it often enough.
I know it's not YOU that I have to thank
for the sunshine, Dear Reader,
but I am just telling you that I am
very thankful for it.

I told you the worst was over with Baby J,
and that does seem to be the case. We still have
a runny nose and we are dealing with a baby who
now thinks that he should be able to whimper and
get everything he wants....but that's okay.
He'll figure out that life is still the same around here.
I'm just happy that he's not sick anymore.
I am SO very thankful for that.
I am extremely thankful that we did not have to

put him in the hospital. I'm telling you, Dear Reader,
I'm just a Bell full of thankfulness.

This weekend Sweet T has his little birthday party
with his little friends. I think he really enjoyed it.
I hope so. It was very basic, very simple and small.
It would have been nice if people would have let me
know if they were coming or not, you know? That created
the stress that I felt. I didn't know if I was going to have
five little kids or twelve.
Or twelve kids and all their siblings.
And that's a big difference.
It ended up being that the ones who came are the families
I so enjoy (and wish we were more like) and it went
very smoothly. The kids were fine. Everything was fine.
They played a couple of games.
They got sugared up.
Sweet T unwrapped the gifts at the speed of light
(why do kids do this?).
They chased each other around the room.
And then it was over.

And now my little super baby is a five year old.
I can't believe it. I think about how much has happened
in the time since that child was born. I really
associate his arrival on the scene with a lot of changes
in our lives. In a lot of ways, I wish I could go back
to that time, only not subtracting Sweet T and Baby J
from the equation. But I have learned a lot in these
past five years. We've walked down some difficult
roads. Hopefully we are wiser for them.
Hopefully we are learning the things that God is
trying to teach us ('cause we really don't want to turn
around and have to walk back down those paths again).

But when I think about that child,
that little blond third born of mine,
I just think of joy.

He is a constant source of joy.
He's such a happy child.

A hard worker. A follower of directions.
A tender heart. A smart mouth
(where does he get that from!?!?).

A dancing, laughing, smiling,
bubbly, fearless little boy.

What a blessing he is in my life.
Children are indeed a gift from God.
I am so blessed.

I told you, I'm just full of thankfulness tonight.

What a Difference A Day Makes

2011-01-28T15:59:00.002-07:00

I was telling a friend
who called yesterday
to check on Baby J
that if the fever would just go away,
everything would be fine.
And guess what?
The fever has gone away.
Things are better. Baby J is not totally
back to normal because it was such a sickness,
it took a chunk out of him. But he is so
very much better than he was.
There's just no comparison.
So thank you for praying for him.
Thank you for caring about us.
I'll be back later.
For now, just know that we are on the mend.

And if Lloyd Dobbler or I come down with this,
you will probably be able to hear me scream all the way where you are.

The Lion Sleeps Tonight (but what about the baby?)

2011-01-26T20:15:00.005-07:00

Well, Dear Reader,
since we last spoke
I have had a very sick baby.
Very sick. Took him to the doctor
yesterday. We have
the best doctor in the world,
by the way. Love our doctor.
He's a very godly man,
very practical and thorough.
He's just great. He's doctor
to our entire family and we all just love
him to pieces. I don't think Baby J loved him
yesterday quite as much as he will in
future days....In fact, I do believe that there was some
kicking going on between the two of them (and it
wasn't our lovely doctor who was doing the kicking).
Doc offered to put Baby J in the hospital if I did
not feel comfortable taking care of him at home.
We just had to watch him carefully.
Watch the crazy fever and
watch the hydration.
So I've been watching.

My mother was very concerned and she came over
here this morning. I think she said she was dressed
and ready to come at 5:00 a.m. Thankfully she
didn't come at that time. She was just afraid that
I would have been up all night long with Lionel Ritchie,
but he actually slept last night. Tonight I am
not so sure that will happen again. He is just
so miserable. It's really pitiful.
I can't stand to have a sick baby.
They can't tell you anything. They are just
so sad and pathetic.
It's no fun at all.

So let's hope Baby J sleeps tonight.
And lets hope he gets better
while he sleeps. Pray for him
if you will. He's such a
precious little guy.

You've Come A Long Way, Belly

2011-01-24T16:49:00.004-07:00

What's up, DR?
It's Monday. Have you had a good Monday?
I got on facebook this morning to see, you know,
if Frank Sinatra is asking to be my friend
('cause that would be really weird since he's dead and all)
and it seemed like everyone was complaining about
this day. All those typical "I hate Monday" kind of
statements. Usually I would be right there with you
to kick Monday as hard as I possibly could.
While wearing steel toed boots.
But not today.
This Monday went well for us.
I am trying to stick by the plan in recent days.
And I actually have a plan to be sticking to
---that's improvement on my part.
You have no idea what a long way I have come.
You should be calling me Virginia Slim.

But after the holidays and then sickness and snow
and too much of messed up days, it feels so good
to be back to the ordinary.
Back to the routine.

Tonight for supper I made this Tex Mex Beef & Potatoes.
It was a brand new recipe to us lately, and it is not
the kind of thing I make a lot. It's not my normal fare.
I find myself thinking that and saying that in
reference to this recipe. But then I don't know
why it is exactly that this feels like something "different."
It just does. This is not healthy or impressive or
anything like that. I mean, it contains Velveeta.
That says a lot, doesn't it?
It's just a basic, comfort-food
type of dish and it is very filling and warm
and my family likes it. (A feat in itself)
Maybe yours will too.

Tex Mex Beef & Potatoes

1 lb ground beef
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 pkg taco seasoning
1/2 cup water
1 bag frozen southern style hash browns
1 pkg (10 oz) frozen corn
1/2 lb (8 oz) Velveeta cheese

Heat oven to 350 Brown meat with peppers
and onions in a large skillet. Drain, return
to skillet. Stir in taco seasoning and water.
Add potatoes, corn, and Velveeta. Mix well.
Spoon into 13x9 dish. Cover.
Bake 20 minutes; stir. Then bake UNcovered for
15 minutes more or until heated through.

It's easy. You can make it ahead of time and throw it
into the oven later. Or make it and put it in
the oven to come on while you are out (like on Sunday
morning while you are gone to church---I love having
the smell of a wonderful lunch meet me at the door
when I come home). So try it if you like.
Or don't. Like I said, it's not some amazing,
impressive dish. It's just ordinary food.
The kind I like to serve on ordinary days.
Like today.

Pa Ingalls was no looker.

2011-01-20T13:28:00.003-07:00

I was just looking at the radar on-line, wondering if
we are going to get any of this winter storm they are
threatening to slather all over us. It's funny how after
the recent snow, now that everyone else is fed up with it,
the weathermen don't talk about it so romantically.
They are not quite so giddy at the snowy prospect.
Nobody is crossing their fingers and hoping for it.
Parents are complaining about school being canceled
because they don't know what to do with their children.
I'd like to point out that I am not jumping on the
bandwagon of bad-mouthing snow.

I am the one that drove that wagon into town.

I can't help but remember, every time I look at
a weather radar screen, the time that Lovely K first
took note of a weather report. We lived in our old house
which had two very large, very old trees in the front yard.
I was sure a good storm would
come through on any given day
and tip one of those trees over on our little house.
This time to which I am referring was a particularly
stormy spring day. There had been tornado watches,
tornado warnings, and actual tornadoes. I was checking
the TV on a regular basis to see if we needed to go to
our happy place. It was one of these times, when I came
into the living room to see what the weather people
were saying, that Lovely K watched the weather radar
with me and then ran to the window and looked up
at the sky. She looked all around, as far as she could see.
"Are we going to get the red?" she asked.
That's what I want to know when I check
the weather radar.
Are we getting the red?
Never mind all the other stuff they want to talk about.
You know how crazy they get with the warnings.
Merciful heavens! After some big weather show
passes through, then they have to go above and beyond
to report to us anything that might
possibly turn into something.
"We interrupt this regularly scheduled program
to inform you that a good stiff breeze will be blowing through
your county for the next eleven minutes. If this
good stiff breeze were to increase to, oh I don't know,
an actual gust of wind, we will be right back on here,
keeping you from watching Oprah, so that we can
talk about the wind.
Stay tuned."

I think it's all too much.
Ma Ingalls didn't need anybody to warn her
about wild and crazy weather.
But who ever said I was a Ma Ingalls?
That I am not.
No dirt floors and outhouses for me.
And no Pa Ingalls either. Please.
Have you ever seen a picture of the real Pa Ingalls?
No wonder Mary went blind.

Blah Blah Blah

2011-01-20T09:32:00.002-07:00

I am amazed at how much better I feel today.
A complete turn around from yesterday at this time.
Wonderful.
(Thanks for your concern for me and your prayers!)
We are just rolling down the street
in our school bus today.
One student in particular seems
to be struggling with this.
Too much laxness in recent days.
Too much fun.
And this child is so easily distracted. I often wonder
what this child would be like if they had been in
a traditional school setting from day 1.
I have really been thinking about schooling lately
and the choices we have made in our family,
wondering if changes need to be made.

Lovely K is playing the William Tell Overture
over and over and overture this morning.
And Baby J is having a fit because
he's incarcerated while his sister is playing
the piano. He thinks his place is to be
on one end of the piano banging any key he can
reach when she is practicing.
Now I'm no musician, but it just seems to me
that it might be easier to practice an instrument
without a baby hanging onto it.

It just feels kind of like an ordinary day
around here, Dear Reader. I mean, it's just school
and laundry and dirty diapers and cleaning....
the fabric of my life.
Sometimes ordinary days feel precious and priceless
and their beauty is easy to recognize.
Ordinary days can also be a boring bowl of oatmeal
or a cross to bear.

Wouldn't You Like To Be A Pepper Too?

2011-01-19T12:50:00.003-07:00

It was a NyQuil night for the old Bell last night.
I think I went to bed around 8:30.
It's about 2:00 p.m. right now and I am sitting up
and am conscious of my surrounding. It's
a good thing when you can actually slip
things into "auto pilot" from time to time as a mother.
And not have to worry about somebody eating
an entire poinsettia or trying to ride the lawnmower
to the convenience store down the street. Today was
one of those days. I mean, when you have to call your
ten year old to lift the baby out of his bed for you,
don't plan on getting much accomplished that day.
I sat up long enough to feed Baby J his breakfast.
Then I put him in his fence and turned on Sesame Street
for entertainment. I meant to lay on the couch and steer
the ship from there, but apparently when I became
horizontal again, I lost consciousness. It was like from
time to time I would open my eyes
and there'd be kids walking around.
"Did you do your Language Arts?" I would ask.
"Yes."
"Okay. Do your Math now."
I think I'm up for Teacher of the Year.

I'm just grateful that my big kids are old enough
that going into "auto pilot" mode is actually an option now.
Lovely K is such a helper. I'd have to say, if you're going
to have a daughter, have one like Lovely K.
What would I do without my beautiful Lovely K?
She is a one of a kind.

The fact that I am sitting here now, clear minded enough
to be able to operate a computer, shows how much better
I am feeling now than I was this morning.
I could not have typed a word to you this morning.
This morning I had one foot in the grave.
Forget medication of any kind.
I felt like death until I drank a Dr. Pepper.
That's what my grandmother always used to
"medicate" herself. Maybe there are some
healing powers in that magical dark juice.

I went to my bed when Baby J took his morning nap
and I was out cold again. I can understand why last week
when she was sick, Lovely K would just cry because she felt
so bad. I don't know what woke me up just after noon
....I think maybe a child came in asking
for more porridge or something.
Lovely K made PB&Js for all of us. I think eating that
and drinking a Diet Dr. Pepper (just what the doctor ordered!)
perked me up a little here.
I am now sending the two big kids off to do more
school work. I am determined to get everything that is
absolutely necessary checked off of the list today.
School will be done.
Supper will be made.
I set the ingredients out on the cabinet a minute ago.
I'm not going with the French Country Casserole that was
originally scheduled for tonight. I'm going to replace
that with a promising new act called Chicken In Rice.
It's something that I can just whip together and put in
the oven. Of course, so was the French Country Casserole,
but it just seemed more involved. I can't be standing in there
chopping carrots for 45 minutes today.
I'm hanging over the edge of a cliff today
and I have got to hold on for dear life.
Today and tomorrow are all I am allowed to feel crummy.
I can make life easier on myself these two days,
(by making an easier supper choice
and riding through this day in a fog letting the kids do the
minimum school work and watch the maximum TV)
and then it's back to the salt mines.

Some day when my kids are grown,
I'm going to get sick and I'm just going to stay in bed all day.
Never get up the first time.

But not today.

And why would blogger pick on somebody who is sick today?
Why would it treat me this way?
It keeps telling me that horizontal is misspelled,
but it won't tell me how to spell it correctly.
And I can feel the Dr. Pepper magic leaving my body
even as a type. I think I'm going to be HORIZONTAL
again in a minute....whether that's the way
you spell it or not.

And so it begins.

2011-01-18T09:20:00.002-07:00

You know how people will say
"today is the first day of the rest of your life"?
While that may seem like a profound statement at times,
every single day is actually the first day of the rest
of your life. Every day is a new starting point.
What is it L. M. Montgomery says in Anne of Green Gables?
"Tomorrow is fresh, with no mistakes in it."
And the Bible talks about new mercies each morning,
a daily load of benefits, that sort of thing.

Today is a new start for us in some ways.
Lloyd Dobbler has returned to his former job and will no
longer be working at home. So starting today, when I say
to the kids "Daddy is at work," it won't mean that he's
in the basement. You guys know I have complained about
The Big Stink of 2010 and how hard things were
for us--and it was hard. My soul! Last winter was hard
and cold and lonely and unpleasant. And yet God really
showed Himself to us in myriad ways.
So it was good and bad.
Sometimes it takes the bad to make us aware
of how good the good really is.
Well, I kind of feel like this return to this job is a return
to "the way things used to be." It's like we are going
back to life before The Big Stink. Hopefully we are
wiser for all the bad smells we had to endure.
But there you have it.
Lloyd Dobbler has left the building.

In other news: I have a cold.
I started sneezing and having various issues with my
whole nasal region yesterday. I didn't think much about it
until last night. It was like I was just running out of
energy around supper time. I took a nice hot bath
and went to bed early thinking I'd wake up and be
normal again. That was not the case.
I am not normal. My nose is doing every ridiculous
annoying thing a nose can do.
My head hurts.
I keep sneezing.
And I am out of Kleenex.
I should just hook a roll of toilet paper to my belt today.
But I have to say, I'd rather me have a cold than any one
of the babes to be sick. I have had my fill of sick
children lately---I think I mentioned that. And the good news
is that since I'm neither growing nor feeding a child with
my body right now---I can take drugs!
Woo hoo.
If I am feeling tonight like I feel right now,
I'm going to break out my old friend NyQuil.
I love NyQuil.
I would take some right now if I weren't responsible
for the four babes under my roof. If I take NyQuil,
I have to follow it up by a couple of hours
of dead-to-the-world sleep.

We have piano lessons and ballet and Cub Scouts today.
And it's raining. But I don't care.
I feel like getting out. I feel like getting a nice big greasy
burger from somewhere. Having a cold always makes me
want to eat like a ravenous wolf. And it makes me want
something with flavor.
Like Mexican food. Or onions.
Or a big greasy fast food burger.
And they say "feed a cold, starve a fever,"
right?
Or is it the other way around?
I hope not because I am feeding this cold.
It's very hungry.

My! What a big mess you have!

2011-01-16T19:26:00.005-07:00

All the better to get rid of things, my Dear Reader.

It is true. I have a big mess right now.
How glad I am that you cannot see the state of things here
at the homestead. Haven't you ever set out to clean up things,
or even just one thing, and the next moment you are
tearing the house apart, rearranging things, going through
stuff....making a big mess....but feeling like
you are making progress.
That has been me today.
I didn't intend to do any of this today.
I don't know what my intention was when I set out. I didn't
go to church at all today due to lingering sickness in
Sweet T. This morning was kind of peaceful and normal.
I fixed lunch so that it would be hot and on the table when
Lloyd Dobbler and the big kids came in from church.
It was sometime after church that things went haywire.
I was just going to clean out that cabinet with the games
in it....That seems so long ago now.
Since then I have rearranged furniture
in several rooms, dragged out stuff from hither
and yon, emptied the downstairs changing table
(it's going away forever, the beginning of the end
of babydom in this house),
....oh, I can't even remember what all I've done at this point.
It's going to be better once I get everything put back into
some kind of order. I moved a little bookcase into the kitchen
where a lot of schooling happens. I rearranged things in the
guest room which is my retreat---
that's where my comfy chair is that I go to
first thing each morning. I've got pictures
down from walls, books dumped out in piles,
all kinds of havoc.
But it's progress. It's a good kind of a mess to have.
And I am trying to get rid of some stuff as I think about it.
Baby steps.

We've started reading
Andrew Lang's Blue Fairy Book.
Many of the stories in these collections are familiar,
but these are the "old school" versions. They aren't softened,
prettied up, or made politically correct. I think
I prefer that. Yesterday we read Little Red Riding Hood.
It was a brief story. The wolf ate the grandmother and then
he ate Little Red Riding Hood when she came
to the grandmother's house. And that was the end
of the story. No woodsman came in to cut open the wolf's
stomach so that Granny and Little Red could step right out,
unharmed. There was no saving of the day.
The old lady died.
The little girl died.
Everyone died.
And that was the end.
Goodnight, children. Sweet dreams.

Do we make things too rosy and easy
for children today?

I read an article this week (here it is) that made me think
about the way I make things easy for my children.
I'm not saying I'm going to become a Chinese mother like
the ones described in the article, but I could stand to be
a little more Chinese than what I am.

Bell is a H.S.P.R.

2011-01-16T14:43:00.003-07:00

Greetings, Dear Reader.
I am happy to report to you that at this very moment
while I am typing these words to you,
the sun is shining.
I'm so thrilled to see that ball of fire in the sky!
And I am seeing patches in the snow today. I'm so ready
for that. The last two days I got to leave the house
and both times I had "issues" in the driveway upon
my return. On Friday I couldn't make it up the hill.
I was no George Jefferson with my whole lot of strivin'.
I tried it slowly and that was the problem.
I lost momentum.
Lloyd Dobbler had to come to my aid. He rolled us
back down the hill and around the block, coming up the
driveway like we were in the General Lee---and we
made it up the icy hill and into the garage.
So yesterday when I returned home with groceries,
I came zipping in at top speed and made it up the hill.
It was at the top of the hill, just outside our garage,
that I somehow got off of the concrete and the
silly ol' van just decided not to move for me.
Lloyd Dobbler had to come out again.
And I don't really know what he did to get it
going that time, but he did it. Whatever it was.
I told him that was why I married him.
To maintain the electronic/technological devices in my life.
And to get the van when it's stuck in the snow.
I think that's a direct quote from our vows.
Imagine how pleased I was to have the forethought
to cover that situation.

I cleaned out a cabinet today that was having serious
over-crowding issues. It's the main location for games
in our house. I now have a stack of games to go
to Somewhere Else. Some place yet to be determined.

I start these piles, or boxes, of things to get rid of.
I do this thinking I will just take the stuff to Goodwill
or some place like that since Lloyd Dobbler is very
anti-yard sale. So I started collecting a pile of things
to which I want to sing "Happy Trails" and then my in-laws
come to visit. My mother-in-law, bless her heart,
will go through my pile of cast offs and say "I can sell this."
And she usually ends up taking all of it back home with her.
She is a wheeler and dealer in this department
(and she has way more time than I do to deal with these things).
She takes stuff to a re-sale shop down there or puts it
on Craig's List. She has called me at regular intervals
lately saying "I have some money for you."
Those are the kind of phone calls I like to receive.
(If you too would like to call me and tell me how much
money you are going to send me, I'll be glad to
give you my phone number.)
Just today she called and said she had fifty bucks for me.
Lovely. You can't imagine how much I appreciate
her doing things like this.
I have a really good mother-in-law.

By the time they come for Sweet T's birthday,
I hope to have much more for her to take home with
her. I have been mentally preparing myself for
paring down here at the homestead.
And I think the mental prep is going well because
I am beginning to just get rid of stuff. I am throwing
away more stuff. I am buying less.
But keep this in mind: this is coming from
a Highly Skilled Pack Rat though,
Dear Reader, so don't get a mental image of a
minimalistic house when you think of me.
No. Far from that.
But I'm baby stepping.
Everything I get rid of helps.
Every single thing.
Having said that, there's a drawer in my kitchen
that has been living it up and partying with every
piece of junk it could lure into its wicked depths.
And I have had all I can take from that disorderly drawer.
I am going to go in there right now and have
a heart-to-heart with that rebel.
One of us is going to come away from
this encounter lighter and more attractive.
And it ain't going to be me.
Although I wish cleaning out a drawer could make me
both lighter and more attractive.
I'd be cleaning out drawers like no body's business.

In Which Bell Wants Everything Over-Sized

2011-01-14T08:16:00.005-07:00

I love office supplies.
I was just thinking about that as I admired
my over sized paper clip in my school planner.
This morning while getting something else out of my nightstand,
I discovered this stack of blank over-sized index cards
---the kind of cards that we usually just call "3x5" cards,
only if they are over sized, then they obviously are
not 3x5. I think these are 5x8.
They are my favorite cards to have everywhere.
They are very friendly and helpful. You can take messages
on them, write to do lists or grocery lists or copy off a recipe.
And people always act like they are something wonderful.
"Oh, where did you get these?" they will say.
And it's an index card.
But it's large and lined and wonderful.
Just another one of the office supplies
that has found a place in my heart.

Me and my office supplies have been
doing a little paper work today (on this last morning
of sickness---I am making an official proclamation:
this is the last day of sickness
in this house for this semester!
They better get it all in today.).
I counted up and realized that we have 83 days left
in this school year. That's good enough. I like to be
at least half way at Christmas (half way is 90 days).
So considering we have wasted this week (five days down
the toilet!), I'm okay with where we are.

This is the time of year that I begin to think we will
start our first semester of school during the summer for the next
school year. It's never hard to get the kids motivated
during warm weather. We can do school in the morning
easily if Mr. Popsicle's pool is waiting for us after lunch.
Or some other pleasant summer activity. I have several
home schooling friends who do that. They always say they'd
rather be doing school in those dog days of summer when
it's too hot for any thing else. And here on this snowy day
in January where I am looking down the barrel of
83 more days of school, I am seeing the wisdom of that.
My over sized paper clips and I are in
agreement on this matter.

But find me in July
and see if I am still of this mind.
I might be too busy hanging out with my
over sized stapler to be bothered with school.

Want something to eat?

2011-01-13T19:39:00.004-07:00

My kitchen is a big mess right now.
I have about an hour's worth of work to do.
I cooked this nice meal, you see.
Pork chops. Scalloped potatoes. Green beans.
Corn on the cob. Homemade bread.
I thought it would be a nice thing, after all these
snowy days (not that I haven't been cooking the usual
three meals a day anyway, but I just thought this seemed
like a cozy meal for a cold night).
Just a nice meal with the family.
Well, we have the sicky sickos, you might recall.
They feel better in spurts. But come meal time, they are
all near death and want nothing to do with my offerings.
Even their father tonight.
He's not sick, but in anticipation of being sick,
he's passing on the meal I made.
I kind of feel like throwing it all out into the back yard.
Maybe some pack of dogs will come by
and appreciate it.

I am a silly person to even complain about this.
I mean, what in the world do I have to complain about?
There are people all over the world suffering and
experiencing tragedy. I am just a pampered,
spoiled rotten, lazy American.
Right?

Sorry I've been so sour and sarcastic an gripe-y lately.
More than usual, I am afraid.
I'll try to get into a better frame of mind.

Take my trainer, please.

2011-01-13T10:04:00.004-07:00

If I didn't have to go to bed at a decent hour,
I would get so much more done. Every night
around 10 p.m. I am thinking of 100 things to do.
And I would do them right then---except that the rest
of the family is asleep, everyone but Lloyd Dobbler, who
begins to prod me to get into the bed at this time.
I'd like to drag out the vacuum cleaner or clean out
a cabinet at that time. When Lloyd Dobbler had the job
where he traveled all the time, he was often gone on
weeknights or else got home very late.
Of course I only had two babes at that time and I was not
educating anyone then, but I was able to be on top of
things so much better because I did my work at my
peak time---night. I'm a night owl by nature.
But I've been forced to live as someone who is not
naturally nocturnal. Kind of like a superhero forced to live
like one of the common people without super powers.
Not that housekeeping is my super power.
Please. Have you seen my house?
But back then I could run into a phone booth and change
identities for a while. I didn't have to accommodate others.
The kids were little and they could have slept through
it if I was vacuming their very bed.
I used to clean the bathrooms and vacuum
and dust and all of that kind of thing starting around 10 p.m.
The kids were in bed. It was just easy for me to get stuff
done at that time of day. That's when my mind comes alive
and I feel motivated. That's when I would always
START my homework---10 p.m.
Last night I dug out my Christmas present (the wii fit)
and finally unboxed it and plugged it in and all of that.
I did this at 9 p.m. or so. The kids were all in bed
(I'd had my fill of their sick, pitiful selves yesterday---once again,
aren't you glad I'm not your mother?---and put them all in
bed as early as possible).
So the house was quiet and Lloyd Dobbler was in the
basement so I just wii fitted myself. And here's the thing:
I wanted this because I have no time when I can ever tear
myself away from my posse and go exercise.
I have no exercise equipment---except a yoga mat that
reminds me how much I enjoyed that when going to
yoga twice a week was still an option.
But is this really going to help me in any way?
This video game with word "fit" slapped onto it.
Would I be better off walking to Subway
each day with Jared?
'Cause he goes right by my house.
And if there's anything that would burn up calories
and brain cells and patience, it would be walking
anywhere with my four at this point in time.
(this may be my cabin fever talking---coupled with the
overworked Florence Nightingale who is really not even
there inside of me to be summoned forth)

I'm just wodnering if there's going to be any benefit
to doing this. If it is actually a worthwhile investment
of my time. I guess it is. It's better to be standing on a
board leaning left and right to get little balls to roll through
a hole or make fish jump onto your penguin than to be
sitting on the couch doing nothing.
I have to tell you, though, that this is doing nothing
for my self image. That wii did everything except
throw itself at me in disgust as I worked on the "balance"
things last night. It would show my my little person
pounding the ground in sorrow and flash on the
screen its favorite name for me: UNBALANCED.
It even asked me if I trip a lot when I walk.
I didn't know I purchased the Don Rickles
version of the wii fit.
So forget any fitness goals. I'd just like to get to
where the wii isn't insulting me.

I am looking at 2011, Dear Reader, and I am excited
about things on our horizon. There is the potential
for major changes that, I believe, will be getting us back
on the path we should be on. I am glad about this.
It's funny how other people looking at your life see it
differently than you do when you are the one in it. I have
had a number of people who know about one situation
in our life say to me, "Oh, I am praying that doesn't happen."
And I just have to say "Don't pray that!"
Something that they think is a BAD thing is
actually NOT a bad thing.
We want it to happen. We are trying to get to where it will
happen. It's a good thing whether or not it looks like
that from the outside. So let's hope for these things to
work out in this new year ahead of us. I have been praying
about it all for a long time. I am anxious to see what
God is going to do in our life.

All I am going to say about the snow around here is this:
enough already.
It will take forever to melt. And it's going to be ugly gray
sludge for weeks. This is why I don't love the snow.
And snow seems be to like fish and visitors:
after three days it stinks.

Have a lovely day, Dear Reader.

Unpublished Bell

2011-01-12T08:08:00.002-07:00

Never mind that we already have six inches of snow here
at the homestead. It's snowing again.
"It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife."
If you are my age, you will remember that line from
a song in your high school days. You might also
remember this one:
You can't touch this!

Is there anyone who doesn't laugh or at least smile and
roll their eyes at the very thought of that song? Do you
remember the pants? The hammer pants? I remember
this guy wearing those to school. The whitest white guy
in the world. And it's not like he was Mr. Fashionplate.
But he wore hammer pants. I wonder if he has nightmares
about that to this day. I wonder whatever happened
to him. Oh great. Now I have to look for him
on facebook. Won't it be funny if he's a fan
on facebook of MC Hammer? Or if that little box
that says "write something here about yourself" says
"You Can't Touch This."

Last night Lloyd Dobbler and I were cleaning out a couple
of boxes in the basement. I was just trying to get through
the piles of stuff. We only had a little time set aside for
this activity. Lloyd Dobbler, on the other hand, wanted to
talk about every single remnant from him childhood.
And show it to me.
He had this whole folder full of this fantasy baseball game
he created. He kept statistics on the games and the
imaginary players. It is the kind of thing that you might
show me if you were hoping to gently guide me into
a coma. He better be glad he didn't show that to me
before we got married. We might never have
made it down the aisle.

I found this folder of writing I did for a particular class in
college. Creative writing. I remember thinking the teacher
in this class was a total ditz. And why she was teaching
this class, other than she was some single woman near
40 who probably loved poetry or something....and at a small
Christian college, I don't think they worry too much about
who is doing what in the English department. She would
tear apart my papers with her little red pen and then at the
end ask if she could have a copy of it for her "good paper file"
or for her own personal collection or whatever.
Reading stuff I wrote so long ago was very interesting.
It was like meeting up with someone you knew briefly.
Something about them was familiar, but I think I was able
to look at them objectively. There was one that was
so immature. Painfully so. I can't believe I ever
turned it in. I wonder what our assignment was
for that specific paper. But there were a couple that
I read that were worth being proud of.
I was pleased with them. Makes me wish I had time to devote
to that currently. I always have the hope of writing someday.
I used to have this quote posted in my bedroom that say:
Take time to write. You can do your life's work
in half an hour a day.
I wonder if I could. I think that I could,
but I wonder if I ever actually will.
I don't want to just add more poorly written words to the
world (any more than this blog, let's say). I would want
it to be worthwhile. But you know what?
I was thinking about that the other day when I was standing
in a Goodwill looking at this whole wall of books.
Books that were some one's pride and joy when they were
first published. For some reason I was thinking of
Ernest Hemingway and how he started out.
A phenomenal American novel was not the first thing
to come from his typewriter. He wrote lots of things.
Anything he could at first. It takes a lot of writing,
I think, to get to where you are good at it.
That's why all those novelists from his era worked for
newspapers and magazines. They worked at their craft.
Constantly. Daily. In ways less grandiose
than anyone dreams of. I wish I had thought about that
when I was younger. I used to have a better grip
on things. I wonder if I have forgotten everything I knew
or if it is laying dormant.
Maybe I will be the Grandma Moses of the literature world.
I'll be Grandma Bell, the amazingly old and yet
surprisingly good novelist.
Or maybe not.
I think I am getting a little old to still be wondering
what the future may hold for me.

Well enough of the contents of my head for today.
My good friend is coming by to see me in an hour
and I haven't even had a shower yet this morning.
I must get myself in gear and get moving.
Who knew this laptop would make me so prone to laziness?
I love sitting here with my cup of tea
and all the www.'s in the world.

2011-01-11T12:00:00.001-07:00

I was looking back today and laughing and rolling my eyes at some things I have said to you in the past. But let's hear from a woman who I never grow tired of---Ruth Bell Graham. If you go here, you will see a poem a shared with you on a snowy day long passed.

Snowy, snowy night

2011-01-10T18:15:00.002-07:00

It is the end of that snowy day now.
My quiet moment on the porch this morning set the tone
for this quiet, still day My one sick child is slowly
becoming three. The one who has been sick all weekend,
Big E, is on the mend. The best nurse in the world,
Lovely K, who was so kind to Big Sick E over the weekend
(as she always is to anyone who is ill--she definitely has the
gift of mercy) has been down all afternoon with glassy
eyes and a major headache. And Sweet T has glassy
eyes and crankiness which, we know, are the first
signs of illness in a four year old.
So I'm thinking maybe we will have several days
of this fog of nothingness in our house.
Perhaps it is a good time to have snow days when we
are also having sick days. We can just
snug in and be cozy and get better.

Good news on the kitchen trauma.
Lloyd Dobbler's father, a retired GE employee (did his
whole career with them) called to people high up on the
totem pole in that company. It seems that between us,
Lloyd Dobbler's parents and his brother, quite a few appliances
have been purchased in the past few years.
Quite a few.
I know there were 3 or 4 kitchen remodels in the mix,
a new house or two....so when I say several, believe me,
there were several. And evidently there have been
several "issues" with these several appliances.
So if you complain to the right people, you get co-operation.
Somebody with some power called us today.
It seems the cook top we have is no longer available.
Because it is "bisque." That's the color of it.
It's bisque. (Off white.)
And bisque is no longer an option if you are purchasing
GE appliances. It's black, white, or stainless.
But they do have replacement parts
(I'm wondering why they can't put all the replacement parts
together to make a new whole? But that's just me.).
So they are sending us that slab of glass that makes up
the cook top. Hopefully we can replace the cracked one
with this new piece and return to glory days in the kitchen.
This is the plan. So isn't that lovely to have a company
actually stand by their stuff?
I am pleased with GE.

I watched part of Wives and Daughters on Netflix today.
Every time I watch these movies from the 1800's,
I want to wear dresses like those they wore.
Those high waisted, cotton morning dresses. Only not the
version with the LOW neckline where their bosoms are
out there for the whole world to see. I wonder how
common that really was. There was much more of a sense
of propriety and modesty then than there is today.
I wonder how many regular women would have worn
that LOW neckline version. I won't tell you what I read
in a historical reference book one time when looking up
something related to this matter. Let's just say that there
was a fad among the French in that era
(of course it would be among the French)
to take matters a bit further.
Like the limbo neckline.
"How low can you go."
And the fad was to go a little lower than you would think.
I was quite surprised at what I read.

I don't know if I have told you this lately,
but I am too old to be having a baby. Not that I'm
having an additional baby. I am referring to the one
that I already have. And he is just 12 months old.
He's still a baby. He'll always be my baby,
but won't they all?
What I am saying is that having a baby at my age makes it
very easy to realize that the quiver is full. Somebody asked
me the other day if it was sad to me when
my baby turned one recently.
Sad? No. I'm ready to move on.
We've had four rounds of this. While I am enjoying
Baby J's babyhood and it is sweet to mark all these
milestones in his life, it is also sweet to know that these
are the last times we will do these things.
When he outgrows the baby clothes, they go out the door.
No more saving everything.
When he is past a stage, we are done with it for good.
So when he gets off the bottle, every bottle in this house
will be knocking on the donation door of Goodwill, looking
for a new home. And just think, when he starts using the
real potty, that will be the end of diapers.
Woo hoo. The end of diapers.
If I had all the money I have spent on Pampers over the
past 11 years, well, I would have a nice
pile of money to be sure.
But the end of diapers?
The end of wipes?
And I say Bring it on!
I am ready for the next stages in my life.
I'm going to be 40
(like Sally in When Harry Met Sally---not on my next
birthday but SOMEDAY.
It's out there. It's on my horizon.).
I'm too old to be carrying a diaper bag and sticking my finger
in some body's mouth to fish out a Lego block or a broken crayon.
I'm too tired at the end of the day to keep a constant eye
on a tireless baby who waits for every opportunity to slip
out of sight and climb up the stairs
(remember the broken baby gate?).
I've got a one track mind and (like Sammy Davis's eye)
"it was lookin' the other way."
I'm just ready to advance to the next level.
You mothers of three or more children
know what I'm talking about.

Okay.
So the snowy morning is now a snowy night.
I'm going to have a decaf cappuccino and watch the third part
of Wives and Daughters once I get these little sickos tucked
into their nice warm beds. I hope you have a lovely
evening, Dear Reader.
Stay warm.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

2011-01-10T08:17:00.004-07:00

This morning I stepped out on the porch to take
a couple of pictures of the snowy scene that met me
there. I think we got 5 or 6 inches of snow and they
continue to threaten us with more.
(It amazes me how happy and excited people on
facebook are about the snow. I don't get it.)
I was struck with how very quiet the snow makes things.
Not that I live in New York City where you always hear,
you know, city sounds and neighbors and sirens and all
of that. But it was unusually quiet. Strangely quiet.
I felt like if someone a mile down the road said something
on their porch, I would hear it.
And then back inside my house, as I was carrying
Lloyd Dobbler's tray of breakfast down to him in the
basement (what a good wife am I!), I paused on the steps
because I realized I had left my computer
on in the dining room
and over the other sounds in the house at that time,
I could hear Paul McCartney's voice singing
"The Long and Winding Road" (which, by the way, is a
favorite song of mine---that and "Yesterday,"
I just love those two songs.
And it's not the same with any one else singing it. It has to
be Paul McCartney.) That song is on the juke box,
by the way, in case you want to take a minute and listen
to it and say, "You know what, Bell, that is a beautiful song."
Even as I say that, I am thinking of someone who does not
like the Beatles or anything related to the Beatles and
would rather chew their arm off than listen to any song
by them. A friend of mine who is somewhat anti-Beatle
had her small child, when he saw a picture of John Lennon,
ask "Mommy, is that Jesus?" For some reason I always
think of that and laugh. It just
seems funny to me.

Right now we have NPR on the radio in the kitchen
and I am half-way listening to it. All the talk about the
repercussions of this horrible shooting in Arizona----sigh.
Sometimes people just take something and try to make
a whole other thing about it. Trying to connect things
that are not in reality connectible. You know what
I mean? I'm not NPR's target audience anyway. But after
a few hours of them, my eyes are tired from rolling.
At the same time, there are things I like about them.
I like their human interest stories.
I like some of their international coverage.
But they are so biased on anything pertaining to
our government. Spare me. Right now they are
blaming the shootings in Arizona on Sarah Palin's use
of gun terminology in her public speaking and on her
websites. I'm not a Sarah Palin cheerleader by any stretch
of the imagination, but I am pretty sure that the nut job
who fired that gun this past week was not motivated
by Sarah Palin. And the whole gun control topic. Oh man.
When NPR starts talking about guns, I've got to
turn off the radio. The eye rolling becomes
not enough.

Another sound we hear right now here at the homestead
is the sound of Sesame Street in the living room.
Yes, I am trying to turn my baby's brain to mush
at this very minute. What can I say?
I'm not one of those homeschooling mom's in my denim
jumper, making a loaf of bread and never allowing my
children to see a television set turned on.
Nope. I'm not.
There are many ways in which I need to improve,
but I have to say, using Sesame Street to help entertain
my one year old, that's not something I'm going to give up.
It didn't cause any of my other children brain damage
so we're going to plow on. Not that I love Sesame Street
any more than I love NPR. But there are good things
about it. You just have to know when to hold 'em, know
when to fold 'em, know when to walk away,
and know when to run.
That's what my Uncle Kenny always told me.

Lloyd Dobbler suggested we have a snow day today.
If ever there was a family who did not NEED a snow day,
that would be us. We have been so lax since Christmas.
And I was all prepared to get our noses back to the
academic grindstone this morning. I was ready to
crack the whip.
But this snow just "rained on my parade."
So to speak.
I could use the day to get some stuff done on the
paperwork/organizational side of things. If only I would.
If only I would stop trying to talk to famous guitarists
and watching documentaries about concentration camp
survivors in Terre Haute, Indiana.
If only I would stop wearing my pj's half the day
and using every possible excuse for postponing
necessary things.

I was thinking about posting the three new recipes
that I have enjoyed lately, but I don't want to turn
into allrecipes.com here. Maybe later.
But I'll have to give them to you one at a time.
Don't want to overwhelm you with my culinary magic.
I was also going to tell you about my sympathetic heart
overflowing yesterday as I drove around my small town
and thought about the various difficulties faced by people
in this little town as well as in this nasty, cold world
in which we live---I am so thankful for my small, simple,
peaceful life. I also wanted to talk about
the Kennedy Center Honors. Did anyone else watch that?
And then I had trauma in my kitchen yesterday
morning that just seemed like a straw that might
possibly break the camel's back at the moment.
You know how something can happen and you
just think "That's it!" You just want someone to
yell "cut and wrap" and you get to walk off the set of this
life and into some other life. I felt like that yesterday
morning. But I got over it.
Of course I felt like that again in the afternoon when,
less than an hour after I bought a much needed baby gate,
the baby gate proved to be worthless. Not that Baby J
conquered it in some way. No. But it just flopped down
and broke when a gentle breeze passed its way.
I bought it at Walmart so I'm sure it was made in
some other country where the babies, obviously,
are weaker than gentle breezes.
Or maybe they wouldn't dare touch the baby gates
because they are just so thankful not to be in the
overcrowded orphanage down the street.
Or dead.

Wow. I wonder if the sarcasm and acidity in my head
is translating in my words this morning.
I don't know why I am in this mood.
(I'm going to blame it on NPR.)
Stick with me.
I'll be silly and peppy again.

Enjoy your snow day today, Dear Reader.
Unless you are in San Diego and you are not exactly
having a snow day. If you are in San Diego,
1) tell Jason Mraz that I said hello and
2) why haven't you invited me to come visit you?
I love San Diego.
I would live in San Diego if it weren't so expensive
and if it weren't so far away from TN.
I didn't even know you lived there.

It is a lovely day, Dear Reader.
Be a part of that loveliness.
I'll try to do the same.

George Washington held his own wooden teeth.

2011-01-07T18:55:00.004-07:00

Remember at the end of 2010
when we were trying to visit every member
of the medical profession in the state (or so it seemed)?
Well, one of those visits included dental cleanings/check ups.
The dentist we go to now is the one Lloyd Dobbler had
gone to ever since he moved here (almost 20 years ago).
My dentist had retired a few years back and I was just
kind of drifting, not going to the dentist, not knowing who
to go to. Then when we started having children with teeth,
they had to go somewhere and eventually we have just
all ended up going to Lloyd Dobbler's dentist.
This dentist is an older man with a small practice.
He runs it like a tight ship of which he is captain. I think
the dental hygienist there has some serious OCD issues.
Not that she's neurotic or bizarre, but I think she's just
like one of those people who does the same thing every day
to the minute, has this perfectly ordered life, and would
freak out if she had, oh, I don't know, something like
a hair out of place or an interruption.
I can't imagine being like that.
And you know that I am absolutely NOT like that.
I'd be surprised to have all my hairs in place on any given
day. And to go without interruption for more than five
minutes, well, that would mean either the kids are all
asleep or you have the wrong person.

Anyway, when I had that cleaning that day in late December,
the dentist came in to look at my teeth.
They always make those ominous comments about
the teeth they are keeping an eye on. But then it was
time that he had to say something.
He had to make some kind
of remark to me about my teeth. I almost think he was
disappointed that he couldn't say that something was wrong
or needed to be fixed. So do you know what he said?
In this strange, hesitant way, he said,
"Well....it looks like you're holding your own."

Holding my own?

What am I? Some 102 year old woman
hoping to keep my last two teeth?
What kind of thing is that to say?
Holding my own?
He just couldn't say something nice.
"Good check up today, Bell."
"Keep up the good work, Bell."
No. No, he didn't say that.
And he even made what he did say sound worse
than it could have. You could say "you're holding your own"
with a smile on your face and positive tone and it might
sound like a good thing. Almost a compliment.
But no.
He made it sound like "I can't believe your teeth
haven't all fallen out of your head,
but they haven't...so carry on."

So here I am with my disappointing teeth.....holding my own.
What did he expect? I don't really have any plan for
restoring my teeth's youthful appearance. What can I do?
Try to make them look small like baby teeth again?
Make them run laps around my mouth?
I thought that the opposite of cavities and problems
was GOOD! It's supposed to be a pat on the back
when you've prevented the dentist from being able to
suck any more money out of your wallet.
I guess some dentists just can't be happy
with problem-free teeth.

And don't say it's just that dentist's way.
It's not. To hear Lloyd Dobbler tell it,
they celebrate when he comes through the door.
"Oh, Lloyd Dobbler," the dentist tells him when it's
time to comment on the teeth, "If everyone had teeth
like yours, I'd be out of business."
And then they give him a balloon
and a toy out of the prize drawer.
And what does the wife with the boring teeth get?
Sigh. Oh well.....she's just holding her own.

I didn't have anything of interest to tell you today.
(And how is that different from any other day?
I don't know. Humor me.
My dental hygiene has been called into question.)
I just wanted to let you know why I am doubting myself as I go get ready for bed. I'll be up there brushing my teeth and pondering this statement about my teeth.
I'll be up there holding my own.
It's the least I could do.

If everyone had a dentist like mine,
we'd all need a psychiatrist too.

Who was your teenage heart throb?

2011-01-05T15:19:00.002-07:00

Hello lovely Dear Reader. How are you today?
It's a gray, rainy day here at the homestead. They are
threatening us with snow, but I really think it's just a threat.
You know how excited I get about the stupid snow. I'm sure
my parents have full gas tanks though. The threat of snow
always sends them to the gas station. They are
good southerners, born and bred.

Speaking of my parents, I was with them today.
I went to their house and looked at the chaos. Have I told
you about their craziness? Oh my. There was flooding in
their kitchen and it has just been like someone took
the lid off of Pandora's tool box. It has become a major
ordeal. They have discovered a big problem underneath
the house---and I have to say, they are handling it
so well. They are just kind of shaking their heads and
getting it fixed. I mean, it has to be done. I think I would
be jumping around and kicking things and fuming if it
were me. So anyway, the fun part is
that there's going to be a new kitchen.
New cabinets and floor and all of that.
And there has been this dark, 1970's kitchen
there all this time. They are looking at white cabinets
and wood floor and a whole new shape to the kitchen
layout. I am so excited about it for them. My mom
will just be so pleased once it is finished and she deserves
a nice, new kitchen. She spends enough time there.
She never demands things for herself at all. So she needs
to do this right and enjoy it. And I am just excited
for them and for the finished product.

I feel like this week is just something suspended in air.
Remnants of The Big Stink of 2010 are haunting
us still and that's not very fun. We have started
school, but it hasn't been our normal school.
It's much more UNschooler activities.
Not at all the norm for us.
But it hasn't been a bad transition from our holiday revelry.
(Can't say that word without think of KOL
--you know how I love those boys)
Next week the whip will have to crack.

Lovely K read the first Elsie Dinsmore book last week
and really enjoyed it. A friend has #3-#28, so if we can find
the second book, then she is set for that whole series.
I love that she has become an avid reader. She sets her
alarm in the morning so she can read before the days starts.
She keeps her light on at night reading until we have
the LIGHTS OUT call. I am so glad that she is doing this.
I want to encourage it as much as possible.

I got Andrew Lang's The Blue Fairy book at the library
today. I've been formulating these lists of books I want
to read---'cause I have just so very much time to sit
around and read. But I want to! I wish I could.
And I want to make it more of a priority.
Have you read G.K. Chesterton? He's on the list.
And I think I need to get the George Macdonald books
that I want on audio. I've read a tiny smidge of him in the
past and I think that at this stage of my life, I would do
better having someone read his work to me while I'm
making a meal or cleaning or something.
No offense to you, long dead Mr. Macdonald.

I need to share two recipes with you that were new
to us this week. They both passed the test and that's
always a good thing. They are just basic comfort-food
types of dishes. I'll share them with you later.
I don't have time right now. I've got to get cracking
on tonight's supper---it's an old favorite:
Salsa Chicken and steamed broccoli.

Oprah is on right now. It's like teen heart throb reunion day
or something. The Backstreet Boys are on there. I am
surprised at how they look. One of them looks young
and cute still. A couple of them look really old.
Surprisingly old. And they were a hit with girls
younger than me. I think I was too old to be interested
in a boy band when they came out. Or else I just
didn't like them, I don't know. I don't really remember
what the situation was. I just wasn't a fan. But I am
surprised at how they look. Except that tall blond one.
He must have a frightening portrait of himself looking
old in his attic. Or else he was a toddler when they
made their first recording. Now it's Peter Frampton
and he looks like somebody you'd like to be neighbors with.
He doesn't look like a rocker. Or a former heart throb.
His voice is totally the same.
Good for him. I love his way.

Okay, let's get that supper cooking!

Get Your Motor Running.....

2011-01-03T09:56:00.007-07:00

What's up, Dear Reader?

It's the first Monday morning of this new year.

We are trying to get back into the academic saddle again this

morning. So far that has included a viewing of some Weird Al
videos---this is the kind of education you get from a
mother like me. I want them to know why I am singing
"Eat It" to them, where it came from, the meaning
of parody, the historical value of it
(which is approximately ZERO), etc. But we have moved on.
We have discussed changes in our routine and our approach
to some of our schooling. (At this point should I show them
the video for David Bowie's Changes? I think not. This
could go on forever---as I always told my friend Tiffany,
there's an appropriate song for every situation and if you
are with me, I'm going to sing it to you.)

I have to brag on
Baby J this morning
for being the
best baby ever.

We brought up the "fence"
this morning because not
only has the Ricky Nelson
come out in him
(making him a travelin' baby,
he's made a lot of stops all over the house...),
but he has begun to climb on things. The child
is not quite brave enough to let go of things and walk
on his own yet, but he will hike that leg up and climb
on anything that will give him a foothold. I have
never had a climber---or at least
not one who climbed on things
to the point of being a problem---so I hope that Baby J is not
going to carve out that niche for himself. I know he
wants to do things that he sees the big kids doing, and that's
why he will try stuff that the others wouldn't even have
thought of at his age. But I hope it's not going to make a
dare devil/crazy person out of him. We went through
that stage with"Sweet T where he was trying things
he was too young for
(and he's the "Cast Your Fate to the Wind"
type who doesn't worry about danger---I did not enjoy
that summer where we made several trips to the ER,
had a little cutie with constant scrapes and skins and busted
lips). Sometimes I think Baby J is going to be the more
cautious type, like Big E was (and is). But then Big E didn't
have big brothers on the scene teaching him to do stuff,
removing elements of danger, or catching him just before
he plunges into the depths.
We shall see.
But as for today, the child is sitting in his fenced in area
with a selection of toys, playing and being so sweet.
I almost forgot he was there.
Couldn't ask for a better baby.
What a joy he is.

Today is a gentle step into the academic realm. We aren't
doing all our subjects.
For Language Arts today, we are writing
paragraphs about our holidays and re-writing them until we
get them correct. I think that's a worthy investment of time.
For handwriting, we'll be cranking out
some thank you notes--
-and let's all cross our fingers that
the new and improved 2011 Bell will actually
mail the thank you notes that these children write. I am
so bad about having them write them, or me writing my own
thank you notes, and then they sit here on the counter
until it's three months later (or three years--I'm sorry to say
that is not an exaggeration in some cases) and then I just feel
bad and stupid for not sending them.

This week starts back other activities too.
Basketball. Piano. Dance. Cub Scouts.
And here I stand with no 2011 calender yet.
I looked for one at two places yesterday
and I could not bring myself to select either
the kitten or puppy option. And those were
the only two options.
I can't deal with a calender made for a
10 year old girl for twelve months.
No offense to 10 year old girls.
One of my favorite people in the world is a 10 year old girl.

And guess what kind of calender she has?

I either want one that reflects my personality
or a totally utilitarian one with no art work
--that's what I had last year. And we know
what a stink bomb last year proved to be.
Maybe it was because of my poor calendar selection.
I should get out and buy
a cute calendar immediately
before this year
goes down the toilet!

Well, Dear Reader, we both have more important things
to do with our newly resolved selves than to sit here
and listen to strange music selections.
So let us away!
And I'll see you again with more
mundane updates from my Ordinary Days.

Not So Silent Night

2011-01-01T17:29:00.003-07:00

Just thought I'd share some pictures
from our Christmas Eve.
We always have a good time.
And is it just me or are my kids getting cuter and cuter?

2011-01-01T07:13:00.003-07:00

The old year departed, how swiftly it flew,
'Tis gone, and with rapture
we welcome the new.
We trust a bright morning
will dawn on your eyes,
And sunbeams unclouded illumine the skies.
Then wake from your slumbers,
our serenade hear,
We wish you a happy, a happy New Year!

Out With the Old

2010-12-30T14:17:00.003-07:00

Greetings, Dear Reader.
I am sticking a big flag in the ground with this post--
one small step for bloggers, one giant step for Bell.
I am working from the lap top.
Me. The Bell. The one who does not embrace change
or progress in any way until I am forced. Remember
how I finally got a new cell phone when they sent me
a letter saying I was the only one in the area with that
old phone and they weren't going to support it anymore?
Remember how we finally got one of
them horseless carriages
when the old mule died?
Yes, that's me.
Always on the dull end (as opposed to the cutting edge)
of technology. But here I am, with the lap top in
my lap (how appropriate) and I actually think
I am going to like it.

I have someone else's children here today
and I have to keep a closer eye on the kids---'cause you know
how I just let mine run wild and free for days at a time.
But I've been sitting here on the couch while they
play the wii (the boys are playing the wii, the girls
are trying to play Monopoly).

Last night after my babes went to bed, I took down
the Christmas tree and all the deckings in our halls.
So this morning I continued my flurry of activity by
putting up the Christmas dishes. That doesn't sound like
such a big ordeal, but it kind of is. It always turns into
this "re-doing" of the cabinets in my "butler's pantry."
I also weeded out a pile of stuff that I am going to put
in the much needed Yard Sale. I did this with the
Christmas decor last night too. I made one of the tubs
the "going away" tub. The things that got put in there
didn't know that they failed selection. They think they
are getting packed up for a year like the rest of their
holiday comrades. How surprised they will be when they
see the light of day when Yard Sale day comes around.

The dishes that got removed from the cabinets and
set aside for the same fate, I think they might suspect
something. They know they haven't been in demand.
And they may have heard some mention of a Yard Sale.
I think I saw one of the snowman glasses shed a tear.

I also cleaned out some drawers this morning. It was kind
of that momentum thing, you know. I was scuttling things
around in the butler's pantry, and then I just thought
"Why don't I clean out this drawer while I am here?"
But don't get excited thinking you would look into those
drawers now and think
"some minimalist had their hand in here."
If you opened those drawers, you might think they could
use another cleaning out. But they look better than they did.

And so that is our relatively quiet, peaceful day here.
I hope that you are having a lovely day, Dear Reader.
I hope that your 2010 is wrapping up nicely.

2010-12-29T09:48:00.007-07:00

I mentioned to you once a long time ago
about a band that I was fascinated with.
They're a rock band. I don't want to say who
they are now. If you remember, that's fine.
Anyway....these four men formed a band that has met
with a great deal of success. They are known all over
the world. They are very talented.
And I am just fascinated with them.
Part of it has to be their back story.
They are preachers' sons, raised in very conservative
Christian homes. I can completely identify with their
early life. They remind me of guys I grew up with,
guys I dated, even my own two brothers.
I see things they do and it's like I understand it
---little things that are hard to even put in words,
but it's like I recognize something
in them from that childhood that I understand and
experienced myself. Even down to the choice of words they
use, the vocabulary in the lyrics they write.
I know where they are coming from.
But then the lives they have launched themselves into are
very different from the path I have been led down.
Obviously.
Part of my fascination, I think, is in trying to understand
how they got to where they are from where they started out.
I listen to interviews they give because I'm looking
for pieces to that puzzle.
One of them said one time he thought about
being a preacher at one point, and it's like when they
talk to these media people, they have to kind of make a joke
of all of that. But when he said that, I realized that he has
a voice. God has given him something to say.
He's been given a certain charisma.

(don't you know that Samuel and David and Moses all had to have
some element of charisma--and so did Samson and Absalom
--"it's in the way that you use it.")

And he is speaking, this song-writing rocker.
His voice is being heard.
I just don't think it's the message
he was meant to be putting out there.

They drink like fish.
You hardly ever see them where they aren't actually drinking
or else talking about it. And you know what?
I think they use that to "ease their consciences."
I think they know better. I think, at least some of them,
are trying to silence the voice of God that convicts them
and that is how they do it.
With alcohol.

I think about their mother.
I think about when these boys were children,
when she was a mother much like myself.
Very much like the life I lead right now.
I would love to talk to her. I would love to sit down
and ask her all these questions that I think of. It is a
very good thing to learn from the example of people who
do things right, but it is also good
to learn from those who would
have done things differently.
I would love to interview her.
But I am not saying that the mom did something wrong.
Every individual person makes their own choices.
Each person decides whether they will submit their will
and follow God or if they will pursue their own desires.
Parents have a great responsibility to train their children
in the right ways, but that doesn't
guarantee that your children
will all have hearts after God. I remember reading
something Ruth Bell Graham wrote in a time when she
was dealing with major rebellion in her own kids and how
judgmental other Christians were of her and her husband,
and how hard that was. In the words of a prayer
she said "Help them remember that You (God)
have rebellious children too."
Parents who like to pat themselves on the back for
doing a good job and raising good kids need to remember
that it's only by the grace of God that they are able to have
that end result. Their children could have gone the other way.
They need to remember that it is God who works
things together for the good.

I look at my four babies and the lives stretching out
before them. I have no idea what God's plan is for them.
I would love to see my son as a Jim Elliott or Nate Saint.
I would love for my daughter to be the next
Susannah Wesley or Ruth Bell Graham.
I would love to raise a Billy Graham.
But what if God's plan is for my son to live a very small,
quiet life of faithfulness and duty?
What if God's plan for their life is poverty
or struggle or martyrdom?
That's just as good--if it's God's plan.
And what if my kids are hard-hearted?
What if they turn their back on God?
What if they want to take a walk on the wild-side?
Do I give up and wonder where I went wrong?
Do I believe that God can reach them wherever they are?

I contacted the father of the men in this band I was
talking about. I told him that I pray for his sons.
And I do.
I pray for these guys like I pray for my own friends
and brothers. I pray that God will protect them, will give
them good judgment and wisdom, that He will make them
miserable in their sin, that He will remind them of the verses
of Scripture they heard and learned in their youth.
I pray that God will work in their hearts.
I pray that God will put other Christians in their path.
I pray that the wickedness around them will not prevail.
I pray for them a lot.
I feel compelled to do so.
And do you know what their dad said?
He said that he was just clinging to the verse that says
if you train up your children in the way they should go,
when they are old they will not depart from it.
He is loving them and just waiting in faith and hope
for their hearts to be turned back to The Way.
That has just brought such encouragement to
my heart. I have this mental picture of the prodigal
son story, where when the boy finally starts for home
in humility and desperation, the father sees him "a far off."
The father sees him because he is watching for him, waiting
for him, wanting him to return. This is a picture of God's
love for us, and how beautiful it is to me to know that these
boys that have become a burden in my heart, that they have
an earthly father who is waiting for that same thing in them.
That return.

So I am going to continue to pray.
For all of our sons.
For Nathan and Caleb and Matthew and Jared.
And for Big E and Sweet T and Baby J.

Best Post Since Sliced Bread

2010-12-28T18:27:00.003-07:00

In our quest to log as many medical hours as we can
before the end of 2010, everyone in our family
with more than 8 teeth
went to the dentist today.
Poor Big E has a broken tooth
(we didn't know about this)
and it is getting repaired on Friday
(more ways to log more medical hours!).
Big E has never had anything done besides a cleaning
at the dentist. Actually, Big E hasn't had anything medical
done since he's old enough to remember
(he had to have his tear ducts "unclogged" twice
--around 15 and 18 months). So let's hope
The Child Most Likely To Spazz Out
doesn't live up to that title on Friday.
And I would never use that title in front of him.
This is just you and I talking, Dear Reader.

Oh, I forgot to tell you something.
I got a laptop for Christmas. Wasn't that the nicest
surprise for Lloyd Dobbler to spring on me?
But the best laid plans of mice and men (and my husband)
often go astray. He wanted everything loaded on
the thing so that on Christmas morning when I turned
it on, it was all there, ready to go.
Well...once more read the sentence above
that contains the word "mice."
He spent a great deal of time on the phone with
every person in India. A technician came to our house
yesterday and then again today. Even as I am typing now,
he is down in the basement trying to get it all worked out.
Bless his little heart.
I bet he's wishing now he'd just
bought me a bottle of perfume.
I am excited about the new computer though.
And you can get excited at the thought of
hearing from me MUCH MORE.
So it's a gift for me and you too.
(Did you just roll your eyes?)

I am enjoying this week of nothing-ness.
I'm supposed to be working on school...and hopefully
tomorrow I will be able to do that
(said the graduate of the Scarlett O'Hara School of Philosophy).
I have enjoyed a break. While my MIL was here,
I got a pile of stuff cleaned out of Baby J's room.
I thought of my minimizing friend as I was cleaning
stuff out of his black hole of a closet.
Got rid of so much.
But I am able to do that now, now that I know
each stage of babyhood is over for us
as Baby J grows out of it.
I don't think there's anything on the docket tomorrow.
And I am getting into that planning,
decision-making, organizing state of mind.
So hopefully tomorrow will be profitable.

Right now I think I will go downstairs
and devour a piece of this bread I just baked.
It smells so good.
I found my old fool-proof recipe for white bread
that is so easy and so good.

Want a piece?

Christmas Review

2010-12-27T20:06:00.003-07:00

Greetings, Dear Holiday Reader.
How are you and your merry little Christmas
getting along? I hope you had a lovely day
and that everything went the way you hoped it would go.

Christmas means different things to different people.
I have friends who, though devoted Christians, make a point
to tell everyone that they celebrate Christmas
as a secular holiday
(because we don't know exactly when Jesus Christ
was born, we aren't specifically instructed to
celebrate His birthday, etc.).
I understand what they are saying, but I don't follow
along that path. I have always attended churches that
celebrated the birth of Christ and I see no harm in specifying
a day to focus on that celebration.
It is strange to me to look around our culture
and see what 2010 Americans make of Christmas.
It's mainly a big sales event.
Most Americans celebrate materialism
more than anything else
(and this is hardly different from the rest of the year).

What I love the most are the traditions we have in
our family, the time of togetherness, the joy and anticipation
of gift giving and meals shared and special efforts made.
I love Christmas Eve bingo with my side of the family
and I love Christmas morning with just my little family
here at our home. I love the foods my mother
has made all my life (dressing and giblet gravy,
cheese ball, chex mix, her version of common foods
everyone eats---there's just no cookin' like your own
mother's cookin', is there?
Unless your mom was a stinker of a cook.).
It's weird to me that my dad asks my children to read
the Luke 2 Christmas story now; he did that for the
first thirty-something years of my life. We don't get
to play games as much as we did when we didn't have
small children. We have to get them home to bed
sometimes and sometimes there's just too much going on
with the kids for us to get into a Scrabble marathon
like we used to. My family is teaching my two older
children how to play Rook.
Another generation playing Rook
---will this cycle never end?

We had a very nice, peaceful, happy Christmas.
It was a white Christmas which thrilled all the snow lovers.
And in the spirit of the season, I didn't frown about the snow.
My kids had more sugar and less sleep than normal,
so we've not had a quiet moment for days.
But I have four healthy, happy (most of the time),
beautiful children who were
right here at my side for Christmas.
No one was sick.
No one was troubled.
No one was missing.
Nothing was wrong.
It was lovely and beautiful and I should never do anything
but give thanks to God who has blessed me ridiculously.
I am a spoiled rotten child of God
and I thank Him and praise Him for this.
It's all grace, I assure you.
I am up to my chin in grace.
And loving every minute of it.

Chocolate Covered Martha

2010-12-23T09:23:00.006-07:00

If you've seen many of my ordinary days,
you might recall that I have gone a round or two
with our dear friend, Ms. Martha Stewart.
She puts out these recipes for all the world to see
....and some of them are good, granted.
But sometimes you make what seems like it ought to be
a decent meal...you follow the recipe
to the T....and what do you get?

Heartaches!

And if you think the main dish looked bad in the pot,
you should have seen it on the plate,
with the equally disappointing (and I might add disgusting)
tomato side dish that was brought to us by you-know-who.

And yet, what do I do?
I go back for more.
Not more of that pork chop/cabbage/tomato mess.
But more recipes from the old jailbird herself.

This morning I am making some
pecan sandies to the tune of
Martha Stewart and I have to say that Martha is back
on the nice list. One less chunk of coal
to have delivered by Christmas morning!
These cookies are so good.
Melt-in-your-mouth good.
Oh man, they are good.
(They are fresh out of the oven right now and I've had three.)
For some reason it bothered me when assembling
the cookies that there was no egg. Aren't there always
eggs in cookies that you bake? I pondered this,
and then when I remembered that I didn't have my own
TV show nor was I known for being The Domestic Diva,
well, then I decided to go by her recipe.
And I am glad I did.
Did I mention the cookies are GOOD?

Perhaps I should point out that this is something I can add
to the short list of desserts I like that
do not contain chocolate.
What is dessert without chocolate?
Someone else's dessert---not mine, hopefully.
It seems like I've had this discussion lately with
various people. One person told me their favorite cake
was white cake. White cake? White cake doesn't have
a flavor. It's like the white crayon. Or unlined paper.
How can white cake be your favorite?
Unless it's covered in some amazing chocolate frosting....

If you are the president of
White Cake Lovers International,
please do not made a voodoo doll of me and feed
white cake to it. These are my opinions.
They are the only ones I have.
Most of them change from time to time or grow in strength.
I don't see that happening on the white cake issue.
But you can proclaim your undying love for white cake
on your blog and I will come over there
and read it and roll my eyes.

It looks like one of my procrastinating students
will have a Christmas after all.
This particular student didn't believe me (evidently)
when I told him/her that he/she would be doing Math
on Christmas Eve if necessary but would NOT be having
vacation from school until he/she reached a certain point
in their book. All of this child's time was spent on Math
yesterday (I should clarify that this was only the time
when I was home with this child AND I must point out
that if half of the daydreaming time had been spent
actually DOING the Math, well, this student would
have a good jump start on next semester's Math
instead of finishing up this semesters assignments!).
But motivation seems to have kicked in this morning
and the sluggard is doing Math like a Biblical ant
this morning. He/she is taking a test right now
and when that is graded and corrected, he/she will be done.

I just took the last of the pecan sandies out of the oven
and do you know what I was thinking?
They would be good dipped in melted chocolate!

I love Jimmy Stewart!

2010-12-22T12:52:00.004-07:00

I didn't even know they did this
---but in The Big City nearest me,
they are showing It's A Wonderful Life
on the big screen in some theatres.
I didn't know anybody did this.
And does that not sound like
the most romantic thing to do?
If I was dating somebody
(and not, you know, married
and the mother of four children)
I would so be going to see George Bailey's life story
at the movies with the current love of my life.
When I heard this on the radio today,
Lovely K said, "What? Why did you make that noise?
Did they something about babies in the news?"

Do I make noises
when I hear things about babies in the news?

It's the FINAL COUNTDOWN!

2010-12-22T12:13:00.009-07:00

Greetings,
Dear Reader,
on this Christmas week.
It's Tuesday.
How are you doing?
Are you the type who
is out shopping or have
you hunkered down
for the rest of the week
with just your animals
and a supply of water
and chestnuts?

Or do you have 42 children
under the age of 8 living there
in your shoe with you and you
don't know what to do with this time?
I hope you are enjoying the days.
There is beauty and love all around you.
And I left a sandwich for you in the fridge.

We raced out the door
this morning to go to
the orthodontist ...because
what could possibly make
my daughter
merrier or brighter
than a holiday trip
to the people who can

always
(ALWAYS, without fail)
cause her to gag?

So we did that and now I know why I always schedule our appointments after lunch...and why I don't usually take three small boys. We waited over an hour and a half and my boys were bored. Big E and Sweet T were sort of entertained by the Christmas movie on the always muted television in the office. Baby J was good for about twenty minutes sitting on my lap, and that was his limit. It was nap time and he was bored with nothing to do. I let him down and he spread cuteness all around to the other people. It's funny, the things I never would have let my first child or two do. Crawl around a public place? No way. But now here I am, doing that very thing, and not even hosing the child down in Lysol.

Last night after everyone else was in bed, I went down to the basement and had the best time going through FIVE boxes of books that a lovely lovely friend brought to me. It was like my Christmas. I love books and there was some great books in these boxes. Great read-a-louds for the kids and some just for me. It was so cool. Thanks, Friend! I will take the ones I want and pass the other along to other book lovers.

Okay, people---here's the deal:
It's December 22nd.
Things are piling up.
We are running
out of time.
I have not wrapped the first present!
Nor the second.
Nor the twenty-third.
I have got to make
that my top priority tonight.
M.I.T. Absolutely.
I don't want to be pulling an all nighter
on Christmas Eve or handing my friends
gifts in Walmart bags. I used to
love to wrap presents--and make them cute.
Now it's like cover that thing in
paper and put a name on it. We'll have
bows again when no one in the family
wants to chew on the bows, okay?
I think I will like it again
when my life is in a different place.

Beautiful Boy

2010-12-21T08:47:00.012-07:00

Let's take a little walk
down Recent Memory Lane.
There are many things
about the past twelve months
I would like to blot
from the pages of our
life story,
but there is a bright
and shining story
that is the absolute

best part of this past year.

It started exactly a year ago.
On Sunday, December 20th, 2009,
this was our family:

We were about to walk out the door
(some walked, some waddled, you guess who did what)
to church. Do I look stressed? Ragged?
I was on bed rest at this point,
but I was determined to go to church that morning.
I slowly got ready that morning, taking rests every
20 seconds, and finally got to the point you see in the
photo above. My favorite black dress for late in pregnancy
and a pony tail. I frankly didn't care what I looked like
at that point. I'd been through the mill.
I was ready to get the show on the road.
I went to church, made it through Sunday school.
Lloyd Dobbler had brought the blood pressure thing-y
(please try to keep up with the
complicated medical terminology I use)
so during the song service at the beginning of church,
he checked my blood pressure. It was ridiculously high

and I had to leave and go home.
And lay down.

That Sunday night, we went to the hospital in order
to get a jump start on things the next morning.
This was all carefully orchestrated by my doctor.
He was very considerate. He wanted to make things as good
as possible for us. If Baby J had been born on
Sunday (the 20th) he would have been "premature"
and we would have had to be sent
to a hospital in The Big City
and there would have been hoops to jump through
(did I look like I could jump through a hoop?)
and all of that. So I had to sit with my legs crossed
until Monday (the 21st).

And then on Monday,
December 21, 2009
we got our beautiful Baby J.

What a precious Christmas gift for me!

And then the fun began!

He has been such a good baby.
Just a constant source of joy and love to our whole family.
What a blessing our dear Baby J is!
What a lovely gift from God!

And this is our family now:

We are so blessed.

Whatever the Weather, We'll Weather the Weather, Whether We Like It Or Not

2010-12-17T06:49:00.007-07:00

My Daddy used to say that little phrase that is the title of today's bullet-riddled post. He also has some sentence about a fox that uses every letter in the alphabet. I love my father.
Are you simply having a wonderful Christmastime already, Dear Reader? I must admit, I am getting into the festive spirit myself. I think it's because school is winding down and things are getting checked off my list. Yesterday I got us registered for next semester of our home school co-op. Check. I am almost totally done with the shopping and I WILL finish that Saturday morning. Anticipatory check. Arrangements are made for Baby J's first birthday celebration. Check. I'm making progress.
If you don't like the weather where you are, you might want to try the roller coaster weather here in Tennessee. Wednesday night we had sleet and ice when I went to bed. When I opened my front door yesterday, it was 55° and breezy like an early spring day. There is no mystery why anyone has a headache here. It's like sinus whip lash.
Ever since that week that Lloyd Dobbler was out of town, I have not been good in the mornings. I have slept in until I had to get up, and this just gets us off on the wrong foot for the rest of the day. But maybe these leisurely mornings are the reason I am getting more into the spirit of the holiday season. You know how people will use that phrase "You have to get up pretty early in the morning to fool John Smith"? Well, you've got a good shot at fooling me without having to get up at the crack of dawn. You could probably sleep until 8am. (I'm so accommodating.)
Last night I made a cookie a haven't made in several years (actually, I made a whole batch, not just the one cookie). It's the easiest cookie in the world--I was thinking this last night as I was making it. It should be called "Retarded Cookies" or "Rainman Cookies" ('cause Rainman could make them, they're that easy). But they are so good. And there's the variety factor. You can change their flavor by the pudding you put in them. I made them Triple Chocolate by using chocolate pudding, chocolate chips, and frosting them with chocolate icing. Lloyd Dobbler's mom used to make these when we were first married and when I finally got the recipe for them, I was almost disappointed that they were "Cookies for Dummies." I don't know why I stopped making them for a while. They are yummy. And now I have a bunch of them in my kitchen. I might as well give up any thought of losing weight until January....not that I was spending a lot of time thinking about that.
We are going caroling today at an assisted living facility. Sweet T (who is normally cute but first thing in the morning, with his sleepy voice and his bed head, his cuteness grows exponentially) kept asking me when we were going "husbanding." I got him to repeat it several times before I figured out what he was talking about. How he got "husbanding" from "caroling," I will never know.
I'll tell you what makes Fridays more enjoyable to me: ever since I instituted the Movie and Pizza Night on Fridays, supper is already decided. Occasionally I will make the pizzas, like we did last week. But usually we order it. Papa John has become a good friend of mine. But already this morning I have thought "It's Friday! I don't have to cook supper!" And little Christmas elves danced across the screen inside my head.
We're already joking that two of my caroling friends today will be singing a duet and I have selected Handel's Messiah for them. Actually I thought about making a joke song sheet (and I may have to make one copy of these to show my friends when they first arrive, just to see their reaction) and have it full of songs like "Last Christmas" or "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer" or what? What other songs would not be the best choice for caroling to the elderly? It's just making me laugh--the mental picture of our little group of people and to picture us singing "Now I know what a fool I've been, but if you kissed me now I know you'd fool me again. Last Christmas I gave you my heart...."
I hope you have a lovely weekend, my Dear Reader.

Merry Christmas from The Braggers

2010-12-15T13:47:00.007-07:00

Greetings, Dear Reader.
You will be glad to know that I have shed that nasty
headache from yesterday. I have lowered the Crab Flag
--at least I thought I had.
Several times today Lloyd Dobbler has said to me,
"What's the matter?"
when I was just going about my business.
And don't you love to be asked that
when you don't think anything is the matter?
That's what you ask somebody when they
have red puffy eyes or they are out somewhere in public
with a newspaper wrapped around their body.
It makes you think:
What? What am I doing?
What am I acting like?

It's enough to make you want to
run the Crab Flag up the pole again.

Maybe it's this outfit I am wearing today.
It's sweatpants and the matching zip front hoodie.
And they are green.
Like a light, pleasant green.
Kind of like the crayon that would just say "green."
Lloyd Dobbler has expressed to me in the past
that he hoped I would never wear sweats
in public on purpose.
And remember how George Costanza dressed
when he had just totally given up on life?
He wore sweats.
Don't get me wrong. I haven't given up on life over here.
I just knew that I wasn't going anywhere today all day
so I put on a comfy outfit this morning. I meant to wear
the matching little Christmas shirt underneath that makes
the outfit cuter, but it wasn't around when I was
getting dressed in the cold dark this morning.

I have to go register for our home school co-op tomorrow.
We always used to register in January,
right before classes began.
I don't know whose idea it was to move this up. And this is
another thing that I thought I had looming out in
the future until I actually read what was
written on my calendar for this week.
I kept thinking "when we register for classes..."
like it was this distant thing. No, it's tomorrow, Bell.
Would somebody come over her and hit me over the head
with their Franklin planner? I also wondered why
the people I am supposed to go caroling with were pestering
me for details of our caroling activity. I mean, we aren't
doing that until the 17th, people!
Oh...yeah...that's the day after tomorrow.
I think I do need to be hit over the head with something.

I ordered more Christmas cards a few minutes ago.
And now I am wishing I had ordered these all along.
I got a good deal on my first ones, but they are just
boring cards, one picture of the whole fam
(and not the best picture, but it's us).
The ones I made today are a collage so you
see multiple cute shots of the babes.
I think the collage cards have more personality.

So 50 people will get the original Christmas card,
the single picture and the pre-printed message.
And then 25 people will get the new and improved
Christmas card with the photo collage.
I just hope that the people who might visit each other
or mention something about the card
all get the same one. We don't want any fights
breaking out over people thinking they rank higher or
lower on my prestigious Christmas card list.
("Did you see the odd picture Bell put on her card this year?"
"Which picture? There were six different pictures on my card."
"Mine was just one picture.")
Would you be offended if you got the one picture
card instead of the collage?
Is that an insult? It's not meant to be.
I wish I had the collage for everyone, but I've got
fifty copies of the original card addressed and ready to go.
I'm not wasting them or doing them over.

I like the collage cards--it makes you feel like you can
put a tiny bit of creativity into it. That's what we did
one year. Was it last year? I can't remember what
we did last year. I still have about 20 of them somewhere
around here (last year's cards) because I ordered them late
and I ended up going into the hospital to deliver a baby
so delivering Christmas cards seemed less important
at the time. And when I got home on Christmas Eve
with my brand new Baby J,
the last thing I cared about was who got
a Christmas card and who didn't.

Do you send out a Christmas letter?
And if you do, do you brag in an outrageous manner
about each member of your family?
Every time I read one of those, I just wish
somebody was standing there beside me to hear
my wise cracks. I hate for my sarcastic comments
to go to waste. And nothing brings out the smart remarks
(other than going to a church where Paul McCartney is a deacon)
as much as those certain types of Christmas letters.
You know the ones I mean.

"Our two year old daughter Heloise was accepted
into Harvard but we really feel like we should keep her
home a bit longer. She so enjoys practicing her dulcimer here
at home when we aren't in the Brazilian jungles handing out
hand-copied versions of the Bible in a little known dialect
that just happens to be our family's love language
--which we discovered on our way home from high tea
with the Queen of England."

I mean, nobody writes that their ten year old son
still wets the bed and that they're going to have hemorrhoid
surgery after the first of the year.

"The entire family got food poisoning at Thanksgiving;
you know what a terrible cook Peggy is. The only person
who didn't end up in the E.R. was Uncle Timmy
and that was just because he was locked up
for writing bad checks."

Nobody writes those letters.
It's all the bragging and lists of accomplishments.
One of my uncles writes a very amusing letter.
He has done this for many years. He reviews the past year
with colorful commentary. I enjoy his letter.
And I enjoy the braggy letters from the Braggingtons.
Just for different reasons.

If you are somebody who feels like you should be
getting a card from me and you never have,
maybe you better send ol' Bell your address.
And FYI--you will be getting the
new and improved Christmas collage
if I send you one at this point.
Just don't tell anybody. Okay?

The Crab Flag

2010-12-14T08:22:00.006-07:00

My December calender is getting marked up viciously.
Never mind that I booked us to do school until the 23rd
(don't you wish I was your teacher?).
I now have to mix in other stuff.
It seems like we have about 72 appointments
with the medical community between now and the
end of the year. And guess what your hair-brained Bell
has been doing? While I knew that today was the 14th,
when I looked at the calender as a whole, I was seeing
this as the second week in December, thinking we had
another full week before the week that ends in Christmas.
But no. We're in the third week.
This was pointed out to me by my dear Lloyd Dobbler earlier.
Sometimes he looks at me like he wonders how I make it
through the days. I do have moments where one might think
I should be institutionalized.
But it hasn't happened yet!

We are all going to the dentist again--that's 5 appointments.
Lovely K is going to the orthodontist. We have Baby J's
one year check up--when I called to make
that appointment, the receptionist said
"That baby cannot be a year old already!"
Tell me about it, lady.
I am also going back to my OB/GYN, which is a topic
I am sure you want me to talk about at length on here
--especially if you are male.
But I am hoping he'll find a switch on me that they
forgot to flip, something to make everything
go back to normal. I just kind of feel
like something is out of balance.
I know it's been a hard year and stress can do stuff to you
and then having a baby at well, let's just say
mid to late thirties,
that's not the first step on the road that leads to
the fountain of youth. It's more like that machine that
they put Wesley on in The Princess Bride, the one that
literally sucks the life out of you. So there has been
this chunk of time that has been
hurdle after hurdle after hurdle
--and coming back around to the year mark on some
of the things that happened to us has not been fun.
It seems like everything is a reminder.
"This time last year...."
Yeah, let's not even think about "this time last year"
or any of that. It just kind of makes me nauseated.

So let me just vent here for a moment
since I am headed into the direction
of crabbiness anyway.
I didn't sleep well last night. Something kept me tossing
and turning and I didn't know what it was until I woke up
this morning. As soon as I woke up, I knew exactly
what it was: a nice holiday headache.
A nice, juicy, twelve pound headache.
With brown sugar glaze.
I have just wanted to kick everything
since the second I woke up. (Where are my steel toed boots?)
So I am a real pleasure to be with today.
And now I've got to load up all the babes in this
single digit temperature with ________
(insert your own choice word, don't hold back, and say it in all caps)
snow all over the ground and go all over Tiny Town
this afternoon. But you know what?
I am so very thankful that this is not a migraine.
When I get a migraine, it's bad.
I mean, it requires another adult to be present.
I can't be the one in charge of my kids.
I don't understand how people can walk around and do stuff
when they are having a migraine. I don't have that option.
The ones I have (and thank the Lord that they are few
and far between) put me out of commission.
Not by my choice.
So I am very thankful for that.
Perhaps I should just swallow all my crabby crabbiness
and put on a happy face
and just get through this day.

I have taken Excedrin.
I just ate a Reeses' peanut butter cup---
'cause I'm all into the holistic treatments like that.
If things don't improve, I'll be swinging into the Sonic
(in the stupid SNOW)
for 44 ounces of Sundrop.
So not only do I have a headache today,
but I will gain 9 pounds.

Have a lovely day, Dear Reader. Stay warm.
And if you are having a lovely day,
stay away from me.
I'm your faithful, crabby Bell...
letting my crab flag fly.

Let's Call the Whole Thing Off

2010-12-13T16:24:00.003-07:00

I don't usually give my kids a snow day
when the local schools around here call for them.
Do you know how much snow we would have to get
to keep us from making it to the closet in the guest room
(where the school stuff is kept)?
So we really are never unable to have school
because of snow. But I called a snow day today
and it has been so nice. It's days like this that make me
realize how much schooling eats up of my day and my energy.
I just did laundry and made meals and cleaned up a little
and took care of the kids today. The only thing missing
from me being that stereotypical housewife was
the bon-bons and the soap operas.
And the optional fuzzy robe.

It was so nice to have this peaceful day.
Saturday I was busy getting ready for our little
annual pot luck Christmas party. Two couples who
usually come were not able to come this year and three
couples who have never come before came. I made
two big pots of soup and a butter pecan cake
and gingerbread men.
Everybody is supposed to bring something
(hence the "pot luck").
We had a good time. I had put in the DVD from
the 80's Trivial Pursuit game and had it on that "party mode"
where it just randomly does questions and answers
(while you party). That was fun because of the group
we had there, we were all probably much more in
touch with thing sin the 80's than we are now.
Then we played this DVD version of Name That Tune
that somebody brought. It would have been more fun
if they'd had songs that were actually, you know,
known to the general public.
And it's not like we had a group who never listened to music.
The group Wa Wa Nee kept coming up and no one
had ever heard of them. If I had been Oprah, I would
have sent everyone of my guests home with a copy
of Wa Wa Nee's greatest hits.
But I am not Oprah.
I don't know if I ever told you that or not.
And I don't think Wa Wa Nee had any great hits.

Sunday our pastor and his wife came over after
church for party left overs. It started snowing then.
After they left, I made Sweet T lay down and take
a nap. I had to lay down with him to make sure he wasn't
playing with cars in his bed...as he did for the first half hour
he was laying down. So I got a little snooze in there
and I needed it after being up late Saturday night.
When I woke, Lloyd Dobbler was telling me that church
was canceled because of the snow. So we had the night
to just snug in and be cozy. We ate supper and watched
AFV together---I don't know why I always love
that show, although less and less as it progresses.
Tom whoever that hosts it now always has to say
semi-tacky things. Then Lloyd Dobbler and the kids
came upstairs to watch something from Netflix and
I had the downstairs to myself (well, Baby J was there for a little while).
It was so odd, but so nice. It was kind of like being
home alone. I got to pick what I wanted to watch on
TV and watch it while I cleaned up the kitchen.
Then I just vegged out. I started watching a movie
as everyone else was turning in for the night.
I did not realize that this movie went until midnight
--but I was already invested in it
and had to see how it ended.
And then when I came to bed, I couldn't go to sleep.
Could it have been that caffeinated drink I was
sipping while watching the movie?
Could that late hour of finally falling asleep have anything to do
with my calling off the school day today?
You draw your own conclusions.

Someone's In the Kitchen with Dinah

2010-12-10T21:22:00.007-07:00

I wish someone had been in the kitchen with me tonight.
That way maybe that someone would have said,
"Hey Bell, when you put the cake in the oven,
why did you turn the oven off?"
Then I wouldn't have discovered it
40 minutes later.

You know what? I would like to ask myself
that question right now:
Bell, why in the wide wide world of sports
did you turn off the dad-burn oven!?!?!

Instead of slipping into my jammies right about now
and hitting the old hay sack,
I am waiting for this blasted cake
to bake so I can cook up the buttery syrup to pour over it
when it is done. So I might as well just take a shower
after that and begin my Saturday because it is going
to be LATE and I have about 1,734 things
to do tomorrow.

Take a deep breath, Bell.
Everybody does dumb things sometimes.

In other news:

I took the whole entire school here (at Bell's Academy)
to see The Nutcracker today in the next Tiny Town over.
I had this activity on our calendar for over a month,
but it was yesterday, the day before the activity,
that I realized that I never called and reserved our seats.
So I called and, of course, they were full to overflowing.
So they put me on the waiting list, which seemed odd to me.
What are they going to do with the waiting list?
Start calling people just as the curtain is going up
to see if they want to sprint to the theater in their bathrobe
and fill the three freshly vacated seats?
I don't think so.
So this morning I called the little person there and told her
that I was on the waiting list and I was going to come
down there....so that if they realized that not every one who
reserved seats showed up, they could then let us have those
seats. It was an odd conversation and I don't know why
I bothered to call first. I should have just gone down
there. The woman proceeded to tell me that there
were 17 people ahead of me on the waiting list for
the 12:15 show today. I told her that was okay,
I wouldn't pitch a fit if we didn't get in, but if we didn't
come down there, we didn't actually have a chance
of seeing it. But, she continued, those 17 other people
have preference over me. I asked her if at show time
she realized they had empty seats and me and my three
babes were standing there, was she going to call the
17 people ahead of me on the waiting list or just let me
have the seats if I was there and the other 17 were not.
She just continued to say that she didn't
know what they would do. For some
reason, it all seemed too complicated to the little lady
on the phone. But we went down there, there were
available seats, and we took them.

Lovely K has been to several presentations
of The Nutcracker. She seemed into it today a little
more and I think that's because she has started with
the dance classes. I can't tell how "into" dancing she is.
She enjoys the classes. Her teacher says
she is doing fine. But she doesn't
carry on about it. She rarely talks about it.

Big E is an eight year old boy.
He suffered through it (a ballet)
like a trooper---he's done it before. I guess he knows
that what doesn't kill him will make him stronger.
So he's one ballet stronger.

Sweet T had not seen The Nutcracker before
and he was not familiar with the story like Big E and
Lovely K are. But what perplexed him is why the people
on stage weren't talking. He asked this several times.
"It's not a play, Sweet T," I told him, "It's a ballet."
He thought they could talk while they were dancing.
The thing about The Nutcracker is that just as
a little boy gets bored, mice with swords show up
and he's suddenly interested again.

I do have to tell you about the stinkers in the dance troupe.
There were these couple of girls in the ballet
who needed to be somewhere else today.
At one point, I think it was during The Waltz of the Flowers,
they all come bounding in from both sides of the stage
and two of them just busted into each other.
Like they were surprised to find
other dancers on stage with them. And instead of
acting like it didn't happen and quickly getting back into
the groove of the jigginess, one of them actually said
out loud for all the world to hear, "Oh, I'm sorry!"
And then she had a little giggling fit.
I'm sure this happens with professional dancers all the time.

After the play, we bought groceries
and I got trapped in that time warp that sometimes
happens in the grocery store. Tell me this has
happened to you. You don't mean to be in there
forever, but it just seems like some days
it is so much more challenging.
It's like trying to get through the fire swamp
with your true love. There were obstacles of
every kind today. It seemed like the employees were
just trying to block you or get in your way and
mop the floor in front of you so you had
to just stand there. There was an extra measure of
old ladies thrown into the mix today also.
Not crabby old ladies that you just want to kick,
but sweetie pie old ladies who talk to you
about decaffeinated tea
and you have to talk back to them
because they are sweetie pies.
And then you don't know how long you are supposed to
stand there beside them before you can just move on
over to the beans. My children, for some reason, had to
each ask me five questions a minute, every minute of this
whole entire day today. I don't know what prompted
that, but I was really looking for the MUTE button
by the end of this day.

I made pizzas when we got home.
We usually order pizza on Friday nights,
but I was there at the store and since I had to go
up and down every aisle six times, I had time to
think about getting the stuff there to make my own pizzas.
It's a lot cheaper and I'm all about that right now.
After supper, the kids and Lloyd Dobbler watched
the movie I got them (Planet 51); they seemed to
enjoy it. While they did that, I made gingerbread men.
About 100 of them.
Right after I finished baking all those cookies, I began to
mess up the dang cake I mentioned before. It wasn't
enough that I forgot to sprinkle the nuts on the bottom
of the bunt pan before I poured the batter in--so now it's
not going to look pretty like usual, but then I had to slide it
into the oven and turn the oven off like some
kind of culinary fool.
Oh well. It's done now.

It'll all work out okay.
I have seven couples coming over
for dinner tomorrow night.
No need to get stressed now.

There's the timer going off.
I can go finish with the cake.
Then I only have to wait 30 more minutes until I can be
done with it and go to bed.
Remember when Aunt Bea from The Andy Griffith Show
said that it's the hours of sleep before midnight
that really count?
Well, who cares what Aunt Bea said.
Nobody ever wanted to be Aunt Bea.
I wanted to be Laura Petry.
Give me a pair of black capri pants
and a husband who dances
and I almost am.

Happiness is....

2010-12-09T14:58:00.002-07:00

It seems that I have read several things lately
that use this phrase "Happiness is....."
And then they say what happiness is.
They are not saying that happiness is several periods in a row
(AKA "dot, dot, dot"). There have been different things,
from happiness being a minimalistic kitchen drawer
to a friendly dog in your lap.
Happiness is many things to many people.
Many different things.

I was just thinking about that,
and feeling very happy and content
on this cold, gray December day.
So I thought I'd share some of the ways I can end
that sentence and tell you of the things that
create happiness for me.

Happiness is...

...the laughter of your children drifting in from another room.

...soup bubbling on the stove as a frigid wind blows against the house.

...sitting quietly with your son while you both read and enjoy each other's company.

...a napping baby, snuggled in his bed with all his "babies."

...talking to an old friend who knows you inside out.

...hiding surprises in anticipation of Christmas morning.

...knowing your husband will be home after a week's absence.

...a bowl of homemade Chex Mix made and delivered by your mother.

...completed Math lessons on the kitchen counter.

...a basket full of wooden blocks just waiting for a playmate.

...soft music playing in the background of a warm, quiet place you call home.

I am so very thankful for all the blessings
that the Lord has lavished on me.

Black 15 Passenger Van Sessions

2010-12-09T11:32:00.004-07:00

Okay...so I was on the phone for a couple of hours
with a childhood friend today. Not the most productive
way to spend my morning, but it was the right thing
to do today. Sometimes it's more important to be a
friend to someone in their time of distress that to stick
to the schedule and mark things off the list.
I never want to lose that perspective.

Fortunately my lovely children were really good
and did their school work (all that they could do without me)
and behaved themselves rather well.
They did eat a bag of Fritos, but I'm not going
to complain about that. They are good kids.
I don't recognize that often enough, but it's true.
I am always worried about every little thing that I see
wrong in them and I think I need to celebrate the big things
that I see right in them more often.
That is a perspective I need to work on having.

Okay, remember me warning you about this earlier
--we are re-visiting a place we used to go together,
you and I, Dear Reader, a while back.
I had forgotten about this until I stumbled across it
the other day---it's our old friend the Auto Crooner,
Mr. Explorer Sessions himself.
And things have changed.
I do believe our friend has turned Amish.
Or maybe he's in the middle of turning Amish,
the first thing to turn being his face, his bearded Amish face.
So enjoy this song, Dear Reader, with our old friend,
because the next time it might not be so easy for him
to mount his camera on the front of the buggy and
it might be more difficult to hear his voice over
the clopping of the horses' hooves.
(TURN OFF THE CHRISTMAS MUSIC NOW)

What think you?
Has our friend gotten better or worse?
More or less scary?
A greater danger on the road?
I don't know about that---because I am always singing
when behind the wheel like I'm on stage at the sold-out
world tour of Bell's Greatest Cover Songs
...but I am not trying operate a camera while I drive and sing.
That's what my crew is for.
So I'm more focused on my driving.

But the beard.
I just can't get over the beard.
And how do you like his little tour guide effort
thrown in during the bridge?
(the tour of the bridge of the road
during the bridge of the song)
He just amuses me on so many levels.

Ya'll have a good one.

Are You Wacky?

2010-12-08T22:52:00.004-07:00

Well, it's been Wednesday here all day long.
I don't know what Wednesday is supposed to feel like exactly.
There's a book in our Dr. Suess collection (though it's
not by him) that is called Wacky Wednesday and I always
hated it when my kids would ask me to read that book.
It was not a warm and cozy read.
It was page after page of
"Find the 78 wacky things on this page."
I get tired of that fast.
I'm glad Wednesdays are not necessarily wacky.
It's just the middle of the week. It's just a "work horse"
kind of day. And I got a lot accomplished today.
My eyes just popped open at 5:30 this morning, before
the alarms, and it was one of those rare occasions when
I was fully and completely awake in an instant.
I did some decking of the halls throughout the day.
Actually, I got out all the holiday decor
that I am going to have out this year and I've got it
all adequately spread around. I made 194 trips
up and down the stairs carrying boxes because
I wanted all of that stuff put away. Away!
Then I just got busy once all the carnage and tubs and
boxes were removed. If you had seen the state of things
here this morning and then saw it again tonight,
you would know that I've been busy.
Decorating. Dusting. Cleaning.
All the floors downstairs got cleaned.
Progress. That's what we call it.
AND we got our school done and I read chapters
from Peter Pan (Hook died tonight, only one chapter left)
and from our little Christmas book. It's just been a nice,
busy, seemingly productive day.
I even laid down (as in kind of took a nap)
for about 30 minutes in the afternoon.
I was tired, haven't been sleeping well or much this week
so that half hour of rest was great.

I did not get any gingerbread men made tonight.
boo! boo!
I was hoping to do that. I have to make my gingerbread
men at night. It's my little system. I decorate them after
the kids have gone to bed (in peace and quiet),
so I get the little piping on them right.
See what kind of mother I am,
what a free-spirited wild child
--I should have been a hippie.
I know you are glad you are not my child.
Then they set out on the counters until morning
--this way the icing is set up enough that you can store them
without smearing. If it gets too late and I haven't even
started making the cookies, I have to just bail on the plan
for that day--and that is what I had to do tonight.
I opted to clean the floors and get that out of the way,
so I sacrificed the cookies tonight.
There's always tomorrow.

And what is this world coming to
when Your Faithful Bell chooses cleaning
over making cookies?

So I am kind of getting into the holiday mood a bit more
now that we have the atmosphere
(more than just the music).
This weekend we are having our
little childless Christmas party.
We were watching Minute To Win It last night
while decorating the tree and I was inspired with a game
to do Saturday night at the party. I am excited about it!
I think it will be fun---and funny.

How was your Wednesday?

Arbor Day

2010-12-07T22:25:00.002-07:00

Pssst....Dear Reader....are you there?

I just thought I'd tell you that the tree is decorated.
In total "we have four small children" style.
But that's one more thing off my list.
I march on.

Is Your Refrigerator Running?

2010-12-07T11:21:00.005-07:00

Greetings, Dear Reader.
And I trust that we all know the answer to that
prank phone call question. We also have
Prince Albert in a can.

I hope none of your body parts have frozen and fallen off.
It's really cold out. Maybe that's why I was grumpy
last night---I had to get out in the dark, cold night.
It was the first time this year I had to break out my coat.
The sky here is very gray-white and I am wondering
if it is supposed to snow on us. I haven't watched
the weather lately. Lovely K has been giving us her weather
report from time to time, whenever someone mentions
anything about the weather. She's been listening to some
radio station that plays Christmas music at night in her room
so she's hearing the weather and commercials. She can tell
me if one day is supposed to be warmer or not or if there's
a good sale on diamonds in town.
'Cause I'm always looking for
a good sale on diamonds.

If you were to ask me at any given moment what household job
I hate the most, unless I had just had some terrible experience
with something else, my answer will always be
"cleaning the refrigerator."
I don't know why I hate that job, but I do.
I have always hated it. I put it off until the health department
starts circling our house, giving me the stink eye.
I just hate that job.
But today I did it.
I did the thorough cleaning, taking every thing out and taking it all
apart and cleaning the silly thing. It looks very nice.
While I was doing it, I realized that it's not that bad of a job.
I don't know why I put it off so. I guess some things are
like that. You think, "Oh that job! I don't want to do it!
It'll take forever." But then you do it, and it's not so bad
AND it doesn't take as long as you think it will in your head.
So my fridge is clean.
At least for the next five minutes or so.

When I was taking everything out and apart, I just trotted
out onto the back porch and put my eggs and milk and
OJ there (one must be careful leaving OJ on the
porch though, someone might get murdered!).
It was as cold outside as it was in my fridge. I actually forgot
to bring them in for a while. It was when I saw Ranger the cat
on the porch trying to whip up a souffle' that I realized
what I'd done and brought them back to the clean fridge.
They were a little disoriented by the cleanness of that appliance.
They thought they were in someone else's house.

Now I need to turn my attention to the oven.
The health department is still circling.
See those kids in that picture?
Hopefully that will be me and my brood before the end of this day.

So much to do. So much to do.
And nothing is getting done while I'm sitting here talking to you.
See ya!

Don't Waste Your Time Reading This

2010-12-06T21:28:00.007-07:00

Whew! I am so glad this day is over.
Have you ever had something, like a day, just kind of
go wild on you and you know there's nothing you can do
but ride it out? That felt like how this day went for me.
I'm not sure where we went wrong exactly,
maybe it was the leisurely morning where we whiled away
the time....but we got off track somehow.
Nothing really went wrong.
I just felt scurried.
And I was already tired from Sunday
which turned into a marathon day for me.
I got up early on Sunday to make this big meal for us
and our buddies after church. So I do all that, get dressed
and get everyone else dressed, run out the door to church.
After church we came home and had the big meal

--and I think my dressing turned out good.
Although I must tell you the conversation I had
with my friend after we ate. I told her that
I wanted to know the truth: how was the dressing?
She said that it was good and (this is the funny part)
that she "wasn't expecting that."
I just had to laugh when I heard that.
What a funny thing to say. Try adding that phrase
onto the end of things you say to other people.
"Margo, that's a lovely hat you are wearing today
--and I really wasn't expecting that."
"Bill, you look like you've lost some weight
--and I really wasn't expecting that."
It just makes it such a weird statement.
But we both laughed about it. And I was
pleased with my dressing that day so that's that.

After we ate, we played games and the kids partied
all over the house (and outside the house
in the ridiculous flurries of snow we had).
I guess I shouldn't say gameS (plural).
We didn't play an array of games.
We played one game.
We played Dutch Blitz.

Yes, people, it's Christmastime,
it's Dutch Blitz season. Time to break it out
and drive yourself crazy with that game.
I don't know why I love that game so.
I stink at it. I never get to blitz.
It's just like this big exercise in mental stress
and frustration for me.
And this is a game?
This is fun?
I guess so.

Towards the end of the afternoon I had to whip together
a dessert for a thing after church. We had some missionaries
there that night and we had a little dessert fellowship thing
after church. Which was great. We needed to spend
more time away from the house since we still had to decorate
the ding-dang tree and do this whole big thing for Lloyd Dobbler's job.
Sigh. But we stayed after church, we fellowshiped, I got
talked into changing my plans for today which is part of why
I started out this post with a big "whew." If I had kept
my original plan, I would have just stayed at home
tonight. I would have missed out on a holiday party
that I enjoyed, but I would have had a quiet, peaceful night.
And see, that's my problem.
Is that just being a homebody?
Or am I anti-social? Do I have a problem?
I would almost rather miss a fun, once-a-year occasion
than to have to scurry around, making arrangements
for each kid, who will take who to basketball
practice and all of that kind of thing.
I wonder sometimes if I just
get too used to my low key stay-at-home life.
I mean, is that a bad thing?
Should I be taking Zoloft or something?
Or is this another one of those situations that falls under
the category of "Well, you've got four kids now."
You wouldn't believe how often I hear that.
I can understand it in some situations.
We can NOT pick up a trio of hitchhikers. Why?
Because we have four kids. Our van is pretty much full.
We could squeeze maybe one in if they were skinny.
Not that this is ever going to happen.
But that would make sense.
But other people will say to me
"Well, you've got four kids now"
as an explanation to things that
just don't have any logical connection.

I burned the cookies.
"Well, Bell, you do have four kids now."
I forgot to pay the cable bill.
"Well, you do have four kids now, you know."
I tripped and almost fell down the stairs.
"Well, you have four kids now."
What?
Is that my excuse for everything?
Am I supposed to be using it?
Is that why people are offering me that bit of information?
Because it doesn't seem like much of an excuse.
But just tonight when I explained that I just wasn't going to
be involved in a certain activity for a while, the person I was
talking to said, "You have four kids. Tell them that."

I just paused here and realized that I'm rambling on and on
and being rather crabby. I'm really not in a
crabby mood...I don't think. I'm just tired.
I've been busy, and you sure wouldn't know it
to look at my house. To look at my house, you would think
I've been busy making messes.
Because it is a MESS.
Christmas boxes are everywhere. It's a little chaotic.
Like this day.
I'm just glad this day is over.

I could have just said that one sentence
and saved you from reading all of this.
I have wasted your time.
I could have just made the title of this post
"Whew! I'm glad this day is over!"
and not written a word.
But then you wouldn't know
that my dressing turned out good on Sunday
or that I am either very lazy or I need to be taking
an antidepressant because I often prefer staying at home
to going out to festivities with my friends.
You wouldn't know those things if you hadn't
waded through this grumbly marsh of a post.
And you know what they say:
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
So you've either died from reading this or you are stronger.
I'm hoping you are stronger.
You do look like you've been working out
--and I really didn't expect that.

Don't Let It Snow

2010-12-04T16:40:00.004-07:00

Hello Dear Reader.

Did it snow on you today?
Or are you in Jamaica wearing your swimsuit right now?
(Like those are the only two options.)
I've heard people talking about snow a lot. It did
snow on some people. It didn't snow here. I don't
think it was supposed to. But that didn't stop nine out of
every ten local people on Facebook from saying
"Oh I wish it would snow!"
in their whiny status lines.
People whining about wanting snow to me is like
people whining for a good kick in the behind.
And they might get the kick for whining about the snow
if they are around me. I don't love snow.
I don't ask for it. I don't wish for it.
And don't I just sound like
the angel of joy and holiday mirth so far?
I'm just saying--I don't love snow.

I've been busy in the kitchen this afternoon. I'm making
a yummy lunch for us and some friends tomorrow
(I hope it will be yummy). I made the dressing and
the cranberry jello already. The sweet potatoes are
in progress and Tom Turkey is sitting on the kitchen counter,
wondering if he is thawed. What I am wondering is
if I should cook him tonight or tomorrow. I'm leaning
towards doing it tonight. My MIL did that at Thanksgiving.
She cooks the turkey the day before so instead of a carcass
in the kitchen, you just have this big dish of turkey meat.

I still have to make pumpkin pie tonight and some cookies.
I made beef stir fry for supper and I could have
eaten 10lbs of that myself. It is the old stir fry beef recipe
from my childhood. My mom said that the recipe came
from my aunt who hates me but
I always thought it came from
my favorite aunt. It's a good and easy stir fry and it's
just somehow different from others.
It just has this 70's feel to it.
You know how some food just seems to taste like the era
it is from. Well, this is a 70's dish. I ate it with gusto
and wished that I had a Barry Manilow album
and a pair of gauchos.

We snapped a family photo
(actually my sister-in-law came over and snapped it for us)
this morning and took advantage of a greet deal on
Christmas cards that was expiring today. I'm glad to have
that out of the way---and at a bargain price to boot.
I would show you the photo we put on the card, but some
of you will be receiving the card and you would have nothing
to look forward to if I showed it to you now. It has a little
"brotherly activity" in the photo that most people probably
would not want in their Christmas family picture,
but to me, it just seemed like exactly what my life is like.
Never perfect. Always something going on
and half the family not even aware of it.
So I picked that picture.

Also this morning Lloyd Dobbler and the babes
went and got us a tree. I haven't even gone down to look
at it in the garage yet. It's down there "hanging out" or
whatever it is that it needs to do. Lloyd Dobbler always says
they tie them up too much and we can't decorate it
until the branches loosen up. Does he not realize that
doesn't matter because we have children who will strip it bare
and redecorate it every day between now and Christmas?
Those branches will wish they'd never been
cut free from their tightly binding straps.

I hope you are enjoying the Christmas juke box.
I am. I especially love Paul McCartney's Wonderful Christmastime
for some reason. It always makes me smile.
My father and my husband hate it.

I have a musical surprise coming your way in this next week.
Some of you who have been around my Ordinary Days
for a while will get a major kick out of this.
I'm grinning right now as I think about it.
Can't wait to show it to you.
We'll have a good laugh together.
Or else you'll frown at me disapprovingly.
But I'll enjoy it.

Well, I've got to get back to my flurry of kitchen activity.
Later, Dear Reader.

The Song Is The Title

2010-12-03T08:41:00.007-07:00

(Don't forget to turn off the Christmas music before
you hit play. Yes, it's all work work work
here at Ordinary Days! Turn off the music. Play the video.
Can you dust the desk while you're just sitting there reading?)

It's the first Friday of NO CO-OP and for some reason that just makes me really happy. It's like we have this bonus day. We don't have to drive over to the next Tiny Town over. We didn't have to get up and get dressed and run out the door. We don't have to buy lunch out. We don't have to do any of that. We also don't get to see our homeschooling buddies, but that's okay for today. I am almost always happy to stay at home. And then tonight is pizza and a movie. Let's hear it for Friday!!!
I know last Friday was actually the FIRST Friday of no co-op, but it was a holiday weekend so it didn't count.
Remember that scene from It's A Wonderful Life where George is having the terrible day and he comes home to find a whirlwind of activity at home with Mary, his wife, and their 72 kids? Remember how that one girl is practicing her piano and she plays it over and over and over? Remember how George left the house and went to jump off a bridge? I think a child practicing piano has that affect on some people. I don't mind it. I would have jumped off a bridge long ago if I did. I usually end up singing along with whatever Lovely K is playing over and over and over. Or maybe it's that mother-of-young'uns skill you develop that enables you to block out certain sounds or noises. But music is not something that annoys me. Okay....maybe blue grass at times....and Michael Bolton....
There's another "child practicing piano" movie scene that always cracks me up. It's in the movie Return To Me (which was Carol O'Connor's last movie, and what a sweet movie it is, but I always forget that in the midst of all the sweet movie-ness, Jim Belushi has a moment or two where he lets his mouth fly. It's unnecessary cussing (as opposed to necessary cussing) but if you just mute it whenever he is talking, you are safe and will be able to enjoy the movie.). But this movie scene...it's another couple with 72 children and they're all doing a million things. Jim Belushi's character is the dad and he's getting annoyed at all the craziness. The one child keeps banging on the piano and he says something about it. The child bangs on the piano again and he says, "Megan!" (This is the wife's name in the movie.) And I just love her response. She says, "What? I'm not playing the piano." That is something I find myself saying sometimes. Lloyd Dobbler will find something one of our precious 72 children is doing annoying and instead of addressing the child, he addresses me. "Bell!" he'll say with capitalized irritation. And there are times when I just say to him, "What? I'm not playing the piano."
I like Bonnie Hunt. She is most like me of all famous personalities that I can think of at the moment. Or maybe I just identify with her. Except for her luxuriously beautiful, silky blond hair. I can not in any way identify with that.
When I was looking to mix things up a little bit with my own hair follicles, the gal who does my hair sent me a picture of a "movie star" that she thought I most resembled. I would love to tell you that she sent me a picture of, you know, Heidi Klum or Grace Kelly, but no. It was Ginnifer Goodwin---someone who cannot even correctly spell one of the most popular girl names of all time. Sigh. Go to this page if you don't know who she is. And let me add that while I never thought of her as a beauty, now that I have been told that is who I most look like, I am finding her to be a very attractive actress.
Speaking of whether or not I resemble someone with a wide face, I never had this fat face that I have now when I was anorexically underweight all those years. It's just in the past 11 years that I have begun to look like I am storing a bag of nuts in my cheeks. I don't really think there's anything I can do about it but go back to being 92 lbs.....and that's not going to happen.
Remember when I was all interested in "minimalism?" Well, I should clarify that---I was (and am) interested in MY VERSION of minimalism. I could never be one of those strict minimalist types. I don't want white walls and Swedish furniture and no door on my kitchen cabinets so everyone can see my four glasses and four plates neatly lined up in a row. No, I'm too much of a knick-knack-paddy-whack for that. But I just thought I'd tell you that I am still thinking of that, letting it stew in my little mind. I'm making baby steps. And oh what tiny little baby steps they are, but they are steps in the right direction. I'm trying. There's just so much to do and remember, you are dealing with the most easily overwhelmed person in the world here.
We had a bit of dancing this morning. That's always a good way to start out a morning at home with your babes. I've been playing the Christmas music lately and Baby J has really enjoyed waltzing around the living room with me on a daily basis. This morning, however, it was the older boys who were cutting a rug to that classic Christmas favorite Geek in the Pink by Jason Mraz. If you could see those two boys dance....oh my....there might be questions relating to epilepsy....They think they are just the best dancers in the world and I love watching them, though I'm often holding my breath, hoping they don't get hurt. It's kind of like full contact break dancing with a little Lawrence Welk Show thrown in.
I've got a turkey in my fridge. I'm going to cook a big meal Sunday for some friends to eat with us after church. Nothing about the meal bugs me except the dressing. No famous dressing maker am I. I have made some before (a few times) and it was okay. Nothing to write home about. And I'm not trying to get my own cooking show via this dressing. I just hate to invite people over and then serve them a big plate of disappointment.
I am wearing a snowman sweater today. I may run into Bridget Jones at the neighbor's party. The other day I had on this rediculous outfit (but it was cozy and comfy) and I had not even done one thing to my hair after washing it...so what I am saying is I looked really pretty...and my friend popped in to give me a birthday present. Why don't people ever come knocking on my door when I look like Heidi Klum and Grace Kelly?
This week has literally evaporated. I cannot believe it is Friday already. It's just that time of year when you have picked up so much momentum that you can't help zipping through these days at top speed. I just do so much better at a slower pace. I am the Tortoius. Are you the Hare?
Oh yeah, I wanted to say something in case some of you thought I was The Jerk of the world because of the title of my last post. I know people don't usually speak of someone they miss terribly and at the same time, refer to a song that might make light of that person's death. We always sang that song to my grandmother and she always pretended to get her feathers all ruffled about it. It was just a thing we did. She lived across the street so she could have literally been walking home from our house on any given Christmas Eve.....but it was not a reindeer encounter that killed her. But that song always makes me think of her because we would sing it to her just to annoy her. And on your blog, you can title yours posts whatever you want and I will never think that you are the jerk of the world.
Have a greet weekend, my lovely Dear Reader. I will catch you later.

Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer

2010-12-02T08:50:00.005-07:00

First, I must tell you that things have been happening
in the strange and mysterious world of socks
since we last spoke. I think those missing socks that I
talked to you about previously....well, I think they
have access to the internet.
They must be reading this blog.
Or else someone is reading it to them.
(Who would read a blog to a bunch of runaway, renegade socks?)
No sooner had I complained to the world about the
sock problem than one pair of those divorced socks
suddenly grew a conscience.
And turned itself in.
I'm telling you the truth. You can drive over here
and meet for yourself the reunited pair of blue
baby socks if you so desire.
It was the strangest, most obvious surrender of a runaway
sock in the history of runaway socks. I was going up
the stairs and this little bright blue sock was just laying there,
in the middle of a step. I thought, "That looks like Baby J's
blue sock that lost it's matching sock."
But you know what?
It wasn't Baby J's sock that lost it's matching sock.
It was Baby J's blue sock
that ran away from it's matching sock.
It came back. It surrendered.
I don't know if it was making its way upstairs to
Baby J's sock drawer and only got as far as the stairs
or if it just thought that the stairs would be the best place
to turn itself in. Who knows how their
little sock minds work? I just know that it could not
have been any more obvious if that sock had been
waving a little white flag.

Today is December 2nd.
Today is the birthday of my maternal grandmother,
the lady who for whom my daughter is named. She died
right before Sweet T was born. That was a crazy time
of life for me. And I am always sad when I think about
the time surrounding her death. I was nine months pregnant
and if you've ever been pregnant,
you know how much fun the end of a pregnancy is.
We were somewhere in the early phases of building our
house, this house that we are in now. I think maybe we'd
just purchased the land and the blue prints for the house.
"The End" for my grandmother started with a fall.
She fell at home. For a long time after that,
Lovely K would say that she wished
that her great grandmother
had just never fallen, like it was the fall
that killed her. But she was quite elderly and not in
the best condition and you know how one thing can
lead to another. She was taken to a local hospital here
in my tiny town and that is where I last saw her.
She was on a gurnie and they brought her out into the hall
to roll her out to the helicopter that would take her to
a hospital in The Big City. I am wondering now if I just
added this to my memory or if it really happened,
but I think I remember reaching out and holding her hand,
patting her arm, for just a few seconds when they paused
there by the exit. I can still remember her skin, her white,
soft skin and the way she always smelled like Dove soap
and Double Mint gum and old books.
I was not allowed to go see her in the hospital in The Big City.
The rest of the family will talk sometimes about how precious
it was when they were all gathered around her bed
when she died. It kind of makes me mad to hear
about that. I remember how mad I was that day,
mad that I was so miserably great with child and not able
to go be with her, mad that it
was all happening the way it did.
I felt cheated. And it just seemed so ridiculous when
my brother called me on my cell phone to tell me
that she was gone. I was sitting at our Mexican restaurant
with Lloyd Dobbler and little Lovely K and little Big E.
Sweet T was the babe soon to appear on the scene.
I was just so mad.
For years she'd been saying that she didn't know why
God had left her here, that she was too old to be any good
for anything and she would always make this statement
that amused me. She'd say "Everyone I know is dead."
That still kind of makes me smile.
"Grandma, you're surrounded by people," I would tell her,
"Everyone you know is not dead."
But I knew what she meant.
I remember taking her one day out in the country to visit
this old friend of hers. They were probably both about
90 years old and they'd been friends since
they were teenagers. They had seen much
water under the bridge. They
kind of chatted back and forth, not always hearing what
the other actually said. And they would just tear up
from time to time. I wonder if that will be me someday.
I wonder if I will sit across from my old friend and just
have tears in my eyes as I see how time has worn on us
both and to know that our lives are really behind us.
But that's only the life on earth that was behind them.
It's such a blessing to know that my grandmother knew God
and that she is in heaven now.
I don't doubt that for a minute.
And I think about that verse that says
"Precious in the sight of the Lord is death of His saints."
That kind of makes me less mad
about the way things happened.

The morning of her funeral, I got up early
and got myself and the kids ready. (Lloyd Dobbler didn't
feel well that day and I was also mad as fire at him,
but that's a whole other story.)
I took Lovely K and Big E to the funeral home. Nobody was
there except the people in the office and they turned on
the lights for me in the room where my Grandmother was.
I took the kids up there so they could see her
and so I could too. I knew that I needed to have
"my little moment" then and that I needed to keep everything
under control because of the condition I was in.
At the funeral, if I got up to go to the bathroom
or if I even moved or breathed aloud,
everyone around me would gasp and say
"Are you in labor!?!?"
It was sitting there at the funeral, listening to my father
conduct the service, that the inspiration came for the name
of the bouncing baby boy in my belly. It was a name
on my grandmother's side of the family tree that was
fading out. Only my great uncle bore than name
until we slapped in onto Sweet T.

So often I think of things that I wish I could ask my
grandmother now. I wish I had paid more attention
to her naming the names of every flower within her sight.
I wish I had paid more attention to a lot of things she said.
I wish she could have seen my last two babies.

The house where she lived is across the street
from my parents' house. A young family has made it
their home for a few years and I really don't think of it
as being "her house" any more. But Sunday night, after
that long, long day, when we had loaded up the kids again
and were leaving my parents' house, finally headed for home,
I looked over at the house and the light in the window
that had been my grandmother's bedroom was on.
And the thought in my head was,
"Oh, Grandma's still awake!
We should go in and see her."
Do you ever do that?
Forget for a second that someone is gone?
You want to call them or see them or something,
and then you remember-- oh yeah,
she's not there anymore.

Well, happy birthday, Grandma!
Thanks for being just exactly who you were.
You had a profound effect on my life.
I love you.

Sock It To Me

2010-11-30T20:29:00.004-07:00

My kids and their sense of humor---another thing that
I am going to be afraid of for many years to come.
It's when they try to be funny that they kind of...
well...aren't. When they don't mean to be funny,
they have me cracking up.
And yes, I am one of those mothers
who laughs at her children. Lovely K was telling me
something today about a lady in a restaurant with a
wheel barrow--only she meant a wheel chair but
said wheel barrow. I didn't know she was talking about
Joni Erikson Tada and I was just picturing this lady with
a wheelbarrow in a restaurant. When we figured out
what/who she was talking about,
it just made me laugh.
But it doesn't take a lot to make me laugh.
I love to laugh.
I'm like that guy in Mary Poppins
who floats up on the ceiling
and knows a man with a wooden leg.

Let me give you an example of a joke we might hear
on any random day around the homestead
(actually I heard this one driving down the road today) :

Sweet T: Mama, I have a riddle for you.
Me: OK
Sweet T: What did one cricket say to another cricket?

After the distraction of his siblings making bizarre guesses
to the answer of this riddle, he continued.

Sweet T: What did one cricket say to another cricket? I hate your stinking guts.

And then he laughed hysterically.

In other news... there's something going on
with the sock population around here. I know that
every one on the face of the earth
(okay...not every one on the face of the earth
because I know we are all looking at that World Vision
catalog right now and realizing that we are
fat, spoiled, ungrateful Americans)
has the same deal with socks where sometimes one
of them just evaporates.
You take off a pair of socks, put them in the hamper,
and that's the last you ever see of one of those socks.
No goodbyes. No warning.
It's just adios sock.
It's like aliens come and get it or something.
I don't know where it goes.
But what we have here at the homestead
is an epidemic of missing socks.
I mean, a ridiculous sock epidemic.
There is a pile of socks on my couch right now
and it's just MIND BOGGLING that you could have
that many socks together in a group
and none of them be mates.
What I want to know is
where are all of these socks going?
There are a lot of them missing.
A whole stinkin' lot of them.
And they've got to be somewhere.
It's not like there's a secret compartment on my
washer or dryer....or is there?
I guess if it's a secret compartment, then I wouldn't know
about it and it could be there,
stuffed to the gills with socks.
And maybe it's just some interpersonal thing with the socks themselves. Maybe they just aren't getting along. Maybe we need some kind of sock counseling.

So don't be surprised if you get a homemade puppet
from me for Christmas.
I've got to do something with all these lonely socks.

It's Raining, Men

2010-11-30T14:33:00.004-07:00

Oh the weather outside is frightful---

and I love it.

People are complaining left and right
about this gray, dreary, rainy day, but you know me...
I love it.
I do. I love a rainy day.
And just like Eddie Rabbit, I love a rainy night also.
And it's not because I didn't have to get out in it.
I did have to get out in in. I had to take Lovely K to
piano and ballet today and then run
a couple of errands with the boys.
I just love the rainy day.
I love the gray light and the quietness that settles
on my surroundings. I love it that if everyone in the house
will be quiet for one or two seconds together,
I can hear the rain on the roof or against the windows.
I just love it. I love the rain.
I want to light the fire or burn some candles
and just cozy in for the evening.

I spent about an hour on the computer this morning
and knocked a major chunk of my Christmas shopping
out of the park. I am so glad to have that done. I really
need to sit down tonight and get out my list
and check it twice,
mark off the naughty people.
I think I am basically done for the kids now and I just have
to worry with a few more relative gifts.

I collected all the fall/Thanksgiving decor last night
and it's all standing together in the dining room,
looking like a nervous group who know they won't see
the light of day for another year once I break out their box.
I think one of the Pilgrim men is thinking about
making a run for the border.
I did whip out these two little decorative
Christmas tree-lets....little two foot tall twig-like
decorative items. I only got them out because they
are stored in the kitchen. I kind of have to get myself
talked into doing the whole "deck the halls" thing
in recent years. I like it once it is done, but it's kind of
a hassle to make it happen.
So I need to get the Christmas music cranking out
and get my holiday groove on.

Once again, I failed to find a great advent-type book
for us to read in the month of December. I looked at
different times throughout the year, but found nothing.
If you are reading this and thinking
"Oh, she needs book ------,"
then please, tell me.
Jump on the comments below.
Help a sister out.

I'm going to enjoy my cozy, rainy night.
I hope you are having a lovely night,
Dear Reader, be it rainy or not.
I hope you are getting into the holiday spirit.
I'm trying to get their myself.

I Will Survive

2010-11-29T06:41:00.004-07:00

Remember that lady with that little blog
who put the wrong cream of whatever soup in her beef stew?
She wrote about it just before eating it--
-and was never heard from again.
Must have been some bad stuff.
Wiped out the whole family.
I can't remember who that was....

But it wasn't your faithful Bell, Dear Reader!
I'm here. I've been gone, but I'm back.
We survived the beef stew.
It was a hardly noticeable mistake, as you probably guessed.
Didn't ruin the meal or anything.
Didn't wipe out the family.
We have survived worse cooking mistakes
than that, I assure you.

Like I said, we have been gone.
We went the 50th state of Alabama for the Thanksgiving
weekend and visited with the Dobbler clan who reside there.
I have to brag on Baby J for a second here before I say
anything else. I am sure I complain all the time--that should
probably be the name of this blog (Bell's Complaints),
but I cannot complain about being on the road or away from
home with that sweet baby. He is so good. It is really like
he's not even there in the van--or maybe we don't notice
him so much because the other three are not following
his peaceful, quiet example. Or maybe it's just because he is
strapped into his little baby cocoon and can't participate
in the "Stop touching my chair!"
and "He put his foot on my head!" activity
that occupies his siblings. But he really is a good traveler
and a good shopper. He's such a sweetie pie.

He's thinking about walking.
As I watched Lloyd Dobbler and my father-in-law try to
get him to walk between them this weekend, I suddenly
wanted to say STOP! He's my BABY.
I don't think I'm ready for him to be walking yet.
He's the last baby. We don't need to rush things.

Thinking about Baby J being my baby and his approaching
first birthday makes me remember this time last year
and how we were just getting into the groove of bad things
happening. If you recall, we were just entering the phase
of constant trips to the doctor and/or hospital.
That was my early December activity last year.
So much has happened since then. And we didn't even have
any idea of what we were in for. Would I like to go back to a
year ago and relive this past year?
No thank you!
Merciful heavens. There is a reason these little gray hairs
are starting to appear on my youthful head.
And it's not old age, my friend.
I did battle with the birthday fairy yesterday
and came out on top. For my birthday I got to spend
approximately six hours in the vehicle on the road
....which is about as enjoyable as a root canal for me
....but I did have a nice birthday.
I was with my Lloyd Dobbler and my four gifts from God.
We got home from Alabama in time to have a late lunch
with my family for my birthday. My mom made the meal
that I always asked for every year on my birthday
growing up---spaghetti. I don't know if I asked for the
salad when I was growing up, but it was there.

As soon as we ate, we had to leave the kids there
and Lloyd Dobbler and I had to travel on to College Town
to buy him a new suit for up coming work related meetings.
We ended up getting a nice suit and sports coat and some
pants and two ties. (Hey---whose birthday was this!?!?)
And so it was bed time by the time we actually got home
with a loaded down van and a very tired family.
It was nice to sleep in my own bed. It would have been
really nice if my alarm clock would have forgotten
to do its job this morning.
Even now....two hours later...I'm ready to climb back
between the covers. But we have no groceries in the
house and we have to do school today and it's time to put
away all the pumpkins and pilgrims and start thinking
about decking these halls.
My brain is tired already.

Happy Monday, Dear Reader.
I hope you were ready to
hit the ground running today.

Beef Stew at the Food Court

2010-11-22T09:47:00.004-07:00

Remember that easy, fool-proof, crock pot beef stew
that I have previously shared with you?
Well, fool-proof might need to be stricken
from the list of descriptives. I'll let you know
this evening after my family partakes of my creation.
I was happily assembling this concoction this morning;
Lovely K was practicing piano, Big E was actually feeding
Baby J applesauce, and Sweet T was deeply involved in
some game on the Leapster. It was just the normal,
lovely, happy domestic scene. And I was just being
Martha Stewart's neighbor there, chopping up the carrots
and all. I whipped out that can of cream of mushroom soup
to add to the mix. About the time I started stirring it up
I realized something wasn't right. I had not whipped
out that can of cream of mushroom soup after all.
I had mistakenly whipped out
the cream of CHICKEN
and added it to my BEEF stew.
I don't know how this is going to turn out, people.
It may be one of those lightening bolt moments
when my error creates a new family favorite.
(and there will be much rejoicing)
Or we may be bribing the children
with ice cream and candy
to get them to eat their stew at supper tonight.
It could go either way.

So while the stew is stewing
and deciding whether it will be naughty or nice,
I want to share a video with you.
When I watched this, it made me cry.
(let's not even talk about hormones, please!)
And here's what it made me think---this might be
what heaven will be like. We will have stuff to do, you know.
I don't think there will be a mall, but I do think there will
be spontaneous outbursts of praise.
From all kinds of people.
I just thought this was such a beautiful thing.
Wouldn't you love to be eating your Sbarro pizza when
one of these things unfolded right before your eyes?
I would!

The End Is Near

2010-11-21T19:45:00.006-07:00

Hello cute Dear Reader.
And the other one.

Okay, I know I said this last year, but I'm saying it again.
If you want to have a glimpse into my childhood,
start the jukebox.
It's that Turkey song that's #1 right now.
I hate to do it to you...and that's why it's not starting
automatically right now, but it makes me laugh sometimes.
Most of the time I just skip over that first song.
It could not be any more my mom
than if she was the one singing it
in the recording. My mom always sang
(from sun up to sun down, every day!)---and that's the
kind of song she would sing. And that kind of sounds
like her voice in that recording. I'm not saying this
in a bad way. I mean, my kids are going to talk about me
and my singing someday. I can just hear them now:
"Remember how you always made up songs
about poopy diapers and sang them to the tune
of old hymns or Beatles songs?"
And then they will do it to their kids.

Friday was the end of our home school co-op
for this semester. I am always excited about having
my Fridays back when it comes to an end. But when it
comes to an end in the fall semester, we have all the
"stuff" that goes along with Christmas coming at us.
I've got to bake stuff this year to make up for last year
when I did nothing but grow Baby J and run up medical bills.
If I do nothing else, I am going to make
Martha Washington candy. OR I could skip that
and just start carrying three pounds of lard around
with me at all times....'cause that's what Martha
and her yummy candies will do to me.

After co-op me and a couple of other moms
who do not enjoy the chaos of the meal with
497 other home schooling families
---we had our own little peaceful meal
at the nearby home of one of these moms.
It was nice. These were my Bible study gals who I have come
to love so very very much in recent weeks. Our kids all play
very well together. It was such a good alternative.
I took cookies that for some unknown reason decided to
turn into ROCKS.
I was so mad.

I should never ever say that I do anything good
because the next time I do it, it will be a shambles.
I bragged on this one type of cookie and
wouldn't you know it?
They were pretty,
but you might break a dad gum tooth off
trying to eat the thing. Sigh.
And I already feel like "the weak link" in this group.
So here's one more thing they can know about me.
"Don't ask Bell to make anything.
Maybe she can bring drinks next time."
Maybe instead of a Bible study next time
we can go over some basic cooking skills.
Mercy.

Then today was Sunday
(in case you didn't know that)
and my church had a Thanksgiving meal together.
It was a nice time and a wonderful service.
Our pastor preached from Psalm 1oo....of course he got into
this whole thing about people being wrong if they ever say
Psalms instead of Psalm,
but he wasn't right in what he was saying.
That derailed my train of thought for a while.
I am willing to put great thought into
the issue of proper language usage.
I know you can't tell that
from reading this blog. I'm not
the grammarian about whom
your mother warned you,
but I have read Strunk and White.
Anyway, language faux pas aside,
the service was so nice. We had communion and
we had a testimony time and it just made me remember
things about certain people in our church that I think
I had forgotten. There are just some people in my
church family who I love so dearly.
And I know that I am not an easy person to love,
so if and when they do love me in return, it means so much.
And you know what? People everywhere are going through
such difficult stuff. Sometimes it's easy to get wrapped up
in our own little problems that we minimize the things others
are going through, but everyone is carrying a burden.
Everyone.
Why would we want to add to it?
Why would we want to announce our own
prayer request like it should take precedence
and not even let someone else speak about theirs?

I'm just so thankful that
once you come to know Jesus Christ,
whatever your burden is, He makes it lighter.
He doesn't make things all better,
but walking with Him does lighten the load.

So that's my weekend wrap up.
In case you were wondering.
Now I've got to get ready for this next week....
It's a short one on The Normal Side
of things and it will be a long one
on The Holiday Side.
Not really looking forward to it all.
By this time next week,
I think a lot of water will have passed under the bridge.

I think I'll wear my rubber boots.

No, But I Saw The Movie

2010-11-18T13:20:00.003-07:00

I snagged this list from someone on Facebook---because I am so deep and such a scholar that I spend my time on Facebook. I should be at the library this very minute reading one novel while listening to another one on CD. It's kind of amazing and sad that I was an English major, an enthusiast of all things pertaining to language and the written word and yet I am not at all a well read individual. Not at all. So I wonder what exactly the BBC (or whoever really made this list) had in mind when compiling it. I wonder if their six book line in the sand separates the literate from the illiterate. Anyway... I put the ones I read in red.

Have you read more than six of these books?

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

Read it. Loved it. So much more humor than in the theater and movie interpretations.

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

I think I've read this, but not sure. So I won't count it.

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

Read it. Don't remember much about it. I remember the movie and the play more.

6 The Bible

Read it. Am reading it. Need to read it more.

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

Read it. Remember nothing about it. Welcome to public education.

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

Will I be voted off the island if I confess that I have never read any of Charlie Dickens' works?

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

Read it. I remember being in 5th grade when I read it and when Laurie married Amy, I was so upset about it. I kept thinking I was reading it wrong. Had to put it down for a long time because I couldn't accept the fact that Jo and Laurie weren't going to get together in the end.

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

I've read some of them, but not The Complete....

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

Read it. Read it several times. I loved this book in high school. I need to read it again because I am sure I would still love it. Although I do remember skipping over passages where Ms. Du Maurier would describe things TOO MUCH.

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

I need to read this to my kids.

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

Read it. Read my grandmother's old copy that came out when it was a current novel. Couldn't put it down. I remember it was summer and I was a young teenager.

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

Read it several times in school. Such a simple story and teachers/professors will milk that thing for all it is worth. If I were a drunken socializer in the 1920's with a mentally unstable wife, I'd probably write in a similar manner.

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

I think I have read this. Maybe I just started it. Can't remember. I won't count them unless I know I read them for sure. Sad how many of these that I have read left no lingering impression on me.

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

I know, I know. One can hardly be considered a good home schooler if one has never read this book---or the whole series. Who ever said I was a good home schooler? But my hubby read it 104 times and my oldest child has read it more than once. The younger ones have had it read to them (by their father). Remember the part about me saying I am not well read?

34 Emma -Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne

I think I read it when I was pregnant.

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

Loved this one at the time. That was one of the first novels that was taught to me. Think I was in seventh grade.

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

Do you know how many times I have wanted to write "saw the movie" on this list? Sad.

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

I have read this book several times and I have to say, it's one of my favorite books ever. Ever. It's so not like me to like this book, but it is gripping. I have thought about doing it as a class for high schoolers at our home school co-op.

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was not one of those times when Bell read any Charles Dickens.

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I have started this one, but it's one of those books I can't read with four small children circling my chair asking questions non-stop. I have to read alone and separate. I mainly got this book and wanted to read it because of the movie Serendipity. (I am soooo deep.)

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

School. I remember seeing a production of it at the Tennessee Preforming Arts Center when I was in school and that was an amazing performance. I remember that vividly, sitting on the edge of my seat (literally) and being almost breathless at the end. I was in Junior High.

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

I think I was supposed to read this for a class in college. Alas....it is not red.

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

Read it. Found the copy of it that I read in the basement when we had the big flood this fall. I think I had to pitch it---you can't really salvage a wet paperback book. Or a whole box full of them.

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Inferno - Dante

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

Bought this for like a dime at a yard sale. Read the first chapter. That's all.

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

Does anyone else picture a young Mel Gibson when you think of Hamlet?

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

Best thing about the book? You don't have to fast forward over the poor mother singing. Does anyone watch the beginning of that movie? I fast forward to the part where Gene Wilder is going to come out of the candy factory. That's really where it starts for me. And yes, I realize I am talking about the MOVIE. What can I say? But I have read it. And I sang the songs by the Oompaloompas.

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

So I have read 16 of these books.

Check my math. Not only am I on the verge of being illiterate, but I also did not win the prize in Math.

Sixteen. I guess that's better than six, but it's kind of sad. So many classics in there. Perhaps I should use that as my little book list now and read from it until I have at least half of the list marked off.

How many have you read?

Any of your favorites on this list?

Have You Hugged A Nurse Today?

2010-11-18T07:44:00.004-07:00

Greetings, Dear Reader. It's me. Sleepyhead.
What in the world has happened to me?
You would think that I am staying up until 3am every night,
the way I am buried beneath the ocean in the morning
and have such a hard time getting up.
Something must have changed.
I know it has gotten colder and we did the daylight savings
time change-a-roo, but never before have either of those
things had such an effect on me. The last two mornings
it has just been crazy. Like I'm medicated or something.
And then it puts a stink on the whole day
if I get off track first thing---and trust me,
sleeping in gets the day off track.
Like today.
We're going to be messed up.
The kids are downstairs watching TV right now
and we haven't even had breakfast.
I probably just need a good swift kick.

And I don't even want to do school.
I want to watch three hours of archival interviews with Fred Rogers on YouTube or read the second half of Peter Pan to my babes. I want to do anything but school.

Yesterday after lunch we loaded up
(the babes and I and my mother)
and went to College Town. It was the last day of a special
discount I had at one of my favorite stores. I got several
things for Christmas, can scratch several names off of my list.
I was even able to buy things for the kids (by sending them
and my mom out to the van before I checked out).
AND I know you will all be as happy as I am
to know that I found a pair of jeans that fits me!
Woo hoo! All my jeans had been abused and
stretched out by the post partum days and I really needed
a new pair. And I found one.
Perfect fit. On sale.
Plus my discount.
That's why I said "woo hoo."

On the way home we stopped at Publix.
I know I have mentioned my love for Publix before.
We keep hearing these rumors that Publix is coming here,
to my Tiny Town. And the rumored location is
near the homestead here. Won't we all be excited then?
It was while I was in Publix, gathering up my listed items
at the speed of light, that I got a call informing me of
terrible news regarding a friend of mine.
Terrible news. The worst case scenario.
I don't think I have ever walked down grocery store aisles
with tears running down my face before.
Isn't it amazing the effect a phone call can have on you?

And I just have to share something with you
regarding that friend.
The friend with the terrible situation was at the hospital
yesterday and his mother, wife, and two friends were
with him. He was still in recovery while his friends and
family received the bad news. They were standing
in the corridor at the hospital when my friend's mother
began to have a moment.
I mean, it's her baby no matter how old he is.
I'd be having a moment too if I were her.
But they were standing there with this happening and
this nurse was walking down the corridor as they often do.
She walked past them, but a few feet past them,
she stopped and turned around and came back to them,
to the mother. She put a hand on each of the
mother's shoulders and she said,
"Lady, do you know the Lord?"
Now, anyone member of this group would be
a bit miffed if someone asked them under normal circumstances
if they knew the Lord.
Of course they do.
They would expect people to just assume it.
Just by looking at them or something.
Normally they would be the ones ministering to others.
Well, that's what was so great about the question
this lady posed to the mother.
It was like a reality check. She said,
"Lady, do you know the Lord?
God has this situation under control."

I have thought about that all night.
Thank the Lord for this nurse---and that she didn't
walk on by without saying what she was thinking.
What a blessing she has been to people she will never know.
God IS in control of this situation.
HE knows what is going to happen to my friend.
He has known all along.
And He will be with him (and us) all the way.

You May Think It's Funny, But It's Snot.

2010-11-15T10:27:00.005-07:00

Sometimes the good and the yucky
are so intermingled that it seems hard to separate them.
That has kind of been how the last 14 months or more
of my life have been. It has been some of the hardest,
most UNpleasant times of my life....and yet it is a beautiful,
joyful, precious time too.
It has been both good and bad.
Ying and yang.
Negative and positive.
Joy and Pain.

"Jooooy!
And pain.
Sunshine. And Rain."
And I so wish I could post just that little blurb
from some crazy hip hop song that was out sometime
in my youth. I just looked it up on YouTube (of course)
and I can't get just the clip I want--where they say
"Joy and pain! Sunshine and rain!"
--and I don't want to make you watch or listen to the
whole thing. Okay...maybe I could make you watch this....
Here are two white girls lip-syncing that song
and it's kind of funny.
They are just such gangstas.
Especially the foil on their teeth.
(You can hear the first 13 seconds of this
and have all that you need
to know what I was hearing in my head
--and I know just how much you want to hear
exactly what is in my head!)

They are so white.
That would be me.
I'm so glad I didn't have a way to publicly broadcast
my silliness when I was young.

But joy and pain--that's what I was saying.
The mingling of the good and the bad.
That's how things have been.

And that's how today is,
but on a very minor scale.
It is the kind of day I love.
Gray and quiet. Rainy.
I'm playing the Christmas music softly in the background.
School is underway.
It's all very cozy.
I love days like this.

At the same time,
Lloyd Dobbler and I are in a knock-down fight
against some sort of cold that is determined to settle
into both of us. I have had major battles with this
relentless bother for days. I'll think I have it whooped
and then it jumps out of the bushes on me when I am
walking home. Today it is just being a pest.
A constant, annoying pest.
It is the little brother of colds.
It won't go away.
It isn't going to kill me, but it just won't leave me alone.

I could not read the History lesson aloud to the babes
this morning. I tried. But it's hard to read when you
feel like the entire Pacific Ocean is inside your head.
My head today is like one of those conch shells
---if you put your ear up to it, you'll hear the ocean.
So I couldn't read.
I'm hoping I will be able to later.
We've got to explore this New World
and be ready for some Early American History
after Christmas.

I have made a big pot of zoop
--heavy on the garlic, I am afraid, because I couldn't smell it.
So I kept adding garlic until I could smell it.
Now that I do smell it,
I realize that it's very hard for me
to actually smell anything right now....
So this might be Garlic Zoop.
With a side of garlic.
(Can you really have too much garlic in anything?)

But what does a pot of soup do on a bleary day?
It just makes it cozier.
So even though I made it in effort to fight off the YUCK,
it's a good thing.
A very good thing.

So it's more of the good and bad, walking hand in hand.
Keeping balance, I guess.
We don't want all bad
and we never have all good.
So both together works out fine.

I must go now and blow an octopus out of my cranium.

Time Flies When You Hit November

2010-11-14T20:35:00.004-07:00

We have hit that part of the year
when we seem to be moving at a faster speed.
The days seem so short.
Maybe it's because I am looking ahead at what we have to do
and what I want to do and thinking about all of that
while I am doing today's activities....and then, boom,
it's bedtime.
Another day has gone to the presses.

Like this weekend.
I can't believe it's over.
I'm sitting here thinking "Wasn't it just Friday?"
I mean, really, I thought it was Friday night
and I closed my eyes for just a second
-- and now it's Sunday night
and we are about to jump into a new week.
Not just any week.
The week before Thanksgiving week.
And you know what happens after Thanksgiving
--the parade of insanity leading into Christmas begins.
And while my family does have a lot of activities going on,
I really make a point of not letting it get too out of hand.
I hear some of these stories from other women
who are just crazed by their holiday schedules,
and I have to say, it's kind of their own fault.
They can scale back as much as they want to
--they just have to be willing to do it.
I am very willing to scale back.
I can't handle too much.
I don't do great handling very little,
so there's no question about me
broadening the scope of things I do.
And today I got one of those BARKING DOG responses
from somebody concerning holiday activities
and it just made me think
"That's what I don't want to be like!"
Do you ever have those moments?
You see somebody handle a situation in a way
that you are very likely to do the same way
or actually have done in the past
...and it's just like a little eye opening experience.
"Note to self: never act like that again."

I don't want to be the barking dog to the people around
me who are just asking a question. I'm afraid that's too often
the case. My poor family gets the worst of it.
That's one thing I have been learning from this Bible study
that I've been doing....though you wouldn't think
I'd be convicted about my tongue doing a study on the
book of Ruth...but it has come from that.
Part of it too is in discussing the things we do on these
Monday nights, I just see this big difference in the way
I look at the scripture and the way these other women look
at it. I think a lot of "good church people" (like me) would
think they know more or are doing better than these
other women and their families,
but I don't think so.
They are reading the scripture and studying it
with open eyes and open hearts.
And a commitment to obedience.
If they see something in there that doesn't
jive with their lives, they change it.
Even if it is extreme.
And isn't that the way it's supposed to be?

I think "we" (I'm referring to myself and people like me)
get caught up in the way our church does something
or the way something has always been
and it's almost like we will try to accommodate scripture
but we aren't going to do anything to rock the boat
in the things that have been established.
Do you know what I mean?
If the scripture says X, then we better be doing X
...and it doesn't matter what our church or our denomination
or our family or Christians in the south have always done.
The scripture is the final authority.
That's the rule book. That's the pattern for our lives.

I just see so many people
(and I am including myself in this---wait,
I need to just forget others and
talk about MYSELF in this, don't I?)
Let me start over.
I see myself falling into the pattern of
doing the church thing.
I go. I have always gone.
I participate. I serve. I do my part.
I know how it all works.
I know what I'm supposed to do.
I know the words to the hymn without looking.
I can finish the verse
or tell you where it's located in the Bible.
I know how to act in various situations.
I've been there my whole life.
But sometimes I wish it wasn't that way.
Sometimes I wish I was that person straight off the street
to whom their relationship with Jesus is a new, fresh thing
and they are undergoing the changes.
Sometimes I wish
it was all new to me.
That's kind of where these friends of mine are---
they are not new Christians at all.
But they didn't grow up in church and
they don't have Christian parents. They don't
have the history and the roots that I have.
And so they are learning and digging for themselves
and it's all new to them.
And somehow finding that daily application is so much
easier to them. They want to be sure the reason
behind things and they aren't going to do something
for superficial reasons or to look good in the eyes of
other church people.

I find myself looking at things
differently as a result of being around them.
I find myself realizing that while I may know a lot of things,
I'm not applying all that I know.
And I have a lot more that I need to learn too.
So I should NOT be resting on any laurels over here.
Not that I have laurels to be resting on.
But it's just like being with them has pointed out to me
that I've kind of gotten off the path.
I've gotten lazy.
Complacent.
I don't want to be that way.
And I don't have to be.
I don't want to play games.

I don't want "Christianity"
to be a compartment in my life.

I want it to be my life.

It is my life.

The only part that matters.
What else is of any value?
Nothing.

And now it's late.
I've got to get to bed.
I don't want to start my week off badly.
I don't want to miss out on that special time with God
when I just feel like He takes the lid off of me and fills me up.
I want to get all of that that I can.
I need it.
So I've got to get in this nice, cozy bed behind me
and get some rest so that I can get up tomorrow
before my offspring start rolling out of bed
and be ready to get my daily load
of benefits from the Lord.

I don't know if any of that made any sense to you.
Goodnight Dear Reader.

I Can't Drive 55 (unless I am in a 30 mph zone)

2010-11-11T19:39:00.005-07:00

When you have just had your hair cut
and someone describes you using the word
shocking,
what is that supposed to mean?

This happened to me today.
I really didn't get something crazy done to my hair.
Just the regular cut. The same thing, just shorter---and not
really shorter than before,
but shorter than it was this morning.
(My hair grows so fast.)
Anyway, she (the stylist) did straighten my hair.
The gal who does my hair likes to straighten it. Lloyd Dobbler
doesn't like my hair straight and I don't have time to do it
(it takes her a looong time to straighten my hair.
I have a lot of hair. It covers my entire head.)

Have I ever been as amusing
to anyone else as I am to myself?

So while it's a nice change, it's not something I am
going to start doing all the time.
I guess if I had a different life
than I have, I might have more time to mess with my hair.
But I am not skilled at the whole cosmetology world anyway
...and having difficult hair like I do,
there's just not a good chance
of a great outcome. I have learned, over the years,
not to fight my hair. I just try to beat it into submission
(somewhat) and spray something on it
and go out to face the world.

So when my daughter meets me at the door
and immediately describes the follicles on my head as
shocking,
I just didn't know what to think.

Here's what straight hair did for me today:
it got me out of a ticket.
Oh my goodness.
For thirty seven years the police have left me alone,
and now they just can't resist pulling me over.
Well, it's not like there have been a flurry of encounters
with the law. This was the second one.
You remember earlier in the fall, I got pulled over
with all the kiddos with me. And the cuteness of the kids
along side my horror at being pulled over for speeding
for the first time in my life--that saved me that day.
But tonight?
It must have been the straight hair.
I don't know what else it could have been.

What has happened to me?
Have I changed my last name to Earnhardt?
Has all the weight gain from this last pregnancy
settled in my right foot?
I don't TRY to speed.
I don't set out with that goal in mind.
And if I catch myself doing it, I slow down.
I even set the cruise control to monitor the situation.
So I don't know what has come over me.
And this nice police man
(who, I have to say, was a bit on the flirty side)
gave me a written warning.
I didn't know what to do with it.
I mean, it's like a note sent home
to your parents from school.

"Bell talks too much during class."

Did you ever have a note sent home from school?

"Bell has trouble focusing
on the task at hand."

It's just like the teacher's way of guaranteeing that you
would get in trouble at home. You hadn't done anything
to really get yourself in trouble, but she wanted
you fussed at all the same.

"Students like your daughter
usually end up driving much
too fast as adults."

Actually, I don't remember being sent home with a note.
I'm sure it happened, but I don't' remember it.
This may come as a big shock to you,
but I don't have any real skeletons in my closet.
I mean, I'm telling you about my big
BRUSH WITH THE LAW
and it's the second time in my life that I've
been pulled over for speeding.
And I got a note sent home.

"Bell needs to focus more on her driving
and less on the cool song on the radio."

At least I didn't get a ticket.
I can still say
that I've never gotten a ticket.
So Lloyd Dobbler
(receiver of multiple tickets in the past)
can't cluck too loudly when I come in
with a note from the policeman.

"Bell needs to focus on her rate of speed when driving
and not the straightness of her hair."