Happy Birthday, Soon-to-be Kiwi!

Today is this girl’s birthday.

Today she’s on American terra firma.

But this weekend, she flies off to a school semester in New Zealand. When she said she was going A.W.A.Y., she was serious. I am not over the fact that all of Bo’s friends are grown up and doing very grown up things like leaving their mamas. Which is obviously wrong. On so many levels. You would think they want to have their own lives or something. We didn’t instill enough guilt or a sense of overwhelming responsibility toward those who carried them tirelessly, through the snow, and uphill, in their bodies. We failed to horrify them sufficiently with stories of thrashing and agonizing pain as we brought forth our firstborns. (Well, that’s probably not true but they may have failed to pay attention and we should have rapped them on the knuckles and made them focus.) Here she is (bottom right corner) with other oblivious girlfriends (my daughter included top right, Kaylee top middle, and Maddie top left) looking entirely too happy. Do you see the girl at the bottom left? That's our Ms. Jenna. SHE just came back from school in England. What did we do wrong?!

And now, just like THAT, more of them are off on big time adventures and seeing new states and countries and colleges and meeting complete strangers. Strangers who will become friends. Friends who will not know the stories of personal sacrifice each of their mothers endured. They will be friends who are escaping the same stories and who will also feel no guilt. For Pete’s sake. New Zealand, I just hope you appreciate what were sending you. One of our sweetest, our best, and our brightest. Now don’t go finding her a husband down there and trying to keep her. We’re loaning her to you. Just like a library book she has to be returned. Promptly. You canNOT afford the fine.

Ms. Kelsey, you will be missed and you are loved. We will be watching Facebook for CONTINUOUS hour-by-hour updates the whole time you’re gone. You know this is required. Don’t make us get up and come down there!

And by the way, PLEASE take some close up pictures of just YOU! I realized when searching your Facebook for photos that this type of picture is almost non-existent. True to sweet form, you include your friends in nearly every photo.

Here’s Kelsey front and center with Ms. Jenna (right) and our Bo. And that’s how you’ll find nearly every picture of her – sharing the moment with friends.

You deserve every happiness, sweet girl. Fly off, have fun, grow, laugh, be a blessing, and when it’s time, we’ll all be waiting for you to come home and tell us about your adventures.

"The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say"
~ J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Fellowship of The Ring"

©Copyright 2010

Now THIS is a MAN Ad

I’m doing my level best to get around and visit each and every one of you. Just so you know, I first track back those who have commented because that’s only right, and I’m not through everyone yet. But then I have those blogs I like to drop into and who may read mine (like Pioneer Woman…..I’m just positive that she spends a good majority of her time hanging on my every word, or lack thereof), but they don’t comment. Or maybe they don’t even know I’m alive or only come once in a blue moon but I like to read ‘em anyway. All that to say, I’m behind but I’m gettin’ there.

Which brought me across my funny friend, Kate’s, blog. She writes the blog called Tatersmama and I know I’ve told you to visit her before but today? Well I had myself a howling good time reading her. She’s funniest when she’s just the “littlest” bit peeved. And I saw that coming through loud and clear in the post I just had to link you to. Here’s an excerpt:

Lookin’ For a Man

That's right.
I'm in the market for a new man.
Aged between 45 and 75, fit, and able to do small necessary chores around the house.
Must be a self-starter.

Must be able to cook the occasional hot meal, without reminding me of it for the next 50 years, and must be able to at least clear his own dishes off the table without being asked.

Clearing mine off the table when I get sidetracked bathing a child with spaghetti from one end to the other, and who's also painting the walls with spaghetti sauce, is highly desirable.
Stacking dishes is acceptable... but a bonus will be given for actually washing the dishes.
(actual bonus negotiable)

……….for the rest of this post visit Kate here:

Tatersmama's Take on Things

This is the Murphys Hotel in Murphys, California where our dear Kate comes from but for the last fifteen years she’s been a transplant to Australia. She dearly wants to come home as her son lives in Murphys. I’m thinkin’ if she gets this ad answered for somebody stateside it just might happen.

This is a feature I’d love to incorporate more – sharing things that moved me or made me split my seams. Why should I keep all the good stuff to myself?

PLEASE come back and tell me you loved her!

©Copyright 2010

Barrier Breakers

We’re still pluggin’ along over here. TWM has had mono but started on a new med today that is kickin’ it in the pants. Oh-yay, oh-yay. I can’t sit for long and I'll spare you riveting explanations. Consequently, the computer time is incredibly short, much like my attention span. Surgery is my next option and I’m not into next options. (Surgery for your attention span, Robynn? Who taught you to write? No one. Oh, that explains it.)

Bo is script writing and involved in a film project so between that and working, we don’t see her much. Bodie, the new puppy, is now housetrained because TWM and I have been largely housebound. Every silver lining has a cloud, or something like that.

But life is going on all around me and these two darling girls have been in the thick of it:

Rachael is on the left and Hannah is on the right. I got to know Rachael during the seven years I ran a camp for homeschooled girls, and Hannah is also homeschooled and is the sweet sister of one of the Wild Man’s best friends, Josh. Both of these lovelies just returned from the Dominican Republic. They traveled there with their gymnastics group of differently-abled members. This video presentation explains it beautifully and shows love-in-action. I’m very proud of the girls and of the whole team. Good job, dear hearts, and Rachael? You said it best on your Facebook update today when you quoted Martin Luther King: "Everyone has the power of greatness. Not for fame, but greatness. Because greatness is determined by service."

Want something to make you believe in the good that people are capable of? Treat yourself to an incredible seven minutes of your day. It’ll be time well spent. I’ll see you later. I have to stand up now.

©Copyright 2010

The Luckiest People on Earth

I am taking a blogging break while I beat back my house, try and get the Wild Man well, and enjoy my daughter before dorm time. I’m not writing much but hope to spend my time in Blogsville visiting YOU soon. In the meantime, here’s a little something to put my life, and maybe yours, in perspective.

Made ME laugh!

The Fast Lane, With Rest Stops

What a whirlwind life is at the moment. I know I’m alone here and the rest of the world has nothing to do. Isn’t that right, World?

But in one week’s time I went with Grizzly to Mineral King (exquisitely lovely National Park) and stayed at the Silver City Resort (shudder) which, as I said before, I will have to describe to you so you can be sure to schedule your hemorrhoid surgery and triple root canal instead of making reservations there this year. Beautiful scenery – but I suggest camping, even without a tent, versus the “Resort.” More later when the bed bug bites on my leg heal and the therapy helps me recover from the spiders that hung in webs over the toilets.

And by the way, you have to pass through the town of Three Rivers to get there. Three Rivers is lovely and you should schedule a vacation there. And someone who reads my blog lives in Three Rivers. I don’t know who it is but I see the town come in on my map reader. I wanted to stop and shout, “I’m in town! Let’s say hello!” but Grizzly thought that revealed too much about my faculties so I refrained. We did stop at Reimer’s (of course) and had a great lunch at the River Inn as we watched the Kaweah River roar past. I didn’t get to meet you, dear reader, but, HI!! Would you mind saying hello in a comment so we can be properly introduced? :)

Sunday was church, an ailin’ Wild Man (third sickness in three weeks), cake baking, and a LOVELY graduation party for our sweet little friend, Ariel, who is headed to college with honors, scholarships, and the love and respect of all of us who know and love her. What a GREAT kid who will do things in the world that will make a difference. She is on the far right in this picture and Bo is in the middle:

Monday it was off to the doctor with The Wild Man, then the lab, the x-ray dept., and the cemetery. No, he wasn’t THAT sick but I had to approve my stepfather’s gravestone which had arrived and it was right across from where TWM got his x-rays so, I mean, why not?

In the meantime, I texted my girlfriends who were in Pismo Beach and put them on warning that I might not make it there by Tuesday, as we’d planned. I couldn’t leave a sick kiddo. But he rallied the next day and I headed there Tuesday night.

These are girlfriends I’ve known since I was about four-years-old. We remember each other’s lives like family. We are forever bonded because we survived our families, which was nothing short of miraculous. And now when we get together we talk as only we can, and we cry, but mostly, we laugh and we laugh and we laugh because each one of us used humor to get out alive and all the world is now a stage. We throw out our one-liners and crack ourselves up to the point of wheezing. I don’t even remember what hit us so incredibly funny but I wasn’t there an hour before we were in danger of asthma attacks.

I made it home Thursday night and felt I owed you all SOME explanation for being the deadbeat blogging friend I am this week and not even stopping in to say hello but, I know you understand and you know I do, too. If you get the chance to go get bit by bed bugs, take care of sick children, attend parties, and laugh and cry with childhood friends, you BETTER skip me and go.

I insist. (Well, second thought.....I don’t insist you go to the “Resort”……..)

©Copyright 2010

Our New Little Baby

There will never be another JoJo. We miss her every day. But at only a year-and-a-half, Minky is part baby herself and misses her friend. The other night we were watching videos of Jo and she was barking playfully. Minky went and got her ball and then her blankie and looked around for Jo so they could play……:( We just about lost it. But it made us realize we – all of us – needed a puppy.

A sweet young friend (thank you, Kristy!) adopted her sister and told us about the pups. Mom is an award winning, papered and ported to the Midwest for breeding, red merle, Australian shepherd. She was winning Best-in-Show awards by eight-months-old. Dad? Well, dad was the bad-boy-next-door-neighbor opportunist who violated every principle, except nature. Near as the breeder could tell, he was a shepherd looking dog except with short fur. She said he had good lines. (I think she added that as a sort of consolation prize.)

Anyway, eight puppies later, one of them is now ours. It’s probably too much to hope that she will be as dainty and diminutive as her sweet and beautiful mother. But she has a great disposition and she and Minky are already best buds.

Minky’s training her to join in a game we play where we throw a ball to her at the top of the stairs and she tosses it back down to us. Now she’s throwing it to the puppy at the bottom and she’s catching it. :) (Was there any doubt that both dogs are extremely bright, precocious, and clever, and that their owner is modest, humble, and demure?)

This is our new “little” Bodie with our Bo:

She is CHUN-KAY. I just hope dad wasn’t a nice, smooth, sort of shepherd looking Bull Mastiff.

©Copyright 2010

(Please forgive the absence! We’ve been occupied with a puppy and a crazy get-a-way for Grizzly and I that can ONLY be blogged about. Be by to visit soon!)

Brought to You by the Letters L, M, N, O, and Urinate (Don't Say P)

In an effort to avoid offending anyone’s sensibilities, including my own, I decided to change the title of my last post wherein I used the word “peeing” in relation to a small child: six-year-old me. It seemed innocuous enough but my telepathy over the vapors some were experiencing from seeing the word in print kept me up half the night.

I struggled mightily to figure out what to call this bodily function and also wondered why it was such a big deal.

The word urinate is positively revolting. I once knew a woman who chided her daughter-in-law for asking her two year old if she needed to pee or poop. She insisted the proper terms were urinate and defecate and they should be used. Number one, (which raises a whole other issue), most kids couldn’t roll that off their tongue if they wanted to and, who would want to? And number two (don’t go there), it sounds like you’re swearing.

I don’t know a mother who hasn’t looked at her soggy-bottomed-toddler progeny and asked, “Have you got a pee-pee diaper?” But do not put that in print because something about it looks wrong. So we can say it, but we must not print it.

Should we say “Number 1?” Doesn’t that freak children out at sporting events when they hear an entire crowd shouting out, “WE’RE NUMBER ONE! WE’RE NUMBER ONE!?” Thankfully, most people don’t shout or advertise when they are, in fact, number two. That could scar kids for life.

And how did we get numbers for bodily functions anyway? I grew up with these terms. I never wanted to be in the company of others during counting exercises until I got to the number three. It seemed rather too close a look into my personal life to speak of the numbers “one” and “two” in front of people.

How about “potty?” That sounds mysteriously ambiguous. I know when I’m training a puppy I don’t want to know that it went potty on the floor. I want to know if it peed or pooped. That will help me make an immediate determination about who to delegate for clean-up duty. I’ll handle the pee. Cleaning up poop must always fall to your kids so you can stand back and lecture about the joys of pet ownership. And remind them they said they would do this when they begged for the puppy. No, succinct terms are important for guiding children properly and making them sorry you are not profoundly deaf when they swear their faithfulness.

And “poop patrol” is the hard science of removing unpleasantness from the backyard. Does anyone really want to be assigned to “defecation duty?” (Or is that “dooty?”)

Some people tell their pets to do their “business,” as if it’s actually a job. I’m heartily hoping “business” really has nothing to do with this activity. If you believe that it does, I’m not coming to your office.

I suppose we could use the default setting, “Going to the bathroom,” but again, when your small child says they have to go to the bathroom in a public setting, you want details. This could mean the difference between three toilet seat covers while they perch precariously on the front 1/2” of the revolting and disease-laden PUBLIC toilet, and the full-metal-jacket version involving FORTY seat covers, holding their hands so they don’t touch the seat – which they immediately do when you let go of their hands to help them dismount – and multiple prayers that they will survive the diseases they have now contracted which, but for divine intervention, will shorten their lives and yours and lead to a horrible death.

And when we are enjoying the company of others and we excuse ourselves to go to the bathroom or restroom, does anyone actually think others in the room believe we’re leaving to take a bath? Or a nap? And wouldn’t that be far stranger than the alternative?

“Excuse me but I need to use the restroom. I’ll be out in about 45 minutes and if I’m not, please knock and wake me up. I’m not going in there to, well, YOU know.”

We all know why we’re headed there. Everyone, everywhere, the world over, knows. Because it is what we all do several times a day. God created us to do it. He was not embarrassed. Why are we? In fact, there are a whole lot of words and descriptions in the Bible that would make the subject of a little girl losing control of her bladder (see yesterday’s post) look positively refined, but those who penned the words through divine inspiration did not shy away from telling it like it was, in graphic detail, and sometimes with words no longer heard in proper society (King James Version). I think our piety can be rather more sanctimony when we “strain at gnats and swallow camels.” (Matthew 23:24)

So this leaves us with the “number one” question: Do you really have a right to mention anyone’s pees and cues right out loud and advise them to mind them? And also, what do YOU call it?

Let’s get this potty started.

(I chose this post to run on the Tickled Pink No. 504 Main Fridays Blog Hop - I thought the tickled thing tied in nicely. ->-)

©Copyright 2010