organized chaos

Yesterday, while at the library, I scanned the new books briefly as I whizzed by with The Cuteness in the stroller.  My eyes snapped to attention towards a book I was surprised to see in our small town library.  Those guys are getting better about all that lately.

It was Skin by Ted Dekker.  I threw it in my stroller and went on my way.  When we got home I did some things, fed the gremlins (it was still before midnight), changed a few diapers, and then started the book.  Then I tried to sleep, but Commando Demando demanded I help her scoop her ice cream since it was too hard for her. So I got up, sour cheery attitude and all to perform my motherly duties.

Then I did some laundry, and actually matched socks and put clothes away, (usually a monthly occurance) and eventually made dinner.  After all that I settled down to read some more.  It was around 7:30.  I read and read, and I couldn’t stop.  It’s a sickness I have.  Obsession.  By 12:30 I was done with the whole book.  I’m still not sure how that happened.  We’re talking about a 395 pager here.  I knew I could read fast, but geez a Pete.  I got so sucked into the story I didn’t even realize how fast I was going.

I guess by now you know I’m going to say, “Go read this book.”  And you’ll probably say, “Why? Just what makes this book so gosh darned different than the other 50 books I know I need to read, but just don’t have time for?” (more…)

Reminder to those just joining “(Almost) Everything I know I Learned in East Texas”: to find the rest of this series, scroll down the sidebar to On The Brain, then click on East Texas.

One of our favorite things to do with Donnie was the beer run. Because we did live so far away from civilization our beer purchasing options were to hop in one of the motorboats and hit the little store across the lake several miles away, which we did on occasion. Or pile into the blue two toned Citation and follow the snakey highway twenty miles away to the other beer store located in one of the many obscure East Texas towns that never hosted a population more than 50 people, yet always had a beer store. To us, it wasn’t a liquor store, for all we knew, they sold only beer, and one other commodity that made our dangerous trip with Donnie worthwhile.

Beer Nuts.

We braved riding with my step dad and his brewsky buzz on that long Texas highway where goodness knows how many other step dads were buzzing and traveling the same as us. We braved his breakneck speeds, we braved his lewd jokes. We braved his sometimes bad moods, wishing he hadn’t taken us. We braved the Texas heat. We braved the occasional armadillo crossing the road while we traveled at Donnie’s breakneck speeds. For a new hip Michael Jackson record? Nah. For a bag of jelly beans? Forget about it. For a chocolate dipped ice cream cone? Never.

Beer Nuts.

A miniscule bag of crunch, a mix of sweet and salt that I would eat one at a time all the way back home.

The other night, I heard this:

Socrates: I really want to buy Spiderman 3 for my ps 2.

My Man: Man, you need to get Frogger or Pac Man or something cool like that.

Jackelope: I LOVE Pac man. He’s my favorite.

Socrates: You don’t even know what Pac Man is.

Jackelope: YES, I DO.

My Man: What does Pac Man look like, Jackelope?

Jackelope: *thinks with lips scrunched up*

Jackelope: Well.  He has some frog parts.  And they race.

Socrates: No, that’s Mrs. Pac Man.

Just reporting it as I hear it, folks.

Ok, not something I’d normally say, being 6 ft tall and all.  But while I was browsing through my new favorite site, Webshots, I came across a marvelous shot of this picture.  What do you think about this?  Leave a comment with your thoughts.

I love fun blog quizzes. I almost always take them when I see one posted on someone else’s blog, but hardly ever post them, because they are usually wrong. However, this one was spot on and confirms my theory that some men just get better with age.

Here’s what My Man rated, based on my answers of course. He’s at work crunching some numbers and can’t be bothered with this type of nonsense. (except when I email him, urging him to view the very important post I just put on my blog)

You scored as Darcy, Your husband/boyfriend is most like Mr. Darcy of Pride & Prejudice. A beloved hero, he may be quieter and sometimes mistaken as proud, but in reality he has the most thoughtful generous nature. He appreciates good character and is extremely devoted to those he cares for. As a couple, you enjoy the company of those closest to you and may engage in thought-provoking conversations. Darcy 100% Edward Ferrars 90% Col. Brandon 85% Edmund Bertram 80% Knightley 60% Captain Wentworth 40% Tilney 30% Who is Your Jane Austen Boyfriend/Husband? created with QuizFarm.com

I don’t know that he would’ve scored this early on in our marriage, but like I said, after 11 years, he has aged like a good wine.

I’m a lucky woman.

If ever I were to leave my family unexpectedly and unfortunately, there are a few things they would miss more than all the other nice things that make me a cool person.

Yes, there are a few invaluable skills I possess that keep me on the pedestal of the gods in my family’s eyes.

I thought I’d list them here. Including, but certainly not limited to.

Tuning the rabbit ears. We are one of the few families left on this green earth without cable. Not really, but it does seem like it on Wednesday night when I try to tune in one of our three channels in so we can watch Lost. Despite the fact that My Man believes I have the golden touch as far as these bad boys go, Wednesday nights are a major stress factor to me, as I desperately wish to watch Lost as clearly as possible in order to catch all the “Easter Eggs” they give us. But alas, it never comes in as I’d wish it, and I end up in knots, frothing from my mouth over the insanity of it all. I will miss Lost until it’s return next Jan/Feb., but I will not miss tuning it in.

The next wicked skill I possess is functioning the remote. I may have mentioned earlier that I purchased a really cheap version looking nothing like this one, innocently believing it would make life easier. How wrong I was. My Man can memorize the first hundred numbers in Pi, but the remote may as well be a Japanese riddle as far as he’s concerned. So, therein lies my value: changing the channel and fixing his flubs when he tries to.

My other skill concerning this appartatus would be finding it. While the first two skills have been passed on somewhat to my oldest gremlin, finding the remote has sadly not been. Probably because there is scientific evidence that males cannot find things. Even when the remote is notoriously hiding out in one of two places every time: in the couch cushions or under the lip of the couch on the floor.

    My dog might as well have been eating this all week because my next skill involves the cleaning of much excrement. I never said my skills were pretty. It doesn’t matter which end of the animal it comes out of, nobody in this house can clean it up as quickly and efficiently as I can. And they probably never will. Since it’s gross.

/>My Man likes to use pens at work. Often he gets a mark on his nice shirts. Never have they been as bad as in the picture there. But I can get them out, yes sir. And without any of that new fangled fancy pants stain remover.

Clogs of all kinds: beware. With the exception of last night, when my kitchen sink wouldn’t drain for the life of me, and we had to call over our Handy Man Neighbor, more on that later, I can usually unclog whatever. Bathtubs, toilets, sinks, vaccuum cleaners. I have a strange, but handy need to unclog things. I think I might actually enjoy digging all that hair and dirt out of a vaccuum tube. I think I might love listening to the clear whistle of water flowing down a drain where once it wouldn’t.

Now go forth and think about your own skills. Comment on them here. I’d like to know what makes you invaluable to your family.

Since the neighbor is over working on our clogged kitchen sink, I thought I would rerun an old post in the same vein from back in the day.

previously posted March 23, 2006

Good Morning, Citizens of the World.

You know, there’s nothing like starting out your day with a cup of coffee in one hand and a toilet plunger in the other. We’re talking invigorating energy here.

I’ve been at war with our bathtub going on months now. I thought the slow drain was a result of all my hair falling out and I imagined the narrow old drain just couldn’t take the consequences of my stress. So I got a nifty hair catcher that just plops right into your drain for a buck-fifty.

The next time I was in the shower, I popped that bad-boy right into the drain to catch my stress and turned the water on. In just a few minutes time the water level started to rise, and lifted the nifty hair catcher with it. No suction. Drats!

So my daily shower ritual began.

#1 Run the water to clean out previous hair and dirt left from the previous shower

#2 Run enough water to plunge, in hopes of opening the drain

#3 Plop in stress, errr, I mean hair catcher

#4 Start shower and get in

#5 Watch drain suspiciously for signs of suction

#6 No dice for the suction quotient

#7 Reach out for the plunger, placed conveniently by the bathtub

#8 Plunge the drain, with the shower still running mind you, for all I’m worth

#9 Stand back and watch suspiciously for drainage

#10 Rinse and Repeat until hair catcher sits in drain properly, then throw the plunger up against the wall because the whole process took so long, the hot water ran out.

I took the cover off the drain spout that sits on the wall of the tub and made a fascinating discovery. Old hardware that I suspect used to be part of a stopper system is mysteriously attached somewhere down in the drain, where I can’t see it. Unless I grow an eye that works like one of those mechanical probes doctors use in exploratory surgery. That would be so cool.

Due to my obsessive nature when it comes to these types of things, I’ve made the drain worse. And this morning, being the nice mom that I am, decided to gift my children with brand new light bulbs for their lamps and such in their bedrooms, and happened to peek in their bathroom.

Oh yeah. You guessed it. The sink was full of water. And not draining. No strong arming it this time. It’s a full-on clog. It could be marbles, beads, little tiny things only my kids would find. I’m told it was pieces of leaves, though I doubt the accuracy of that source.

By the way, have you ever tried plunging with one arm, while covering that other little hole with the other for maximum plunging? I think I just ripped my shoulder out of it’s socket.

The next part of (Almost) Everything I Know I Learned in East Texas is a series of short quirky pieces.  Instead of posting them all together, I’ll just do one at a time to stretch it out. 

And I also created a category for all this East Texas nonsense, so if you want to start at the beginning scroll down the sidebar, click on the white box under “On The Brain” and click on “East Texas” (more…)

Aside from the satisfaction of capturing a person in a drawing, there is the vanity factor.  If you can stand drawing a picture of yourself, from a photograph, mirrors are infinitely harder, it’s a good exercise in objectivity and you get the added bonus of changing little things you don’t like in the photo, but won’t change the overall drawing too much.  For example: Here’s a drawing I’ve been working on the last few days of me and The Cuteness.  Scroll down to see the actual photo. Click on the images to make them bigger.

And here’s the real thing

In this case, I just changed that stupid piece of hair right above my ear. It’s funny how something so small can make me hate how I look in a photo, but otherwise it’s a nice picture.  So I broke out the pencils and fixed that little thing.  Good times. 

What can I say, The Cuteness loves me so much. It’s mutual.

Commando Demando is part spider or something. She can climb up the doorway and hang for hours.

Thanks to my grandma for taking and sending these nice pictures to me. I love them.

Well, Hallie over at Confessions from the Rubber Room (I love that name,) has given me a tag assignment so here goes.

I guess there are rules to this tag and here they are in a nutshell: *7 random facts/habits, *post these rules, *tag 7 other people, *leave them a comment that they are tagged.

Ok, now to the nitty gritty.

In no particular order.

1. I worry incessantly about money. I suppose it comes from living in near poverty most of my childhood and having to fix beanie weenie for my brother and sister five nights a week while my mother worked her fingers to the bone. It’s an illogical worry since God has always provided what we need.

2. I want so bad to publish my writing for a living. I’ve written one fiction book already and tried to get it published, but it’s so hard. Now that I have another little one, time to write is scarce since you know, it involves quiet thinking time and gremlins are anything but quiet.

3. God saved me from a very sordid past involving the occult/satanism, abuse, drugs/alcohol, among other things. See my testimony page for more details. And for even more details, I’m happy to share, just not on here. Person to person is better for that sort of thing.

4. I have a not so secret dream to live in NW Washington State by the ocean. Yes, I know it rains alot there. I like rain, ok?

5. I hate, hate, hate to shop for anything, even if I did have the money to do so. I’m an In-And-Out-As-Fast-As-I-Can kind of gal.

6. I like change. I may have mentioned my habit of moving the furniture around in a previous post, but this tendency extends to many, many areas of my life, including but not limited to: haircolor, hairstyle, cooking habits, books I like to read, moving plants to different gardens in the yard, and I like to change my clothes every day.

7. I’m such an introvert. Put me in a crowd of people, like Sunday School, and I won’t share or talk and have a hard time looking at people in the eye. I think of cool things I could say, but never do it, because I am a chicken. I guess that’s why I write. It’s easier on my nerves.

There you go, take it or leave it. I don’t know if I even know of seven people to tag. I don’t get alot of comments from my readers on here for whatever reason and the few that have left comments have already done this thing. So Jenny and Elizabeth Joy, if you want to do this, have at it! And if I missed someone who would care to do this, leave me a comment if you post your 7 random things.

Occasionally I have a few days in a row where my brain is releasing the good stuff and I feel good about my life. Really good. Like you-can-spill-kool-aid-on-my-floor-good-and-I’ll-just-smile-and-wink-at-ya-good.

I thought I’d list a few things I really like about today.

1. The mild breeze blowing through my windows, therefore making the A/C unnecessary.

2. The smell of banana bread in my oven with a hint of maple flavor thrown in there just cause it’s that kind of day.

3. The fact that my daughter Commando Demando can be bought off to feed the baby for me for as little as a stack of white paper.

4. When I looked up at my mimosa tree, that I thought the ugly freeze distroyed for this year, I saw tiny tendrils of leaves starting to poke out. Better late than never!

5. My tomato plants from last year re-seeded themselves in several places and now I will be gifted with many yummy tomatoes this year.

6. A little foxglove made it’s way out of the ground despite the ugly late freeze, and was an extra pleasure since I forgot I planted it there last year. This happens a lot.

7. I’m drinking my coffee with real sugar because my stint into Splenda land left me with a bad aftertaste, and I’m not feeling guilty about it one bit.

8. The Cuteness is getting cuter everyday. Here’s a reminder.

9. I’ve got a strawberry pie in the fridge that I actually made from scratch, and it looks yummers.

And now I hear The Cuteness making cute noises on the monitor so this list will have to be complete for now. Have a blessed day and go make your own list. Just do it. Because I said so.

Ok. I’m breakin’ out the big guns people. Be forewarned.

One of my dear friends has five little gremlins of her own, close in age to my gremlins, so they all get together as often as possible and do gremliny things. But usually not as bad as in that movie.

Anyway.

She’s had the misfortune of having SRS called on her several times, courtesy of some nosy neighbor who has chosen to target my friend’s family for whatever reason. And now her youngest gremlin has had the misfortune of breaking three limbs in his short two years of life, two of which occured in the last couple of months. Poor little guy.

So this time, the hospital called it in. The agent ended up calling my friend’s husband after meeting with her and proclaiming that she was incapable of handling five gremlins. So we don’t know what’s going to happen at this point.

Here’s my thing: I have four gremlins. Half the time, I’m unsure I can handle them. Some mothers with one gremlin will admit that on bad days, she probably doesn’t know how much more she can take.

I know these agencies are there for a good reason. I grew up with abuse. I’ve known others who were abused worse than me. These people do have a place.

But some kids get hurt. A lot. Jackelope is one of them. He is the King of Head Injuries. And what about the time I caught Socrates, the NINE YEAR OLD, spanking his brother and sister out on the sidewalk like he was their dad or something? If we had nosy neighbors, they would’ve surely called that in and I’d be in the same situation as my friend.

Moms go through enough guilt. We get depressed, we yell, we smack little hands a little too hard sometimes. We feed our kids popcorn for dinner on occasion. (Maybe that’s just me). We prop a bottle with a blanket instead of holding the baby. But we’re still good mothers.

As if most of us don’t carry around a bad little voice in our heads, nagging at the myriad of things we know we need to improve as mothers. As if most of us don’t worry incessantly that we are gearing our gremlins up for years of therapy. Then some government official calls up our husband and proclaims, “I don’t think she can handle her own children.”

As mad as that would make me, it would make me equally insecure. Because I’ve probably already been beating myself up enough.

I won’t even mention the little 5 year old girl that runs up and down our block with no adult supervision. Or the 7 and 8 year old kids running around Wal Mart without their parents, where anyone could snatch them up. Or the many,many other cases like these that never get called in.

Some people get targeted. I hate it. But mostly I hate when a good mother gets one more burden to carry around, that should never be hers to carry.

I finally got on the schedule to do some of my music at the church we’ve been going to for a couple years now.  This is something I did alot of in our old church, but since the move, I’ve started working part time at night and I put off the music.  Then I got pregnant and I put off the music for awhile.

Well, the music will not be put off for long, and I found myself getting the nudge from above (so to speak, it could have just been my own itchy fingers) to get up there and share the songs I’ve written.  So toward the end of my pregnancy I did what I don’t normally do when I’m pregnant…I got in front of people and sang one of my songs.

It went well and I was encouraged to do more, but I said I’d probably wait till after the baby, and so I did.  This morning I was scheduled to play and sing another song. I knew I’d be nervous.  It doesn’t matter how many times I get up there, I always feel like barfing right before I go up.  My hands shake, which doesn’t seemingly help on the piano, and more often than not I psych myself out to the point of feeling like I’m going hoarse.

I do have a weaker set of vocal chords.  I’ve had some nodules and my voice has very little stamina.  But I figure God gifted me with the ability to write music and sing, so I’d probably better go ahead despite myself.

Of course this morning my voice seemed hoarse; I think 5 hours of sleep will do that.  And during my warm up before we left, it was so bad I had a minor freak out.  But experience has showed me to trust time to take care of certain things.

We sang a few songs before I was to be up front, and things still didn’t look any better.  My stomach started to lurch as usual.  If anything else, I don’t want my voice to be a distraction from the words that I’m singing.

Our Sunday School lesson was about God using our weaknessess and being honest about being weak.  Well I know it and am the first to admit it.  

I got up there, sat down behind the piano, said my little thing about the song and why I wrote it, turned around and my fingers sort of took off before I had time to think.

This has happened many times.  Somehow God takes over the situation and while I’m doing my thing I’m actually thinking in some other part of my brain, “Geez, where’s my hoarse voice?  Where’s my shaking fingers?”

Sure, I messed up a couple of times, but even when I think I’ve done a horrible job, it turns out someone was brought to tears, or they were touched by the message.  Somehow through my weakness, God has used me to touch other’s lives, and that’s very humbling to me. 

originally posted May 15, 2006

Here’s #5 of (Almost) Everything I Know I Learned in East Texas.  For your convenience I’ve added a category for East Texas.  So if you want to start at the beginning, scroll down the sidebar till you get to “On The Brain” and click the little white box.  Then click “East Texas.”  And the latest posts are from top to bottom.  (more…)

You know, even movies with raunchy jokes can have a good message. Hear me out.

Last night, My Man and I watched Click with Adam Sandler and while yes, the flick was laced with innuendos and the like, it drove home a point for me.

The main character Michael gets a hold of a universal remote from this guy named Morty who’s hiding out in the very back of Bed, Bath and Beyond. He works in the “Way Beyond” Department. And I have to say, Christopher Walken plays this Morty character and we were bustin’ a gut laughing at his antics through the whole movie.

On a side note: I got one of those universal remotes for 4 or 5 bucks at Wal mart because I found I couldn’t grow a third arm to wrestle all three of our previous remotes. Ever since then My Man complains that it’s too complicated. I try to gently admonish that each button has it’s own function, therefore you don’t need several remotes, but to no avail. Life does imitate art in this case.

Which brings me back to the movie. Michael finds that his remote does some special stuff, one of which gives him the option to fast forward through whatever he wants. He chooses showers, traffic, arguments to name a few. But ahhh, there’s a catch. A couple of them.

Number one, the remote is smart, in that it will remember what you have a tendency to fast forward and will automatically do so the next time you’re confronted with that situation.

Number two, when you fast forward any time of your life, you will have been on autopilot throughout the scenario, whether it be five minutes, or a whole year. You won’t remember conversations or any pertinent details of your life.

Now, here’s the kicker. I do that autopilot thing way too much. No, I don’t have a neon blue remote, graciously bestowed to me by Christopher Walken. He freaks me out a little. But if there’s anything I’m good at, it’s autopilot. Ouch. Becoming way too involved in my stuff and my own thoughts to really connect with my kids all day.

And I’m sure I’ve done it to My Man and to various people in my extended familia. And the consequence of such a thing is to look back after a time and lament over the fact that while time goes faster and faster, you’ve just missed things that you can never get back.

All raunchy jokes aside, this was the thrust of the movie. I’ve noticed Adam Sandler doing these sort of things in his movies lately. 50 First Dates is another example. Something that makes you think at the end.

I’m certainly thinking. I’m thinking I need to get my keister off this internet and connect with my gremlins a little more. When I’m cleaning or cooking, I need to get out of my “zone” and talk to them instead of exploding when their voices bounce off of me like pesky insects. I need to look at them when they’re telling me about “Juney” the June Bug they found outside, and give Commando Demando a kiss for every thirty love notes she gives me a day.

And I need to do these things because in a blink of an eye, my life will be over. Because that is the way of things. And I want to have relationships to show for it.

My Sunday started off groggily as usual after my shift Saturday night. My gremlins brought me their loverly handcrafted gifts and cards. Then I squeezed my post partum self into some non-postpartum clothing and it almost ruined my morning.

Until I got to church and the man who recently lost his wife and one of his children to a car accident came for the first time since it happened. On Mother’s Day.

He and two of his kids sat a few rows ahead of us, and through every mention of the word “Mother” I cringed inside for them. Through every word of the praise songs we lifted to God, I wondered the special significance for him. Without knowing he would be there, the person who chose the songs for today didn’t realize the hand of God would be working through her. We sang words like, “Blessed be Your name, when the road’s marked by suffering,” and “I want to touch You, I want to see Your face,” and I wondered if he was thinking about how his precious wife was actually seeing and touching the face of Jesus, maybe even as we sang.

I saw him wipe his eyes throughout the singing and it just about did me in. I don’t like to cry in public, not because of pride, but because I am a deep well, when started, I might not be able to stop.

Then the teens, who run the service for Mother’s Day, passed out flowers to all the mother’s at the end of the service. And before they were done, a couple women took their flowers and handed them to the man’s children. Then every one of the teens took a flower to the family. I pretty much lost it then. And I think every one else did too.

And I’ve been like that the rest of the day. I can’t get them out of my head. And I don’t think I should. God has softened my heart significantly as I’ve gotten older and while I do feel more pain that way, it’s enabled me to lift up heartfelt prayers for people I don’t even know.

On a day when we celebrate mother’s, we should remember those without one. Especially ones who weren’t ready to let go. They are precious to our Father’s heart.

Geez a Pete, has it been a week already?  I must be stuck in a time vortex, because every week seems to go faster and faster.

Anyway, here ya go, East Texas fans.  As usual, here are the links to the rest:

#0, #1, #2, #3

(more…)

You’d think I would’ve made a homeschool lesson out of it. The cat box, that is.

It was time to wash it out. It stunk so bad, that when I emptied the good litter on top and uncovered the peed-on litter at the bottom, the stench made my eyes water and sting. To me, this means breaking out the bleach. To me, bleach is the answer to many, many of lifes little problems.

Except I guess my brain wasn’t turned on as usual, and when I poured the bleach into the empty cat box, enough of the ammonia laced urine was left to cause it to bubble from a chemical reaction.

Instantly my brain came on, and I remembered the time I tried to clean my bathtub with a mixture of bleach and ammonia, and almost darn near killed myself with the fumes.

I quickly poured the cat box concoction down the drain, already detecting a slight burn in the back of my throat.

However, I did not give up. I used bleach water to mop the floor where the cat box lives. I will prevail. I will have cleanliness in all my corners.

Cat Box: 2 points

Carrie: 1.5 points