That's Just What Day It Is

I was so very sad on Monday.  The depth of it surprised me.  Last year, when I looked into my future and saw this day coming, I saw freedom, excitement, new adventures.  I looked into my crystal ball and saw a clean house, more income and, of course, cuter shoes.  I saw years worth of "to do" projects being marked off my list.  But, instead, Monday came far too quickly.  I walked down the noisy, colorful hallway full of children dressed in new outfits.  I entered a cheerful room where a few children were sitting at tables coloring giant letter A's with red and blue crayons, and tried to smile pleasantly at the woman who would be taking over my job.  I didn't quite succeed at the smile.  I kissed my tow-headed girlie, told her she was going to have so much fun and that I would see her in just a few hours.  Without even looking at me she said, "I know, Mama", picked up her own crayon and started to work.  I held up my head and bravely left the room.  My breath was coming in short, shallow gasps and I can only hope my tears didn't scare the little kids still headed toward the classroom.  I didn't have a little hand to hold when I left the school building that day.  No one needed my help crossing the street or buckling their seatbelt.  No one asked me if we could have ice cream for breakfast.

I cried in the car.

My best friend dropped everything and met me at McDonald's for coffee.  I told him how embarrassed I was at my public emotional display at the school.  

Then, I cried in the booth at McDonald's.

I told him I hadn't cried at all when I took the other kids to their first days of school and that I couldn't believe I was turning into a complete basket case over leaving my last baby at Kindergarten.  Then he held my hand and said to me, "She is your last baby and today you left her at school for the first time.  That's just what day it is today.  It's ok to be sad."  He made me feel better.  That's one of the reasons I married him.

I went to the store to do my regular weekly grocery shopping and as I walked in I heard a little girl ask her mommy if she could ride the 50 cent pony.

And I cried.

I cried when I walked down the aisle with the cotton balls and saw a mother getting frustrated with her son for pulling all the qtips off the shelf.

I cried when I passed a woman helping her elderly grandmother reach the canned soup.  I cried when I saw a little girl run past the end of the coffee aisle.  And I cried at the checkout counter when the cashier asked me how I was doing today.

That's just what day it was on Monday.

Today is Thursday.  That's just what day it is today.

First day of school, August 15, 2011.

Mattie, 16, drove herself to school! 11th grade, Bauxite H.S.

Jenna, 11,successfully opened her locker! 6th grade, Benton           Middle School

Elijah, 10, 4th grade, Angie Grant Elementary School

Daisy, 8, 3rd grade, Angie Grant Elementary School

Ruby, 5, Kindergarten, Angie Grant Elementary School

Change Kind of Stinks Sometimes

Reader Alert: This entry is destined to be a downer.  I'm feeling a bit lousy at the moment and have a nagging desire to throw a pity party, so pull up a glass of wine, or whine, and come drown in my sorrows.  


I was raised by a stay-at-home mother, but she never really talked to us about why she chose to stay home.  She was just...there.  I never questioned why my friends' mothers worked and she didn't.  I didn't think about it at all.  And I didn't really appreciate my mother, either.  


Jeff and I got pregnant with Mattie the summer right after I graduated from college.  I turned 23 exactly 1 week before she was born.  Up until the very moment the doctor laid her slimy body on my chest, I fully intended to be a working mom.  I had a full-time job as a caseworker for families with developmentally delayed children ages 0 to 3 years old.  Jeff wasn't quite finished with school.  For that time in our young married lives, I was the (measly) breadwinner.  It didn't matter that something broke loose in my heart when Mattie was born.  It didn't matter that the thought of leaving my precious baby girl at a day care center made me want to throw up.  It didn't even matter that my shirt instantly became soaked with breast milk at work when I heard another mother's baby cry.  We had a house payment.  And utility bills.  And a truck payment.


Fast forward 5 years to the birth of our 2nd child, Jenna.  Jeff had his degree and had been working in ministry for several years.  I wanted to quit working and stay home with the kids full time.  We had some pretty tough conversations about cutting our family income in half, oh, and by the way, I wanted to try homeschooling.  But we did it.  I got homeschooling out of my system after 4 years, but I've been a stay-at-home mom for the last 11 years.  Sometimes I loved it, other times I hated it.  Sometimes I felt like I was important to my family, other times I felt like a wad of chewed-up gum.  Every day for the past 11 years Satan told me I was being selfish and lazy by staying home and that I was putting too much financial burden on my husband.  However, I have always been confident that it was the best choice for our family.  Since Mattie and Jenna, we have added Elijah, Daisy and Ruby to the mix and in just a few very short weeks, my baby Ruby will start Kindergarten.


And the door is about to slam shut on the baby years.  No more toddlers straddled across my hip as I stand in line at the grocery store.  No yellow spit-up stains on every single one of my shirts.  No more diving into a kid's mouth to fish out June bugs or dog food or safety pins.  No more diapers or pull-ups or plastic mattress covers.  Sippy cups, monstrous diaper bags and strollers have all been sent to Goodwill.  I will forever have Goodnight Moon memorized, but the kids don't request it at bedtime as often as they used to.  And I am not sad about it.  Not really.  Except maybe I got a little sad just now when I typed it out in cold, hard letters and then had the nerve to read it back to myself.


The truth of the matter is that I don't have time to be sad about my babies growing up.  There is softball practice and slumber parties and homework and they broke their bedroom door off the hinges...again.  Will someone please explain to me why there is a cat handcuffed by his neck to the leg of the table?  I take a deep breath and know that I am blessed because this is the way it is supposed to be.  The noise, squabbles, laughter, screaming -both happy and angry- all signs of life.  A life that I am glad to have.  I can't be sad that Mattie only has 2 years left before she leaves for college because she is learning to drive and taking her SAT's.  I can't morn the fact that Jenna is finished with elementary school because she is learning locker combinations and wearing mascara.  Elijah has outgrown another pair of jeans, but he held the door open for me today.  Daisy graduated out of her car booster seat, but she still delights in making mud pies and playing in the rain.  Ruby is leaving me for big school in a few weeks, but she is learning to read and got her very own library card.


Life in motion is a good thing.  It's just that it's changing right now, right before my eyes, and sometimes I wish it didn't have to change so much.  or so quickly.  When Ruby starts school, I will be going to work.  I'm going to ease into it with substitute teaching, but I'm a little anxious about how I'm going to handle it all without melting my family's faces off, Indiana Jones style, when the pressure starts to get to me.


Tomorrow, Jeff and I will celebrate our 19th wedding anniversary.  I'd be lying if I said we haven't had times of wondering if we made the right decision; that I've never been selfish or irrational; that he's never been crass or unreasonable.  All of those things have happened, and more.  But I love him a lot.  There's no one else I'd rather walk through this life with.  I think we'll stick it out together a little longer.  You know, until death do us part.  The end.

Hippy Dippy

In July, Jeff and I will have been married for 19 years.  In that time, we have purchased only 1 new car:  a 2001 Hyundai Santa Fe.  When we bought it, we only had 2 kids, so the 5 passenger capacity was perfect.  3 years later, our 6 member family had outgrown the car, and we discovered a little thing called "depreciation" and how difficult it can be to sell a car when you are upside down in the loan.  Well, it all worked out fine for us, but we decided to never go in debt for a car again.  And we haven't.  We are also anti-minivan.  Since we made our decision, we've "murdered" 3 Suburbans and a station wagon.  BTW, when I say "murder" I mean that we blacked them out...black paint, black rims, as-dark-as-is-legally-possible window tint, etc.  I was kind of going for the "soccer mom, but you better not cut me off in traffic" look.  When I drove the Suburbans, friends joked about my "urban assault vehicle" and when I drove the wagon, my kids' friends asked them why we drove that "funeral" car.  It's fun driving unique cars.  People honk and wave when they see you coming and I've never lost my car in a parking lot.

On December 15, 2010, the same day my oldest daughter got her driver's permit, she murdered my "murdered" wagon.  And when I say "murder" I mean she used it to render a semi truck undriveable. My awesome station wagon with the LT1 Corvette motor, now sits in a scrap yard, being stripped one piece at a time for its few usable parts, waiting for the day it will be crushed and melted.  A moment of silence, please.

We had the thing on full coverage with the insurance company, so with a check for $3200 in our hands, Jeff and I had a meeting at Starbucks to discuss what our next vehicle would be.  Even though I loved our Suburbans (we'd had 4, if you count the one we only owned for 6 days before it was stolen and led police on a high speed chase through Los Angeles), but Jeff was getting bored with them.  I loved the wagon, but was often frustrated with its lack of cargo space.  We had to use all the seats for strapping in kids, so when I went to the grocery store, we had to stuff bags in floor boards around little feet.  You can imagine how poorly my eggs and produce fared on the way home.  We were against driving a minivan, but the idea of a full size van was appealing.  We knew we couldn't just buy one and drive it as-is... that would be dull and normal.  I told Jeff that I wouldn't murder it like we've done in the past, because that would be too "A Team".  I suggested that we could hippy it, thinking he would laugh off the idea.  Instead, he got a gleam in his eye and said, "Mystery Machine?"  To which I responded, "I SO get to be Daphne."  

The following is a look at the transformation of our current vehicle.

We spent a lot of time looking at conversion vans, but because of the seating arrangement with 4 captains chairs, they only hold 7 people.  That's fine for us, but I really like to let my kids invite friends to come home from church and school sometimes, so I was hoping for a vehicle that would hold at least 8.  With that in mind, we started looking at 12 and 15 passenger vans, but the ones we could afford (and still have enough money left to "modify" it) had looming transmission problems.  The ones in better shape left us no money for "personalizing" the vehicle.

About the time we thought we were going to have to go back to the drawing board, Jeff came across a Craig's List ad for a 3/4 ton van owned by the Conway School District.  We drove the 45 minutes out to go look at it, and it turned out to be exactly what I wanted!  (Granted, my version of "perfect" is a little off-kilter from the average soccer mom's definition of perfect.)  It had been used as a maintenance vehicle, rather than a transportation vehicle, so the passenger seats had been removed and replaced by metal utility shelves.  They had obviously been sweating pipes with a torch inside the van as there were more burn holes in the headliner than there was actual headliner.  The flooring was filthy black rubber with multiple colors of paint spilled and dried all over it.  On the outside, it was an ashy red all over.  But, it was mechanically sound, had front and rear working air conditioners, and they only wanted $1800!  See, I told you:  PERFECT!

All of this happened over the Christmas break and with school starting back in January, we needed to have a car that would haul all the kids.  So the first thing we had to do was find seats for it.  This required several trips to several different junk yards.  At the first junk yard, I found the seats I wanted for the front.  I know that the high backed front seats are supposed to be a little safer, but (being a shorty) I always loved the low backed seats in my dad's 1967 Volkswagon Bug that I drove (and ultimately rolled over in a ditch) in high school.  We found these seats:

                                            

In this van:

I had so much fun prowling around the scrap yards with my husband and helping him pull the parts we wanted out of other wrecked vehicles.  It was like extreme recycling and became quite a sport for me!  Even though it was fun, I still wanted my teenager to suffer a little.  After all, it was her fault that we were having to endure the inconvenience of putting together another family vehicle.  So, I made her go to the scrap yard with her daddy on a cold January afternoon in search of passenger seats.  My plan backfired.  It turns out she's related to me and enjoyed the junk yard as much as I did.

Mattie and Jeff scored big on that trip!  They found a wrecked Dodge van with all the seats in perfect condition.  Our van is a GMC Rally, but careful measuring ensured that all but the longest back seat would fit perfectly into our van, and Jeff happens to be quite a good welder, so a few nips and tucks would make the back seat fit.

Technically, there's not any purple on the Mystery Machine, but Daphne's clothes are always purple, so I argued that if Daphne was designing the Mystery Machine, there would unarguably be PURPLE.  And since "I SO get to be Daphne", I decided that my seats needed to be recovered in lavender vinyl.  

To make the reupholstery less expensive, we stripped the old covers off ourselves.

Additionally, we decided it would be easier for our kids to irritate and kick each other if we redesigned the seating arrangement.  So we turned the front row completely around so it faces backwards.  We left the back row facing forward.  And Jeff used his welding torch to shorten a bench seat and we turned it sideways against the windows.  (The passenger seating now resembles a letter "C".)  

When we went to see our upholsterer, Jerry Mann, he had a remnant of the perfect shade of purple, but not enough to cover the entire group of seats.  I did some thinking and reminded Jeff of a booth we sat in when we were eating at an A&W's in Oklahoma.  It had a wavy line stitched into it with one color on top and another on bottom.  We presented the idea to Jerry and he said he could do it!  Here's what we ended up with:

We also had Jerry help us redo the burned headliner and Jeff installed a row of rivets right behind the driver and shotgun seats so we can eventually hang a beaded curtain.  I know!  Fun!

It's hard to tell from the pictures how bright the colors are on the interior, but we also went to Home Depot and picked out a lime green house carpet in the tallest knap we could find.  It's not quite a "shag", but it's pretty tall.

Then we were finally ready to work on the outside of the van!  But first we had to do all the boring prep stuff.  Sanding.

And more sanding.

Followed by more sanding.

And did I mention sanding?

This is 10 year old Jenna.  She wanted in on the action, too!  And this is a cool picture she accidentally snapped while she was taking a picture of her dad.

Then I got to do my very favorite thing in the world...BONDO!  Followed by (sigh) more sanding.

We wiped down the whole exterior with TSP to remove the dust and oil, and set the kids to work wiping down the interior.  (We felt like it was important for the whole family to get involved.)

And then Jeff started painting!  Remember, Daphne (AKA Me!) is designing this machine, so the first color to go on was PURPLE!

The next step was for Mattie to use her steady hand and artistic flare to draw the design for the next layer of paint so we could tape it off and spray.

She was going to free-hand the entire design, but the pencil wasn't working well and a marker would have been too difficult to cover with paint.  So we put on our thinking caps again and came up with another idea.  Mattie drew her design on a clear sheet of plastic.  We went up to the church and dug around in an old storage closet and found an overhead projector.  We waited until it got nearly dark outside....

and projected the image onto the van!  That's our friend, Mike Kirby, who came over and helped us tape off the design.

Look at the detail Mattie put into the design.  If you look at it one way, you see whimsical hearts, but if you look closer, you can see that it's two ocean waves!

The next morning, Jeff added the green.

It was so exciting to remove the tape and see the design! 

Jeff thought I was a little bit silly for wanting a crown design on the hood, but, hello!  Daphne designed this, remember?!

By the afternoon, we were ready for the sea foam!

And, presto!  Here is my finished ride!

oops... still have to reattach the side view mirrors!

Jeff Medders is a genius with spray paint!

Mattie is magical with a pencil!

Special thanks to Mike and Jerry!!  You guys are awesome!

And I get credit for being more than willing to drive this thing all over town!

Friends Are Friends Forever

I had absolutely no desire to go to my 20th high school reunion last year. Don't get me wrong, I was proud to be a North Mesquite Stallion.  I was proud to play on the basketball and volleyball teams; proud to sing in the choir; proud to work in costuming for the drama department.  But, in the end, I always felt anonymous.  At the time, North Mesquite was one of four high schools in that city that sits just on the east side of Dallas, Texas.  All of the high schools were large, but North was the biggest, so those of us who were supposed to be freshmen in 1986-1987, were sent to Poteat High School to be Pirates while the school district worked on redrawing boundary lines.  Sophomore through Senior years, we were shipped to North.  It really wasn't that big of a deal.


I was born in Oklahoma, the oldest of four children, but my parents moved us to Mesquite, Texas, before I was a year old, so I've always considered myself a Texan (though I am required by law to shout "Boomer Sooner" with much enthusiasm at certain times of the year).  I loved Cowboy Hat Day in elementary school; looked forward to standing in awe at the feet of Big Tex at the state fair every year; will never forget when my mother took me and my older cousin Chad to Austin to see the State Capitol where we stood under that giant echoing dome and stared up in amazement as the tour guide told us that the gold five-pointed star fastened to the ceiling high above our heads was 8 feet across.  I remember how my heart ached when our family went to San Antonio to tour the Alamo and I learned about the brave stand taken against Santa Anna, where only one man was cowardly enough to step across the line drawn in the sand and chose to go home, while the others shouted, "Remember the Alamo" with their dying breath.  Even though this red head's skin burns at the very thought of the beach, I loved our trips to Galveston, Corpus Christie, and Padre Island.  Back closer to home, I couldn't wait for camping trips to the lake near Tyler or Texoma.  I loved the Mesquite Rodeo, and even embraced country music for a while... but I'm over that now.


I started Kindergarden at C.A. Tosch Elementary in Mesquite, and attended there until the Christmas break of my 4th grade year.  Dad worked for an oil company in Dallas, and happened to get a salary bump at the same time my mother was getting tired of living across the street from McDonald Middle School, so they built a new house in the neighboring town of Sunnyvale, where the lots were bigger, the population was smaller, and the air tasted cleaner.  


The entire student population of Sunnyvale, which consisted of grades K through 8th, was housed in a single building.  The original one room school house still stood in the parking lot, complete with hitching posts.  By that time it was just used for storage, but we would sit out there during recess and I would peek through the dirty windows trying to imagine what it was like to have school in there back when the teacher traveled on horseback and the students walked 5 miles to school in the snow, uphill both ways.


I was placed in Mrs. Patrick's 4th grade class.  It was January and halfway through the year, so even if I wasn't the only new kid to move to Sunnyvale during the 4th grade, to me, it felt like I was the only new kid ever, in the history of Sunnyvale Township.  On top of that, the class was very full and there wasn't a desk for me, so I had to sit at a table in the front of the classroom next to the chalkboard.  And I was a red head.  Have I mentioned that before?  I hated having red hair.  My skin was pale and freckled and when I got embarrassed, I turned as red as a beet.  So, I sat up there glowing red while Mrs. Patrick instructed the cutest boy in class (Jason Andrews) to help me gather the books I would need.  Just my luck.


It didn't take long for things to change for me, though.  At recess on my first day, Christy Green and Jason Kane took me on as their project and by the end of that school year, I felt like I had always been there.


My memories of the years I spent in Sunnyvale, are extremely vivid.  I remember Mrs. Anderson giving us a talk about hygiene in the 5th grade and telling us that when we shampooed our hair, we should rub our scalp with the balls of our fingers instead of scratching it with our fingernails.  I remember being disappointed when I first noticed that Ms. Fryer was wearing eyeliner instead of her lashes being as thick as I thought they were.  I remember how cold and delicious the water from the fountain tasted after an hour of playing basketball with Coach Tarbet in the unairconditioned gym.  I remember the chipped brown paint on the inside of the stall in the girls bathroom where I used to hide when I lied to my teachers and told them I needed to "go", but what I really needed was a minute or two to collect and quiet my thoughts.  


Before I learned to articulate and distinguish the difference, I would have called myself a "shy" kid.  Now I know that there is a difference between being shy and being introverted.  As it turns out, I was extremely introverted.  There was an entire world of conversation, activity, analyzation, and self-evaluation that existed in the realm of my brain.  I felt pretty bad about myself.  I thought I was ugly because I wasn't as pretty as Michelle Rains.  I thought I was stupid because I wasn't as smart as Becky Ramsey.  I thought I was frumpy because I wasn't as stylish as Angelique Hobson.  I thought I was dull and uninteresting because I wasn't as peppy and cute as Paige Burkhalter.  I thought I was a complete failure at the thing I loved most (athletics) because I couldn't beat Tysha Renfro at anything.  I thought my teachers didn't like me because I wasn't asked to be on the annual staff.  


Even though I realize other people may not have seen me the way I saw myself, this was the reality in which I functioned because it was the world inside my head.  I'm not sure how much of my inside world seeped into the real world through my behavior, so I really don't know what people think when they are recalling memories of their own childhood when my path happened to intersect theirs.  If they think of me at all.


The Sunnyvale years ended when our little class of 28 (or so) eighth graders graduated in 1986.  It was a grand affair, complete with tuxes, fancy dresses to rival Scarlet O'Hara, limousines, and even a Rolls Royce.  After that, Sunnyvale kids were swallowed up into the Mesquite school system, where most of us graduated from North in 1990, amongst a class of over 600 Seniors. (No wonder I felt anonymous.)


Maybe that's why I got so nervous this last Saturday night right before I walked up the stairs to the patio at Primos Grill on Lake Ray Hubbard to join the Sunnyvale Junior High Class of 1986 25 Year Reunion.  But, just like back in the fourth grade when I only felt like a stranger until recess, my friends came through for me again.  15 seconds after reaching the top of the stairs and glancing around at familiar, yet changed faces, I was being embraced by Monti Motley, followed shortly thereafter by hugs from 10 of the best friends I've ever known.  (Karen Yarborough, Erica Evans, Valerie Kimball, Brian Bell, Ami Morris, Jason Andrews, Todd Neece, Connie Bennett, Deborah Weber, and even Coach and Mrs. Hounsel)  And by the time we left at 11pm, I knew that it didn't really matter what happened back then, what mattered was that we went through it together.  At 39 years old, we almost all have a few scars of one kind or another, but I think everyone is more beautiful now than ever.  And the spouses who braved the event have been thoroughly and completely adopted by the Class of 1986.  I love you all so much and look forward to seeing you again (along with those who couldn't make it this time)!

Failure

Today, I failed my Kindergarten entrance exam.  Actually, a good Kindergarten teacher wouldn't use a discouraging word like "fail".  What she really said was, "You've got some work to do to get caught up by August, but you can do it!"


When our first child was 4 years old, Jeff and I did some research on the local schools and ended up making the decision to homeschool Mattie.  To make sure I wasn't getting in over my head,  I started her on a combined pre-school kindergarten curriculum when she was 4, thinking that if it didn't go well I could still enroll her in school at age 5.  I was still a Type A back then.  We schooled 4 hours a day.  She could read before she turned 5.  She could tell you about the Wright Brothers.  She could tell you the difference between a male clam and a female clam.  She took gymnastics, ballet and art lessons. We went to the Fort Worth library one week, the Fort Worth Zoo the next week, and the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History the next week, then started over again. She was my only child.  Life was our classroom.


Fast forward to the summer before her 4th grade year.  We had 4 kids and I was still a Type A.  It drove me nuts when the little kids needed help wiping while I was trying to do a language arts lesson with Mattie.  It drove me nuts when Mattie needed me to explain long division AGAIN when I was trying to teach Jenna the alphabet.  I was depressed about leaving Colorado.  We were crammed into an extremely over-priced apartment.  All that combined led me to make the decision to put Mattie in public school in the 4th grade.  In the Los Angeles Unified School District... the Devil himself ran that school district, according to my hard-core homeschool friends.  They thought I was going to the dark side.  Mattie was so excited!  I was a wreck.  I knew (still know) what the general public thinks about homeschooling families.  Any test she failed, any concept she hadn't grasped would be a reflection on me and my choice to teach her myself. 


I passed 4th grade with flying colors.  In fact, just about the only thing 4th grade did for her was nailing down long division.


Both of my sisters are teachers.  Both of my parents have taught at the collegiate level.  I understand that state standardized tests are more a reflection of whether or not the teacher taught what they were supposed to, in a manner that enables the students to comprehend the subject, more than it reflects on the intelligence of the individual student.  I share this information with my kids when they come home from school telling me how wigged out their teachers are in the weeks before the tests are to be administered.  It helps them relax and do their best because they love their teachers and they want their teachers to score well. :)


Fast forward to today.  Mattie is finishing up her sophomore year of high school.  Jenna is finishing 5th grade.  Elijah 3rd.  Daisy 2nd.  Mattie is in a couple of honors classes.  Jenna is every teacher's dream.  Elijah is my smarty-pants GT kid.  Daisy's only problem is that she thinks everything requires her input and commentary... she talks too much.  And Ruby has entered the scene (making the count 5).  She's been going to Mother's Day Out one day a week at the Methodist church for the last 2 years.


For me, after years of soul-searching, self-evaluating, reading and deep breathing, I have mellowed to a Type B... okay, A-... the point is that I'm way less "driven" than I used to be.  The things that used to matter to me don't seem as important as they once did.  My attitude used to be, move over and let me show you the right way to do that.  Now, que serra, serra.  The important thing to me now is that my children enjoy their childhood.  That they have good memories about how fun, peaceful and happy it was to grow up in my house.  I want them to remember all the trees they climbed and all the mud pies they made, rather than hours of homework and getting grounded if their grades weren't straight A's.


Mattie likes to point out how my mellowed personality has carried over to my theory on child discipline.  She says, "Mom, when I sassed you, you sent me to my room, but when Ruby sasses you, you think it's cute."  Jenna says, "Mom, I remember getting a spanking for putting my feet on the table during dinner.  Look at Ruby!  She's standing in the middle of the table and you're just laughing!"


So, my baby will turn 5 this summer and I am facing the fact that my oldest will be ready to embark on some sort of post-high school education, college, art school, something in only 2 more years.  Jeff doesn't put any kind of pressure on me to go back to work, but I am feeling like I've been sitting around producing very little income for the last 11 years, and it's time for me to pony-up and add a little moolah to our bank accounts.  I knew before I went to Kindergarten Round-up at the elementary school today, that Ruby wasn't anywhere near as ready to start school as my other kids have been, but I was secretly hoping they would say something like, "She'll be just fine!  She knows more than some kids and less than others... she'll do great!"  Instead, I got handed a packet describing the changes they are making to the Kindergarten curriculum starting this Fall.  I got kind smiles and pats on the shoulder and suggestions on activities I can do with her over the summer to help her catch up.  I got told that repeating Kindergarten is no big deal.


So, I'm dusting off the old Type A, digging out the old homeschool curriculum, and I'm passing up the DVD section at the library (WHY do they have to put the DVD's right by the check out counter?).  I WILL have her ready for Kindergarten, even with the upgraded standards, but I suspect I won't find near the pleasure in the process that I did a decade ago.

This morning, I heaved a deep, dissatisfied sigh, and told my husband I wished he would get himself fired. He was standing in a towel at the bathroom sink. He spit out a mouthful of toothpaste, looked around the corner at me and said, "I'm doing my best, Babe." (They say a good minister will work himself out of a job.)Unfortunately for my current state of mind, we have found one of those rare churches full of people who like to be challenged by their minister, think it's fun that he looks like a biker and who don't seem to be bothered that their minister's wife isn't a hugger, or a cryer, or a baby-kisser. The thing is, our life here in Benton, Arkansas, has been just about perfect. I mean, if you don't count the 5 broken arms, Jeff having to dig up a plumbing line that was dumping raw sewage on the ground, and our daughter totaling our family car by hitting a semi truck, we have had nearly 6 years of normal. My kids go to great schools where the teachers really care about them. The property we live on is pretty with tons of room for my kids to run and get loud without bothering anyone. Our neighbors are kind and helpful. We have a gazillion friends. There are just enough hillbillies skulking around town to keep us entertained without making us feel overwhelmed. Easy.

We have some friends who were rocking along with their normal lives. They had jobs and a house. He was working on a masters degree and she was expecting their first baby. Within 1 month, they both were laid off.

We have some friends who were living adventurous lives full of meaningful ministry and foreign travel. They had been married for nearly a decade, were in their late 20's and into their early 30's, when they decided they were ready for the adventure of parenthood. This was the beginning of a series of heart-wrenching miscarriages.

We have a friend (I wish I could say it was just 1 friend, but, honestly, it's 4 different friends going through the same scenario) whose spouse has looked around at their family and decided they wanted something different, or better, or easier. They took the burden of house payments, childrearing, and lawn maintenance, laid it all at the feet of the person they promised to love until death do us part, and walked away.

And here I am, complaining about my easy, normal life.

The thing is, when you are a person of faith, as I am, and as my friends are, the difficult things of life don't sideline you...at least not for long.

I love storms. Not just rain showers, but give me a huge ruckus! I've had "tornado dreams" all my life, but instead of scaring me, they made me long that much more to see a real live funnel. I got my wish a few years ago. We were living in Colorado, and I was taking the 4 kids to visit my mom and dad in Oklahoma for the 4th of July. Jeff had to stay and work, so it was just me and the kids crossing the great desolate expanse known as west Kansas, where there is one exit every 10 miles and most of them have signs posted stating "no services", which is really code for, "We don't cotton to no strangers round these parts, so just take yer new-fangled motor car and keep movin'. They might sell ya some fuel and a coke in Wichita...bunch of liberals livin' in that town." Anyway, I was driving along and the kids were all asleep when it started to storm. I didn't have the radio on because I love to count the seconds between the lightening flash and the thunder crash. A couple of cars in front of me had pulled to the shoulder, but I passed them up with a smug smile on my face as the word "pansy" flitted across my brain. I glanced out the drivers side window and thought, "That's a weird-looking cloud. It goes straight up and down and it looks dirty." About that time, dirt started raining down on my car and I instantly realized I was racing a tornado. I had a momentary adrinalin rush followed by a peek in my rear-view mirror that reminded me I was a mommy, so I did what all the other pansies- I mean, responsible drivers- did, and pulled over to the shoulder. My point about storms, though, is that it's cool and interesting to me how the chaotic wind, rain and clouds can begin to organize and become a very focused funnel of unstoppable energy.

For those of us who are blessed to have it, faith is our tornado. Faith takes the chaos of life and gives us instant focus. Suddenly, our priority list isn't confusing. It's perfectly in order with the top three being God, Family, and Friends and way far down the list are things with monetary value. Our friends who were pregnant and lost their jobs called on their friends for prayer and solid job leads. Their situation of having no kids and being willing to take any kind of work, left them with the freedom to search anywhere in the country, and because their hearts belong to God, they can go anywhere with the confident knowledge that God will use them to expand His kingdom. Facebook informed me this morning, that they woke up in their snug new apartment in the Denver area to get ready to go in to their new jobs and walked outside to discover an inch of snow on the ground. I am not even going to pretend to hide my jealousy.

Our friends who were experiencing the heartbreak of miscarriages, chose not to let sadness consume their lives and, instead, became intensely focused on being the kind of family God would have them be. They took their love of foreign travel and missions, applied it to their desire to be parents, and just finished the process of an international adoption.

Our friend going through the divorce....is still walking through some very difficult times, and probably will be for a very long time still. But his faith amazes me. He has brought more people to church in the last few months than I have in a lifetime. His focus on his son and his patience with divorce attorney's is inspiring.

So, it's not really that I want Jeff to get fired from his job, it's more about how I have a deep craving for some kind of a kick start for a fresh perspective on my life and an intensified focus on my priorities. It's more that I long to be rid of the things of life that limit my freedom to move about the world...you know, annoying obligations like house payments and keeping our children fed and clothed and insured. I am blessed, or cursed, depending on your perspective, with wanderlust. I am not at all unhappy where I am, but I really, really would like to see other places, make new friends, even learn a new language (Honduras has been on my mind quite a bit since Jeff made that trip out there a couple of months ago). And apparently, I've passed my disease on to at least one of my children. A friend called me yesterday to get the dish on why my 16 year old had broken up with her boyfriend. He was a good looking kid, who came from a nice church-going family, and Mattie seemed to really like him. A couple of days ago, she came in and gently prepared me for the news, "Mom, I just broke up with 'Fred'. Are you ok, Mom?" When I asked her why she had dumped him, she said, "Because he wears camo all the time, he wants to live in Arkansas for the rest of his life, and he doesn't want to have adventures."

I'm not sure if I will ever leave this place or not. What I do know is that I don't want to spend so much time dreaming about the future that I forget to live in the present and I also don't want to become so comfortable and complacent in the present that I forget to dream about the future. I want God to do more than use me. I want Him to completely use me up.

Gardening: Kama-Style

Spring is not my favorite season.  For me, it's like First Love compared to True Love.  First Love is fresh, sweet and flirty.  True Love is deep, warm and strong.  Fall is my true love season, but I acknowledge that you can't have Fall without starting with Spring and you can't have True Love without starting with First Love, so Spring, let me count the ways I love thee....I love the warmer air and the moist, earthy scent that hangs close to the ground in the evenings.  I love the bursts of color after months of a gray, mushy, wet winter.  I love mowing the grass, watching the cats pretend to be fierce predators as they chase real and imagined creatures all over the property, and softball.  I love girls softball.  I love that for two weeks out of the year, my tulip tree sings praises to God with its magnificent blooms!

                                                         
And then the same week it drops all its petals and slips quietly into its submissive role as a plain old tree, my crab apple tree decides it is going to give up being crabby and have a good attitude for once!

Frogs.  I love frogs.  I love listening to them chirp in the trees, watching them hop in my garden, and seeing the looks of joy mixed with terror on my kids' faces as they catch the warty critters and carry them around in buckets.  But not snakes.  I do NOT love snakes.  Grass snakes are fine.  They're just macho worms.  But all other snakes are from Satan.  They're bad news and should have their heads chopped off with garden hoes.  I think it says that in the Bible.

But the best part of Spring is planning my garden!  And that's really why I'm writing this blog entry.  I love the idea of gardening more than gardening itself, but 2011 is my year!  I can feel it in my bones.  This is the year my garden will be a success!  I always had successful gardens when we lived in Fort Worth.  I even taught inner-city kids how to plant vegetables in a plastic wading pool.  I didn't even try to put in a garden when we lived in the high altitude of Denver, and there was no place for one at our apartment in Los Angeles.

I thought gardening in Arkansas would be a snap.  I did what Mother Earth News told me to do:  I picked a mostly level spot of ground near the house that gets more than 7 hours of sun each day. My husband put up the optional cute white picket fence and then I declared war and engaged in a 5 year long, epic battle against....

....well-established St. Augustine grass.  I am all for grass roots when it comes to community organization, but not when it comes to my vegetable garden.  This is what I think about grass in my garden:

It had to go.  So, last year, I experimented with lasagna gardening.  It has nothing to do with growing lasagna ingredients and everything to do with putting down layer after layer of materials to build healthy soil.  First, I put down a thick layer of newspaper and cardboard all over the whole planting surface.  Then, I soaked it with water.  Next, I put down a 4 inch layer of peat moss, followed by a 4 inch layer of organic garden soil mixed with manure.  I didn't plant anything in my garden last year.

This year, I turned the whole garden over by hand, with a shovel, not a tiller.  Most of the cardboard and newspaper had deteriorated and Mother Earth News told me to leave what was left and let it serve as a moisture-holding mulch.  I added another layer of peat moss, organic soil and manure.

I still had plenty of grass to dig out, but it was way better than it has been the past few years.  It was a ton of work, but I conquered!

Now, I have beautiful soil to work with!  My dad came out from Oklahoma a few weeks ago and helped me get my potatoes in the ground... and he moved my blackberry and raspberry bushes and grape vines because he didn't like where I put them.  And, today, I got my enthusiastic (said with only a touch of sarcasm) children to help me set the rest of my early vegetables... and a few flowers up by the driveway.

So, we've gone from this:

To this:

PS I recommend starting with plants versus seeds.  It helps you feel like you've actually accomplished something at the end of the day.

Step 2:  Keep it watered and no whining about how it's hot outside and I just want to stay in and I promise I'll go out and water it later after it cools off a little.... and never stop fighting the grass!