FundyNutter

So…in case you were wondering my big food crime was too bowls of coco crispies with whole milk before dinner time. A huge calorie intake and not too bright for the lactose intolerant as well.  And today?  Well, does it count as a diet no no if you had a coupon? Because I had some really good burger king coupons today.

But in good news, because it is not all disappointment, I am tracking myself and learning what my habits are which is a great step towords hanging them.

You know what’s more fun than writing my nanonovel?

Collecting facebook flair. I have well over my 34 required peices. And they are all so cool.  Seriously cool.  Which means I must be seriously cool to have thought of hunting for them, right? And then, having hunted for them gazing adoringly at them isn’t a sign of weakening mental status, and it’s not a sign of serious procrastination right?

Like an ardent art fan at a great museum, one would only be expected to gaze adoringly at the works of art. To ponder what they mean, to be grateful that someone created them and to remember fondly all of the things they bring to mind.

So there you have it. If you can’t stand it now and must see my flair, add me as a friend on facebook and admire away.  You deserve it.  If you are opposed to facebook for any reason or wouldn’t want it generally known that you are my friend I’ll offer you a little taste of my flair here.  Just one caveat, it makes me look like a much bigger sci-fi fan than I really am. Or maybe it just makes me look a little television obsessed.

A sample of the flair I have that is mostly text:

Drive Shaft

I hate Bryce Larkin

What’s your problem with hard to believe?

Go Away, I’m Reading

You’re invited to my Riverside Supper with Riparian Entertainment

Burn the Land Boil the Sea you Can’t take the Sky fromMe

Babette Ate Oatmeal

Mohinder…First he Got Hot then He went Crazy

Fredder

Now for some word pictures:

Tardis

Baker Street

Cubbie Bear

00000

Dharma

Lukes

Jospeh

Richard Parker and Piscine Patel

Firefly

And yes, this post was just another way to use facebook to avoid that ever widening gap between my and nanowinner status.  And now, to continue the avoidance I am off to see if a flair search for Cleggy brings up anything good. Surely it will.

Now drink your coffee.

There comes a day in the life of every mom that is at home raising her kids when she has to answer for her own self the timeless question.

“Will I watch someone else’s kids?”

Since the day that word first got around that I was going to be the one who did the day to day with my kids other moms have been circling. They want to pounce, to pin me down and have me watch their kids. They want me to give their kids a homelike childcare option that costs a lot less then a center and is also fun, safe, and convenient for their commute.

No less than four families have asked me this. Most of them asking over and over again.

I wouldn’t say my defenses were down this time.  I guarded my time carefully with the infants, that’s true. But now my kids are playdate age. They like getting together with other kids.

And this mom only needed someone to watch her kids in the morning. Three times a week. What could be wrong with that?

Well to start with (I tell myself three weeks late) her kids are here at 7:30 in the morning. And in addition, no matter how handy the money is for me, or how convenient my location is for the other mom, her kids still hate having to go to a sitter. They hate it.

I make the day fun while they are here. But the bigger of the two girls summed things up nicely when she said “Yes,it was fun, but I was sad the whole time.” The smaller of the girls is only two months old. She marks her protest via hunger strike. She will not take her bottle from daddy or sitter. She waits all morning for her mummy to return.

It seemed so convenient for both parties involved. My family could buy our plane tickets for Christmas. The other mom could afford to teach kindergarten.  All the kids could play and be delightful.

My kids cry and hate it. They want their normal life back. Her kids cry and starve themselves.

They say it takes kids in part-time day care three months to adjust to their new care situation.  Three months. That doesn’t sound like an adjustment period. That sounds like kids who have given up.

I don’t think I like being a babysitter.

I am not planning on quitting, the teacher has a need to teach so her kids have to go somewhere. I can use the income.  I don’t know where I am going with this–with the post or the babysitting.  I hope sometimes that the little girl will talk her mom into finding a new sitter.  And then I think about if I make it all year I should get a license so I can set good rates and advertise and be selective about the families I watch.

Neither of those seem likely though. I think I will make it through these nine months and then say “No more for now.”  I’ll put my shingle away and maybe I won’t have to sit kids again at all.

Seven years ago, a warm afternoon.  I wore a thin t-shirt and lightweight, khaki shorts.  My cross training shoes were still new. I was as stress free as a girl on the countdown to her college graduation and wedding can be.  I was fueled with a small bag Trader Joe’s corn chips and was ready to climb the mountain.

It was just a foothill, really, of the quite respectable Mt. Hood, off to the south and east. There were no glaciers to be conquered or pending snow to bundle against.  It was, however, the mountainiest mountain I have ever climbed.

This climb, called Angel’s Rest, is a popular climb on the Oregon side of the Columbia River Gorge.

The trail was carved on the sheer sides of the mountain. The forest sloped steeply down to the river, not inviting hikers to explore the woods. The view to the river side was beautiful. The forest in June. Tall new-growth evergreen trees offered the idea of shade to forest visiters. Sword ferns, maiden hair ferns, piggy-back plant and trillium gathered together in small groups, chatting about the pack of hikers tromping around.  I’m sure they found us large, garish, and remarkable mobile.  Here and there an old snag, split by lightening, was enjoying its midlife career change as a caretaker for forest life of all kinds. On an old snag, small birds, slugs, worms, bugs, lichen and moss and other small green things lived together, a miniature forest in the forest.

This particular trail is just under five miles round trip.  It has an elevation gain of 1880 feet.  At the top, after enduring the endless switchbacks and scrambling over the great feild of basalt boulders the resting place of angels greats you. The beauty of the forest that surrounded us was more than enough, and yet at the top, God chose to reward the  determined with  an astounding view.

On the hill top we found a rocky field, open and free, no barrior between climber and the almost 2000 foot fall to the river below.  I sat near the edge, stretched out my happy muscles and was amazed at the greatness of creation.  In front of me was stretched the glories of hillside and mountain and the river that was carved through it. Thy sky was cerrulean, dappled with white clouds–the innocent, decorative kind. The river, far below was saphire. No wind to encourage the wind-sailing that makes the area famous, but the still waters were so far below and so deeply colored that they astounded.  The hills, on all sides of us were emerald green, daring Ireland to be as beautiful.

As we wended our way down the hill, back to our flat ground, boxed in behind, before and above with fir trees and clouds and buildings, I tried to appreciate the forest around me. I chatted with the other hikers. I noticed that changes in the woods as we lost elevation.  I noticed the funny noise I made while I was breathing.

wheesze, whisze, wheesze

It caught at the back of my throat. My breath felt, I don’t know, incomplete. What a funny thing for my throat to do.

It made me think “Health insurance would be really handy about now.”

Later in the week, at an urgent care clinic, I explained to the doctor what happened on the hillside.  He asked questions about my history of allergies.  He suggested the cold I had been fighting for two months was not a cold. He sent me away with Zyrtek (enough for only a month, the most an urgent care clinic can prescribe), albuterol, and the words “exercise induced asthma.”

Earlier this spring, I spent a rather scary afternoon turning my house updside down to find the blasted inhaler (because, um, since I don’t tend to exercise, I don’t need it much.) The doctor told me the next day “asthma can change. It sounds like yours has increased from a relatively minor problem to regular asthma. ”

He sent me on the way with new prescriptions and an annoyed attitude.

My alergic triggers are grass, fir trees, pollen and of course, exertion.

I spent the afternoon yesterday in my mom’s grass lawn exerting with the kids under the fir trees in the pollen.  I still can’t breathe just right.

I didn’t even attempt a  gain of 1880 feet in elevation under the canopy of the forest.

wheesze, whisze, wheesze

I’m glad I climbed the mountain when I did. I plan on climbing more of them.  I plan on spending hours on my own grass lawn under the great fir tree sundial planting things that will make pollen.

I climbed up the mountain, seven years ago, with trepidation, wondering if I could really do it and what I would see at the top. I came down the mountain with asthma.  If I can make it through this post I will get my inhaler.  Then, I’ll plan my day in the garden.

(please visit : www.danbalogh.com/hikes.html for some amazing hiking photos, including angels rest.)

God has a couple of different means to enable us to do work.

On the one hand, Jesus tells us the story of a wealthy man and his servants. The wealthy man is going away for a time and gives each of his servants an amount of money to steward while he is gone. He gives them Talents.

When he returns he wants an accounting of how the money has been taken care of.  The servants who invested the talents are praised and rewarded. One servant had buried the money, saying he was afraid of loosing it.  That servant was punished. He didn’t obey the masters orders, to use the money wisely and make it grow.  The point is, each of us are given a stock of ability at birth and we are all required to invest our ability, to take risks with it and to see it bless the world.

My husband, his sister and brother all have an ability, talent, as it were for running fast. They didn’t do anything to earn long legs and light weight. They were given that in their gene code. But all of them have worked really hard to invest that talent, to improve their ability so that it made their parents proud, paid for college, raised money in fundraising runs, etc.  But whether they had accepted Christ or not, they would always have had the talent to run.

There is another kind of ability that God gives us, called Spiritual Gifts. These are qualities of God we are empowered with through the Holy Spirit after we become Christians.  I’m searching the Bible right now for the list that has Hospitality listed as a Spiritual Gift. I want to talk all about how God didn’t give that one to me.

Every year or two, I try to do hostess. I try to welcome people graciously, make them comfortable, provide them entertainment, and bless them somehow. But I’m awful at it. For example, tomorrow I’m having a *spoiled cook* party.  I’m doing it because the hostess is a friend, and she was willing do do it as a fundraiser for our church’s building. So, the event should be entertaining for my guests and a blessing to the church budget. Instead of being lighthearted and happy about it, my insides are tied up in great knots of dread.

I hate it.

I have to call folks and invite them, and then call them back to remind them. My fingers freeze up in anxiety, my head spins and I want to hide in a cave. I hate inviting people over.

And its no easier once they are here. I’m a half set jello, a jiggly nervous mess, on the verge of hysterics the entire time guests are in my house.

I frequently say I don’t have the gift of hospitality. And if it is also a talent, I don’t have that one either.  I was hunting for the scripture to back me up here, to prove that this me having company is a foolhearty idea that I never have to repeat.

And here’s the best piece of scripture I found concerning hospitality:

Romans 12:13 “Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.”

Oh just wonderful.

Practice.  Practice. That sounds like directions. Like the thing you are supposed to do while you are terrible at it, until you get good, and then you get to keep doing it.  That’s what I get for trying to use the Bible to justify my overwhelming desire to admit defeat in this party right now.

Pardon me, I am going to find a cave to hide in until my company comes.

Worse than an obvious mess staring at you from the kitchen sink, taunting you, saying “Any minute now you will be tied to the sink washing this disgusting mess. You will be here until your hair turns white and your kids graduate high school. why fight it. Come to me now….”  worse than that, is the mysterious stink that sometimes makes an appearance in an otherwise clean home.

My first experience with mystery stink was at our second apartment. The apartment was a marvel of plyboard and plastic veneer. It was three years old. I didn’t vacuum often enough, but there was a dishwasher and few enough people to clean after that there should have been no room for stink.

And yet, there it was. Especially when I ran the microwave.

The mystery remained until the day I moved.  I don’t know…I think that I would prefer it still be a mystery.  At elast I had my pride still then.

The microwave was ours, and moved with us.  I pulled it out from its corner and discovered the stink. One bagged loaf of bread. I know it was bread once, because the bag said so. Inside it was a mottled green fur. The bag itself was painfully distended, swollen with the gasses of decomposition.  I presume I could smell more when I used the microwave because it heated the bag up.

There has been a mystery smell at this house recently.

In the kitchen. It took me a couple of months to pin point it.  It wasn’t the dishes, I promise. They may pile up in a day, but they are washed up with regularlity (see my tired, scruffy hands for evidence.)

The answer to this mystery stink was staring me right in the face. Everytime I went to the sink I stared right at it, but didn’t recognize it.

It was a ripe, rotten smell. When I  opened up my front door, especially on those hot days a couple of weeks ago, a sick, sweet smell wafted over to me.  The whole house, just smelled like it had gone bad.

Yes. It was the compost. Sitting in an open flower pot in the sunny kitchen window.

I keep a pot full of disgusting food in a sunny place, and couldn’t figure out where the stink was coming from?

I have hopes that I fixed it though. I replaced the charming flower pot with a big plastic Folgers bin–the one with the “aroma fresh” sealing lid.

And just so you all know, I was emptying the pot pretty frequently. It was small so it would fill up fast and require emptying. But sometimes, speed just isn’t enough.

That is–Marie at Memarie Lane (sorry that atrocious typo lingered for so long) on the subject anyway. And I am in the kitchen making dinner. Or was. Dinner’s kind of making itself right now.

But really, Daniel never should have said he liked it.

The first time I threw some ground beef and peas into the pan full or 29 cent macaroni I felt like a cheat. Like a shame to the name Hilton. Like I was giving up before I even started. Like I failed Daniel. Early on he asked me, “No matter how poor we get, let’s not scrimp on food, okay?” And I agreed. I agreed to keep Daniel in dinners better tasting each time he came to the table.

If anyone is familiar with formaldyhyde, they will know it is a chemical that folks claim causes all sorts of disease. All I know is it kills the sense of smell over time. Not entirely dead, but mostly dead. So, I actually haven’t needed to kill myself at the stove to impress Daniel.

And the day I put the mac and bling in front of him he thought it was great. And he said so.

Now, truth be told, I really like it too. Very yummy.

But it is a cheat! It is hardly home cookin’. It doesn’t even resemble healthy. He shouldn’t have said he liked it too. Because I make it all the time now. All the time. I feel a funny sense of shame mingled with happy expectation as I wait for Daniel to come home. I expect I’ll make it next week too. Or maybe this weekend.

I have been wracking my brain for well more than a week on the right way to solve my problem. The larger problem is the incredible speed of technology advances. The specific problem is my cd-writer is broken. If it wasn’t I would happily burn disks day and night. I have hundreds of pictures and pages of recent writing that I don’t want to loose. In particular, I was contemplating the blog and the best way to save my posts for later reading.

I was swinging towards buying an external cd burner. But this thought keeps occurring to me–how will I read the disks when cd technology is replaced by something else? Already I can’t watch my wedding video–no vcr at our house.

I have a thumb drive, but just looking at the funny little thing poking out of my computer makes me think “transitional technology! ” It doesn’t seem like the long term answer I am looking for. And when you think how quickly the thumb replaced the cd in computer data storage…I still remember the days of the tape backup. Even that wasn’t that long ago.

As obsessive a reader as I am, you would think it would take just a few minutes for me to come up with the right answer. But honestly, it took me weeks. I wracked mybrain everytime I sat down at the computer to discover the best way to preserve my writing and pictures so they could be easily read at any time, accessed conveniently at any time and any place.

I posed the dilemma to Daniel only after I had solved it. Needless to say, it was obvious to him and he laughed and laughed at me.

I could, um, yeah…I could print the things I wrote. On paper. Then I could read them anytime I wanted to, now or in the future.

Ten points to you if you thought of that answer while reading the post.

Something Daniel’s mom said last night took me back to that shining happy time full of shiny happy people in red gowns.  I revisited that glorious time when 17 and 18 year old girls and boys realize that the institution they’ve been enslaved to for the last 13 years has finally got to let them go.  We were high on expectation and power and freedom, giddy from the sun. We were feeling smart because the SAT scores came to prove to all of our math and Spanish teachers that they were the problem all along. Personally I was going back to Europe as soon as my plane would take me.

I have the little red bonded leather folder, red sateen cap, and program folder to prove I graduated. Maybe not with honors (listen math and Spanish teachers–you saw the SAT scores,  we all know it’s your fault!) but graduate I did.

I even went to the All Night Drug and Alcohol Free party, though I didn’t try the sumo wrestling suits.

Despite all of this evidence, and the Bachelor of Arts in History that followed after four years of college, I frequently dream that I did not graduate.

Last night in my dream I found an old high school transcript, yellow with age and still attached by the perferations, printed in dot matrix.  Clear as a bell at the bottom of the page it said I needed to go to summer school to recieve my diploma. Summer School! I couldn’t believe I had let it slip for 13 years!

I hurried back to the school with my transcript and my kid in my arms. Of course, since it was a dream, Norah was at pre-school and so I had to have my wild climbing two year old monkey Lucy with me instead.  I reasoned with the secretaries that since I had a bachelors, they ought to just forgive the summer school requirement. I suggested they take some of my college credit and apply it to the high school deficiency. They were completely inflexible. They gave me the name of the class I needed and sent me on my way.

Of course, since my graduation, back in the dark ages, the school in real life has undergone renovation. They’ve added whole wings to the school in fact and just to make this dream scenario more mortifying, at least five of my classmates are teachers there now, in real life.  If that weren’t bad enough, in the dream world the school was a veritable labrynth, the teachers all remembered me and that I never finished school.  And they all assumed, that since I was thirty, I should be expected to find my class myself. With the crying two year old in my arms.

It ended like they all do, with me hollering desperately “But I have my degree! I went to University!” Over and over again, trying to get myself free from the obligation.

Back in reality, I worked really hard in university, joined two honor societies and lived on the President’s list.  Yes, I was desperately compensating for my slack high school performance. And yes, it must still weigh on my mind.

Maybe I should buy the alumni list and send everyone my college transcripts, you know, to end the dreams.  Yeah, just to end the dreams. Not that I’m still constantly trying to prove myself.  (I can show you my SAT’s if you want, they are over there, in the giant gilt frame.)

I’ve been out of University for seven years now. My professors would be very pleased to know that I have not stopped learning.  Lesson upon lesson upon lesson.  Yes, lesson is singular. I keep being taught the same lesson, over and over.  Which I would assume means I haven’t learned it yet.  This lesson is also the foundation of Christianity, so I am thankful that God hasn’t given up on teaching me yet. Everytime I am brought low, to a place of remorse, of needing to ask for forgiveness I am grateful that God hasn’t given up on me.

It is a simple process, each time the same.  I get in a scrape of sorts.  I get mad and mouthy.  Then I get sorry that the  peace has been  disturbed.   I complain for a while. Then I look deep inside, consider what responsibility I have in the situation.  Recognized, the responsibility sits on my heart for a time (sometimes a short time , sometimes  a dreadfully long time.)

When I finally see my own actions as the sin that they are, the hard part starts. I seek the party I have wronged (even if they started it! Even if they are bullies!) and I have to humble myself. No pointed comments in the apology, no double meanings. No sarcasm. When I can actually accomplish that, I say I am sorry. I admit how I have caused harm and I apologize. I do it no matter what the other party does.  It is no fun. But it is good. It is right.

And every time I go through that I think “This time I will remember not to pick a fight or escalate a problem with my ugly snide mouth.”  It would seem the last time wasn’t the last time.

It has been pointed out that I was mean spirited and hurtful in my comments about way back when when I was new to my church. Very true. I told myself I was…funny? descriptive? playing the roll of a mean person? But that was, of course, just a justification for sin.  I wanted to be mean and make people roll their eyes at the stereotype of pushy moms out of touch with reality.

I’m sorry. Of course the mom’s weren’t out of touch with reality. And they weren’t pushy either. They hurt my feelings a little, by some comments, but their comments weren’t meant to hurt, probably. No–no pointed comments.  They were just talking and sometimes things hurt my feelings and sometimes they didn’t.

I had no one specific in mind when I used unkind words to describe my peers.  However if anyone read that post who happened to go to our church back then could only infer that I had specific people in mind.

I met three single girls back in those days, who were old enough to consider Daniel a possibility.   Those three girls weren’t frumpy, dumpy or boring. Of course they weren’t!  What young girl full of bright ideas, happy heart, shining eyes, rosey cheeks, and sparkling smiles is ever unattractive? And not only did these three girls have youth and beauty to spare, they each of them, were and are intimidatingly brilliant and witty.

I apologize.  I really am sorry for adding to the sum of mean feelings and unkind words in the world.

I am glad I had the opportunity to talk about what God has been teaching me; I take too few of those opportunities.  But I am sorry that talking about it was spurred by experiencing it yet again.