Last Saturday morning David spent several hours on the front porch – cleaning everything with Clorox, clearing out cobwebs, making sure all the surfaces were ready for the coat of white paint that’s coming their way.

Alex was inside with me since children and large amounts of bleach don’t mix, and about once a minute he’d run to the front door, look outside, jump up and down and say, “I wanna see MY daddy. I wanna see MY daddy, Mama.”

I’ve talked several times about A.’s ever-growing allegiance to and obsession with his daddy, but the whole “MY daddy” thing was new to me. There’s OWNERSHIP in that pronoun, POSSESSION implied, and I got the message – loud and clear – that in Alex’s mind, lest I harbor any notions to the contrary, David belongs to Alex and Alex alone.

Sometimes I have moments of insanity where I fancy that I can actually reason with Alex, that I can put my three key points into some form of multi-media presentation, explain them objectively while using my laser pointer, and at the end of the lesson Alex will look at me and say, “Oh yes, Mother. I understand now. The three critical components of playing nicely with others are 1) no pushing 2) no hitting and 3) sharing toys. Thank you for teaching me today!”

So when Alex started up with the “MY daddy” chorus Saturday morning, I tried to be fairly rational: “Yep, he’s a great daddy…the best daddy in the world – but you need to come away from the door – there’s no point in standing there all morning waiting for your daddy to come inside.””

Somehow Alex got the idea that I was trying to claim David as my own father, and he got very defensive: “NO, MAMA! He’s not YOUR daddy! He’s MY daddy! He’s NOT! YOUR! DADDY!”

I explained that yes, I was aware of that, and perhaps after Alex finished with time out for ALL! THE! SCREAMING!, we could change the subject to something like Veggie Tales or “Finding Nemo.” There’s much less emotion involved with those two things.

But I couldn’t get his insistence about “MY daddy” out of my head.

The older I get, the more I realize that every single struggle I have with God is a struggle I also have had with my earthly father. That father / child thing is huge, isn’t it? I don’t think we can overestimate how our relationships with daddies impact the way we interact with our Heavenly Father.

So I decided, as I re-played the scene from that morning in my mind, that if Alex wants to cry out to his daddy, claiming him as his very own, if he wants to stand at the door and wait for the second that his daddy comes back inside, I will let him. Because every single time that David returns to him, every single time that he comforts him, every single time that he throws his arms around our little boy and responds to him with patience and love, Alex is forming a frame of reference that His Heavenly Father will respond exactly the same way.

It was a total a-ha moment: I need to encourage Alex to seek his father so that one day he will seek his Father, knowing that he can trust him and Him, knowing that they both will answer.

And I just had to write that down.

I’m not sure what sort of direct line you people have to God, but right after I posted about Emma Kate’s church situation yesterday, things started moving into high gear. Over the last couple of months EK has said to me, “Oh, wouldn’t it be neat if THIS THING could happen,” and then yesterday it all started to fall in place. Their small group made some major decisions last night, but since I don’t have the next four hours to devote to typing, I’ll probably tell the story in increments somewhere down the road.

All that to say – EK and her hubby are coming for supper tonight. And their three kids. And some other friends of ours. And their kids. Without going into all the details (what else is new, Mrs. McVaguery?), but I think the biggest “God is at work here” moment was when I asked EK what time they’d be here (keep in mind she’s 2 1/2 hours away from me), and she told me that they were flying because a plane – YES, I said a PLANE – had been made available to them…someone flying to Atlanta agreed to drop them off here on the way over and stop and pick them up on the way back home.

In the midst of everything else (sorry, Sarah – I stole your first three words), :-) EK and I both had the kind of mornings you have when God is trying to work and the devil just gets all up in your business. Emma Kate actually rebuked the devil in an email to me, and I got so tickled because it seemed oh-so-very 21st century of her. I’m pretty sure it was the first time I’ve opened an email and seen the phrase “Satan, get thee behind me” in the opening line…but it worked!

Anyway – they’ll be here any minute, so I better finish my “chores.” And Mama and Daddy are coming in tonight, too, because tomorrow night David and I will be with the lovely Ms. Faith Hill and the handsome Mr. Tim McGraw. We’ll be on row nine, which I believe is the closest security will let me get to Faith (given my obsession with her and my pronouncement that she’s my BFF) without alerting the authorities and filing a restraining order.

So tonight, I’ll be with my real-life best friend, and tomorrow night, I’ll be with my pretend-celebrity best friend (but at a safe distance, so that I don’t, you know, SCARE HER).

As Alex would say, “THAT’S SO EXCITING!”

I’m just sayin’.

So yay Taylor and all that, but y’all, that was the weirdest two hours of television I’ve ever seen.

Meatloaf? Mary J. Blige? Burt Bacarach? Dionne Warwick? Toni Braxton? Al Jarreau? The most random line-up of artists ever.

The weirdest was the whole Clay Aiken thing – so weird in fact that I found it difficult to watch, primarily because Clay’s hair was flat-ironed within an inch of its life and dyed auburn to boot, but those things didn’t seem to bother the young man who sat on the stool and hollered while Clay sang. BI-ZARRE.

The highlights? Carrie Underwood was great, and I thought Prince was delightful.

David pointed out that all the Idols’ “routines” remind him of The Brady Bunch – and I feel that’s an excellent call.

So Idol ’06 is officially over – no more Tuesday night “live blogging” – I’m sure you’re all crushed and will be waiting on the edge of your monitors for next season. Regardless, I think we can all agree on at least one thing: I spent far too much time thinking and writing about a reality singing competition considering that I’m, you know, GROWN. But as Alan Jackson says, “Too much of a good thing – is a good thing.” :-)

BooMama OUT.

I just read a thoroughly entertaining article on fast food by NY Times food critic Frank Bruni. It’s odd to see such beautifully constructed sentences dedicated to Whataburger and Chick Fil A, but it’s a fun read.

Plus, I’m hungry. Glowing words about Blizzards speak to me right now.

Link via Throwing Things.

1. Brenda’s post about pronouns cracks me up. It is right up my grammatical alley, because Sister and I (not “me and Sister”) have had MANY conversations about common (mis)usages that drive us (not we) crazy. My personal pet peeve is when people use the “and I” construction incorrectly, and Brenda does a wonderful job of addressing the rules with a little Southern flair.

There was an adorable girl on Amazing Race a couple of seasons ago who was The Worst “and I” Offender EVER: “I’m so proud of Jon and I…They were really rude to Jon and I…I really feel that the race brought Jon and I closer together.” And all of those examples drove I bananas. :-)

[A brief aside: I was about to go on a tear about why I cannot stand the use of the word “myself” as anything but an intensifier (“I myself have never experienced that” is fine from time to time…however, “that’s between Sister and myself” is kind of obnoxious), but then I realized that, you know, nobody cares. You can take the girl out of the English department….]

2. Oprah’s “Legends” special – anybody see it? At first I was all, “Oh, here Oprah goes, talking about ‘energy’ and ‘power’ and getting all New Age-y on me,” but I must admit that the way she honored the women who have gone before her – Cicely Tyson, Tina Turner, Maya Angelou, etc. – was very touching. I loved the footage of the gospel brunch – I would have HAD ME SOME CHURCH if I had been there. Which I wasn’t. Unfortunately, I couldn’t make it because I wasn’t invited.

Anyway, David and I estimated that the whole Legends celebration probably cost AT LEAST five or six hundred dollars. Okay, maybe a smidge more.

3. I mention my friend Emma Kate just about every other day in my posts, it seems. Well, I’ve been holding back with a little EK info because I didn’t feel like it was time to share, mainly because I didn’t think that she and her hubby were ready to share. And this is all starting to sound very much like a pregnancy announcement, so let me just go ahead and apologize if you were reaching for some yellow yarn and getting ready to start on some baby booties. Because that’s not the news.

And there’s not really ANY news to speak of, because this is actually a very circuitous route to a prayer request.

EK and Brad have been meeting with about 12 other people to pray and study and see if God might be leading them to start a new church in the town where they live in Mississippi. They have a vision – a God-given vision, to be clear – for a church that is rock-solid doctrinally and theologically but different, especially in terms of worship and programming, from anything else where they live.

This is not a fly-by-night deal…this is a result of several years of prayer and a genuine desire to be faithful to what God is calling them to do. And in case you’re wondering if they really have what it takes to be on this path, I can assure you EK and Brad study the Bible like nobody’s business. Let me put it this way: when I get in the car, I crank up my music, but when they get in the car, they crank up preachers like Andy Stanley or Ed Young or Louie Giglio. They know their stuff.

So here’s the thing (THANK GOODNESS, you’re thinking, that she finally has a point). They need your prayers. They truly believe that for this vision to come to fruition, they must first have God’s man. They have the resources to attract someone of the highest caliber, but obviously God has to turn that man’s heart toward Tupelo. If you would pray for that, I know EK and Brad would appreciate it. Their group is meeting tonight, and they are at a real fork in the road in terms of what comes next. The next few weeks are going to be HUGE for them, and wisdom and discernment will be key.

4. Newest Google search that made me laugh out loud? “mama de nemo”

So in case the searcher is still lurking around, let me see if I can help using my, er, increasingly limited abilities in Spanish.

La mama de Nemo es muerto. La mama de Nemo fue comida para un “Jaws.” Lo siento mucho. Marlin es un padre excelente. Tambien, Dory es una “amiga especial” de Marlin al fin de la pelicula.

:-)

Gracias, y hasta luego.

The best part of each season’s final Idol show is the debut of the Power Ballad that becomes the winner’s first single. Said ballad usually contains images of climbing mountaintops or flying without wings or soaring into the sky or soaring above the clouds on the way to the mountaintop while flying without wings.

So, in a HUGE step-out, I’m going to predict water imagery for this year’s single…perhaps we’ll have a river of love, or a sea of faith, or an ocean of truth, but my prediction is that it will in fact be a body of water filled with a universally valued attribute. And a soaring note at the end. You heard it here first.

(Now we’re watching on TiVo. David and I are cracking up at seeing Mandy Moore and Ben Stiller in the audience – guess this show has pretty broad appeal, huh?)

Katharine McPhee –
“Black Horse and the Cherry Tree” – Probably a wise move for her to come out and show her fun side right off the bat – especially since her competition is Mr. Fun Happy Man. I loved this song the first time she sang it, and it was rock-solid again tonight. Honestly, though, sometimes I feel like she works really hard to seem like she’s having fun! We’re having fun! Y’all! She did seem sincerely touched by the reception of the audience – those were real tears. And good grief she’s pretty, isn’t she?

“Somewhere Over The Rainbow” – Perfection.

“My Destiny” – Definite imagery of a journey, a quest…but I may have stepped out too far with my water imagery prediction. :-) Anyway, this song sounds like it’s in the wrong key for her. The low parts are giving her a little trouble, and plus I imagine that it’s difficult to sell lyrics that are quite this cheesy. I’m gonna go ahead and say it: it’s a pitchy performance. She’s all over the place. But I am happy to see the ubiquitous gospel choir, which I believe is an Official Requirement for an AI anthem.

Taylor Hicks –
“Livin’ For The City” – MY that’s a fuschia jacket. And he definitely gets crowd-pleaser points. I think his voice sounds great – way stronger than it has in the last couple of weeks. I actually still have his first performance of this song on TiVo, and what struck me tonight is that he didn’t sound like a recording of that first performance. Good grief the crowd loves him.

“Levon” – I have a deep, abiding love for this song. And I think tonight’s version of it is leaps and bounds better than the first time Taylor sang it – he’s calmer, more confident, and seems more at home on the stage. All that being said, I think Katharine wins the slow song round.

“Do I Make You Proud” – This type of music doesn’t really suit him, but this song works better for him than Katharine’s Power Ballad worked for her. Taylor got to “do his thing” a little more than she did, so I think Round Three goes to him. Even though the song is cheesy, he still sounds like Taylor – doin’ the best he can with some wretched material.

By the way, we have no idea what Paula is talking about tonight.

So, here’s the bottom line: I think Taylor will win for three reasons:
1) The South will vote in droves.
2) Most of the people who previously voted for Elliott are more likely to vote for Taylor than Katharine.
3) People seem to adore Taylor. His fans are rabid – did you hear the crowd? And for old time’s sake, I looked back at some old posts and found this – I’ve loved him from the very beginning, y’all. :-)

But I think David just gave the best reason why Taylor will win: he has personality. Katharine is beautiful, and her voice is distinctive – but she doesn’t come across as having the level of personality and likeability that Taylor does. Plus, in her third song, she didn’t offer anything special…it could have been any other good singer doing a similarly average job. On the other hand, Taylor took a weak song and made it his own – I can’t imagine that’s easy to do.

Looks like we’re gonna have another Idol from right here in B’ham.

Soul Patrol, everybody.