Oh, bloggy peoples.

What a delightful break I have had.

I’ve hung out with my family and gotten lots of work done and figured out our schedule for fall and eaten fried chicken and listened to some great new music and watched untold hours of Olympic coverage. So basically, you know, I’ve been living the dream.

One of my favorite things about the break was that since I wasn’t cranking out some average content for your semi-amusement a few times a week, I got to read way more blogs (and also: NEWS! FROM NETWORKS!) than I normally do. And – here’s a concept – I got to THINK about what I read. I got to explore pockets and corners of the blogosphere that I haven’t visited in awhile, and WHOA, NELLIE, was it ever enlightening. I actually had Some Serious Thoughts about how we really should be oh-so-thankful for our (very supportive, encouraging) little online community, and I’m going to try to write about that in the next couple of weeks, hopefully without boring you to the point that you gouge out your eyes with a plastic spoon.

As always, my goals are very ambitiousy.

So.

I’ll be back later today (let’s say 2-ish) with a REAL-LIVE MUSIC GIVEAWAY EXTRAVAGANZA, and the giveaway will only be open for 24 hours. You’ll have to CLICK LIKE THE WIND, my friends. CLICK LIKE THE WIND.

My daily links page is up and running again, too. Well, maybe not “running.” Right now it’s more of a slow jog. A slow jog with some side cramps and limping.

Finally: I can’t wait to tell you about the various and sundry funny things that have happened in our house the last few weeks. Or at least they’re funny to me. So maybe you can just indulge me and fake laugh and before you know it “The Office” will be on again and give us something really funny to talk about.

See? We’ll be back to normal in no time at all.

Back at 2-ish. With free stuff. Whoo-hoo.

Oh, I’ve missed them terribly.

Five more weeks, my friends.

Five more weeks.

It has been well-established that I am not an outdoorsy girl.

Oh, I can dress the part, what with my fleece pullovers and functional-yet-appropriately-sassy khaki pants. Not to mention my Fundanas.^TM

But even if I have on the right clothes, odds are that once I get in the actual outdoors, something will go horribly awry.

Like that time in 11th grade when my youth group went on a hayride and everyone was swinging out over a pond on a rope, and I wanted to be a good sport so I swung out over the pond, too, only my hands slipped and I fell into said pond and jammed all the fingers on my right hand.

(Smooth.)

(Moves.)

Over the years I’ve learned to accept that I’m just more of an indoorsy girl. My idea of going on a nature hike is to look at pictures of a nature hike on my computer while I sit in an air conditioned Panera with a big mug of coffee (two Equals, heavy on the half & half) and a large piece of plate glass separating me from all the nature. Just as the Good Lord intended.

Well.

I mentioned last week that we spent the last couple of days of our Uganda trip at a lodge near Murchison Falls. The lodge was straight out of a Hemingway novel – perfectly lovely in every way – but I would be lying to you if I told you that I didn’t panic just a smidge when Shannon and I walked in our room and saw that it was “open air.”

Now here’s a lesson you can take with you for the rest of your earthly days, and you don’t even have to pay me for it: “open air” is some fancy travel agent talk for WE AIN’T GOT NO AIR CONDITIONERS, Y’ALL.

However, given what we’d recently seen in Kampala, I was able to quickly put the no air conditioner thing in perspective. Not to mention that I was on a once-in-a-lifetime trip with some of the best people I’ve ever met in my whole life. And so if the Lord wanted to use my time in Africa to rid me of any freon-related strongholds, then I was not going to get in His way.

As it turned out, the lodge’s electricity came from a generator, and they turned off the generator three times a day. For those of you who are keeping score at home, that means there were three times a day when the ceiling fans didn’t work because, funny thing, CEILING FANS REQUIRE POWER.

Honestly, I didn’t even notice the power outages during the daytime. We weren’t in our rooms a lot, and between the hiking and the ferry riding and the river exploring and the animal watching, there just wasn’t a lot of time to sit in the room and think about how you couldn’t turn on the TV if you wanted to, only OH WAIT, THERE WERE NO TV’S THERE, CLEARLY I WAS TRICKED INTO CAMPING.

The first night at the lodge we had an absolutely delightful dinner, and once Shannon and I got back to our room it dawned on us that the generator was going to turn off around 1 in the morning. Which meant that the ceiling fan would not be operating. Which meant that between the mosquito nets surrounding our beds and the lack of air circulation, there was no way we could possibly continue to breathe normally after 1AM.

After a considerable amount of deliberation, we decided to sleep with the sliding glass door open. In retrospect this was probably AN INCREDIBLY FOOLISH DECISION, but at the time we believed that leaving the door open was a stroke of brilliance because fresh air trumps no air at all. Every single time.

About fifteen minutes after we opened the door, Shannon sat up on her bed and said, “WHAT ABOUT THE MONKEYS?”

And I was all, “HUH?”

And she was all, “THE MONKEYS! WHAT IF MONKEYS COME IN OUR ROOM IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT? OUR DOOR IS WIDE OPEN!”

She made an excellent point.

Now in our defense, Shannon and I were both English majors at our respective colleges. And while I recall taking courses in transformational English grammar and Shakespearean poetry and whathaveyou, I was never required to take a course in How To Stop A Monkey Attack. I doubt that Shannon was, either. So we were both dealing with a pretty limited skill set in terms of How To Combat The Nature.

So we talked about some different solutions, and as we discussed those solutions – none of which, interestingly enough, involved sleeping with the door closed – I wandered into the bathroom so I could wash my face and brush my teeth. I kept thinking about what it would be like to wake up and see a real-live monkey on the other side of my mosquito net, and I decided that it would probably be a little alarming.

And I decided it would probably make me scream.

FOREVER.

Now I can’t speak for Shannon, and I don’t know this for sure, but I’m fairly certain that she was having the same thoughts. Because when I walked out of the bathroom and looked at our open doorway, this is what I saw.

Internets, I give you Shannon’s Monkey Alarm (patent pending).

For the record, I nearly wet my pants when I saw it.

Because monkeys? They can jump. From one tree to another tree, even. And so the notion that our two foot tall chair WITH A BACKPACK AND WATER BOTTLE ON THE SEAT would serve as some sort of Monkey Deterrent made me laugh until I cried.

Shannon’s rationale was that if a monkey ran into the chair, the water bottle would fall and wake us up. And that made perfect sense to me because then we would have plenty of time to, I don’t know, SCREAM AT THE MONKEY?

Or to run and jump in the closet while we SCREAMED AT THE MONKEY?

Or – and this, I feel, is the most likely scenario – to try to hoist ourselves up to the ceiling using only our mosquito nets, all the while SCREAMING AT THE MONKEY?

But never let it be said that English majors don’t know how to improvise. Because I’ll have you know that before the night was over, Shannon had TOTALLY revised her original Monkey Alarm (patent pending) design.

She recognized that we needed something on top of the backpack that was a bit more hefty and stable than the bottle of water.

So she replaced the water with a bottle of sunscreen.

We found great comfort in that modification. And we slept the sleep of angels. Because NO WAY a monkey gets past a bottle of sunscreen, y’all.

I feel certain that any respectable English major would agree.

This post was originally published on March 4, 2008.

I knew that today was going to be what Sister calls a “humdingalinga” when I had to put Howard Alex in time out. At the pool. During his swimming lesson.

The specifics aren’t important, really – just typical four year-old antics – but when we got in the car a little bit later and started to talk about the difference between good choices and bad choices, Alex apologized and then informed me that we needed to pray.

Look for him at a tent revival near you when he’s, you know, seven. He’ll obviously be the one offering the invitation to the altar while “Just As I Am” plays in the background.

So we went to lunch, ran a couple of errands, stopped at Publix for some groceries (ground chuck for $1.99 a pound – HOLLA!) , then hurried back home before all the meat ruined in the 243 degree heat.

And clearly I’m exaggerating. Because it was actually only about 172 this afternoon.

The highlight of the day was without a doubt my return trip to the ENT. Who knew that two weeks of impaction-softening eardrops could pass by so quickly? Oh, it has been special season.

In all honesty I didn’t even mind the fact that I had a doctor’s appointment, because I knew that my doctor’s appointment guaranteed a certain span of time in which I would be all alone. Never you mind that the majority of that alone time would be spent with someone trying to pry impacted wax from my ear canal. I’ll take my quiet where I can get it, thankyouverymuch.

So after spending about forty five minutes reading back issues of Ladies’ Home Journal in the waiting room (heaven on earth, I tell you), I was escorted to an examination room, where, thanks to my doctor’s fancy audio set-up, I enjoyed the soothing sounds of Seal and TLC.

Remember, internets: don’t go chasing waterfalls. Please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you’re used to.

Sadly, the physician’s assistant came in the room and interrupted the moment of introspection I was sharing with T-Boz, Chili and Left Eye (God rest her soul). And after he took a look at my right ear his first words were, “So, have you REALLY been using your drops?”

I couldn’t help but feel that the news wasn’t good.

And I won’t go into too much detail because I realize that many of you have recently eaten supper, but he had to use, um, POINTY STEEL THINGS in order to remove the impaction. And then he had to CUT IT WITH SCISSORS because he couldn’t get it out of my ear.

You see, IT WAS TOO BIG TO COME OUT OF MY EAR IN ONE PIECE.

And that was just the right side, my friends.

Several days ago I told D. that there was no way I was looking at whatever came out of my ear, no way in this world, but when push came to shove I just couldn’t help it. Curiosity got the better of me, and not only did I look, I COULD NOT TURN AWAY FROM IT.

Some minutes later, when I finally regained my composure, I asked the PA how in the sam hill that THING ended up in my ear, and he said that it’s because I have unusually small ear canals.

It was a bittersweet moment, mainly because I have spent the better part of thirty years wishing that something, anything about me would be considered “unusually small.” I would love to have “unusually small” thighs, or “unusually small” upper arms, or “unusually small” stomach flab.

But instead, I have “unusually small” ear canals.

Needless to say, I am underwhelmed with delight.

The good news, however, is that I can now hear better than I have in years. I had to turn down the volume on my cell phone, and I’ve been fiddling with the volume on iTunes all night long lest the old settings shatter my eardrums. I’m even considering applying to the CIA as a covert human listening device.

I’m JUST LIKE the Bionic Woman, y’all. Or at least I would be if I actually had any bionic powers.

Unfortunately, it seems that the only superhuman power I have is to produce massively sized ear impactions.

And the demand for such a skill is understandably nonexistent.

This post was originally published on August 1, 2007.

Hey y’all –

Here are the winners of the Third Day question contest:

1 – Suzanne (she also won at Big Mama‘s – WHAT ARE THE ODDS, I ASK YOU), so I’ll check and see if I can pick one more winner)

50 – Amy Martin (earthlink email, question about shopping)

130 – Mozi Esme’s Mommy

157 – Amy K. (cox email, question about hair, and WHAT IS IT WITH THE AMYS?)

168 – Kerry – Colored With Memories

Congratulations, everybody! Mark from Third Day will be answering your questions on his blog on August 18th – I’ll be sure to post a link so you can read all the great questions and answers.

Thanks so much for your participation – and winners, if you’d send me your mailing address, I’ll forward that info to the people who’ll be shipping your fabulous prizes.

Now. If you’ll excuse me, I need to be getting back to my place on the couch so that I don’t miss a single second of the Olympics.

I tend to err on the side of obsessive, you know.