From the time I got home yesterday afternoon until I went to sleep last night, I was showered with kisses and hugs and “I love you”s. The kitchen was spotless, the beds were made, and the refrigerator was stocked with diet Coke.

Also: I have never felt more patient and understanding in my whole life ever. I was rested and engaged and not a single bit stressed.

And as a result of all of these things, I have come to a decision:

I will now be going out of town every four to five days.

Some of you are going to have to open up your guest rooms so that I have, you know, somewhere to go, but I am trusting the Lord’s provision.

Because did I mention that the kitchen was SPOTLESS?

Thank you and have a lovely Monday.

For several years my daddy has maintained a webpage of his own. It’s a password protected deal where he posts pictures of grandkids, fourth cousins eight times removed, and basically every possible morsel of genealogical minutiae that you could ever want to know about our family.

A couple of weeks ago D decided to see if Daddy had posted anything recently, and later that day when we were in the car, he said, “Hey, your daddy linked to you.”

“He did what I’m sorry huh?”

“Your daddy linked to you. He mentioned something about your blog on his webpage.”

Now if it’s hard for you to understand why I was a little shocked by this information, it’s because it’s only been in the last six weeks or so that I’ve known that Mama and Daddy are active readers of my blog. Daddy says that he has to “log on” and then pass the computer to Mama, and in fact just this last week Daddy wrote me a sweet email that congratulated me on my “recent blog awards” and went on to suggest that maybe I should “back up all of your blog posts into some sort of database, as Mother and I think that maybe one day you could compile them all into a book.”

I couldn’t help but picture me standing at a copier, painstakingly running off copies of each and every blog post, then putting the pages through a three-hole punch, placing them in a vinyl binder, and then asking Alex to put one of those title stickers he just made with some markers in the center of the binder cover. It’s sure to be a best-seller!

(I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: why would anyone in his or her right mind pay good money for something you can get for free? And since I have no imagination, a work of fiction is nowhere in my future. So blogging is as far up the writing food chain as I’m going, people. That’s just the cold hard truth of it all.)

Anyway, I logged onto Daddy’s webpage, and after a little bit of clicking around, here is what I found:

Where do I even start?

First of all, one of my favorite parts of Daddy’s blurb is that I’m “a blogger at boomama.net,” mainly because the word “a” implies that I am but one blogger on a staff of many here at BooMama, where we toil furiously in the blogging trenches to bring you some of the very best mediocre writing you’ll ever find on the interweb.

Second, the part about him not wanting to brag? Totally sweet. I don’t care how old I am.

Third, I love it when he says that I have “a large reading audience, nationwide.” I’m not so sure about the “large” part, but when I read it I thought, “DON’T TELL MAMA THAT SOME CANADIANS READ, TOO! IT’LL BLOW HER MIND!” And then she’d call me and say, “You mean they can see your blog IN CANADA? Well I had no idea. HOW IN THE WORLD do they do that?”

I also giggled when I saw, “it is different than most of what you read,” because it’s just a little bit ambiguous about whether it’s different in a bad way or different in a good way. However, I have to admit that it definitely is different if your normal reading material is a newspaper or magazine. I mean, consider the sheer volume of CAPITAL LETTERS and exclamation points! They don’t allow those SOPHISTICATED WRITING SKILLS in those fancy printed publications!

OH NO MA’AM THEY DON’T!

Finally, I thought it was very gracious of Daddy to point out that my writings are done “mostly on the spur of the moment” because I don’t “have a lot of spare time.”

In other words: don’t expect too much, people. She’s frazzled and crazed. SHE’S FRAZZLED AND CRAZED!

All in all, I thought Daddy’s post was delightful. Being in your 30’s doesn’t mean you stop enjoying some parental encouragement. And while I’m sure that some of my distant relatives were a wee bit horrified by what constitutes “writing” in my little corner of the blogosphere, I’m glad that a few of them might know where to find me now.

(Sidenote: if you ask my mama anything about my “website,” she tell you that I have “a blog on Google.”)

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to return to “backing up my database.”

Or, you know, watching “Little Bear.”

We’re busy as bees, people.

And on behalf of all of the writing staff here at BooMama, I want you to know that we’re going to continue to crank out as much writing product “on the spur of the moment” as we possibly can. That is what we do.

All one of us.

This post was originally published on February 22, 2007. And I’ll be back with something new tomorrow.

This morning D. woke me up at 7:30. He mentioned last night that he wanted for the three of us to go to McDonald’s for breakfast today so that we could celebrate Alex’s first week of school, but I sort of thought he was kidding because I rarely go anywhere on Saturday mornings. Unless, of course, I travel a little deeper under the covers as I do my very best to sleep late as possible.

But in the spirit of family fun, I got out of the bed. I stumbled down the hall and helped Alex change out of his pajamas, then started the process of trying to make myself somewhat presentable. Which means that I pulled my hair back with sunglasses, put on some extra-cute flip-flops, and off we went.

(My outfit does not bear mentioning because it didn’t match even a little bit. I pretended that it did while we were at breakfast just to make myself feel better, but that particular bout of denial has since worn off. And the truth of the matter is that I was a one-woman early morning sartorial train wreck.)

(People tried not to stare, and for that I am thankful.)

While Alex and I found a table, D. ordered our food. And that reminds me: I don’t know if y’all know this, but you can get McDonald’s Big Breakfast for about cheap dollars and thrifty cents. It’s such a big meal that Alex and I usually split it – he’s a fan of the pancakes and hash browns, whereas my loyalties lie with the eggs and sausage.

This is riveting information, I know.

I guess I’ll have to ratchet up the excitement by telling you that D. ordered me an EXTRA sausage patty because he thought I might enjoy having two pieces of sausage with my scrambled eggs. And as he was unloading our tray-o-food, he presented that extra piece of fried meat product to me as if it were a diamond resting on a pillow of clouds. Then he said, “Now you can go back home and blog about how your husband loves you so much that he ordered you an extra sausage patty at the McDonald’s this morning.”

It was the kind of romantic gesture every young girl dreams about when she’s twirling around her house wearing a princess costume and crown: the day when her handsome prince will look deeply into her eyes, place his hand on her shoulder, and offer her a plastic McDonald’s tray that holds an extra sausage patty wrapped in waxy paper. And then she will blog about it.

That dream came true for me today, y’all.

It is a precious, tender memory.

And I will carry it in my heart – lo, in my very arteries – for the rest of my earthly days.

Thursday night was the worst night I’ve had sleep-wise since Alex was a baby. I tossed, I turned, I flipped, I sighed, and when I finally dozed off around three (yes! THREE!) in the morning, a certain preschooler snapped me right out of my peaceful almost-slumber when he started to cry.

So I went to his room, made sure he was fine, walked back to our room, crawled in the bed, tried to relax, and about five minutes later Maggie the Lab started whimpering.

Apparently she’s changed her must-get-out-of-the-house strategy. She didn’t ROOOOOOO – it was more of an AWWWWWWR. So I got out of bed (again), stomped down the hallway, took both dogs outside to the bathroom, cajoled them back into the house, and fought the urge to say Very Mean Things. But then I looked at the clock, and would you like to know what time it was?

3:16.

Good one, God. Nice bit-o-perspective, it was.

And then I wondered if dogs or children ever wake up God in the middle of the night, and if they do, does it make him just a wee bit angry?

Okay. Probably not.

Anyway, I went back to bed and slept for THREE WHOLE HOURS, so as you might guess I woke up feeling like I’d been to a spa. A spa where they beat your eyelids with spiky reeds that have been soaked in gasoline.

Since we had a busy morning Friday, I had high hopes for an afternoon nap. However, for some strange reason I was unsuccessful in my nap-taking efforts (“MAMA?!? I’M DONE WITH REST TIME! ARE YOU RESTING?!? DO YOU WANNA PLAY THE WII, MAMA?!?”), and right about the time I decided to give up on the nap and face the world, Martha called.

Now in the interest of time – because I know you all must have things you’d like to accomplish before 2011 – I’m going to skip over Martha’s stories about having the soffits painted, going to lunch at Macaroni Grill (suffice it to say that Martha is not a fan of the Penne Rustica), finding a place for a computer she may be getting, discovering that her previous house painter DID NOT CAULK A THING! HE DIDN’T CAULK A THING! NOT A SINGLE THING!, and taking a computer course with her friend Betty in the late 1980’s where they worked with Macs and Martha made a 98 on her final exam.

So then.

Earlier this week Martha went shopping in Jackson, Mississippi with her friends Mary Ann, Minnie and Rubena. They had MORE! FUN!, as they always do. However, for the first time in, well, MY WHOLE LIFE, Martha didn’t say a single word about the clothes that she tried on and/or purchased at Steinmart(s) because she couldn’t wait to tell me about their trip to the furniture store.

You see, there is a furniture store right outside of Jackson that is the biggest single-store retail establishment I have ever seen in my life. It’s called Miskelly’s, and I’d be very surprised if there’s anyone in Mississippi who hasn’t heard of it. It is ginormous squared, and Martha & Company absolutely love to stop by there when they’re in Jackson.

But they don’t go because they want to look at furniture, necessarily. Oh, heavens no.

They go because Miskelly’s has, according to Martha, “some of the most wonderful homemade cakes you’ve ever tasted.”

And with those wonderful cakes they serve complimentary coffee, sweet tea and lemonade.

AT THE FURNITURE STORE.

So as Martha continued, I listened with great interest as she explained that she really likes the Italian cream cake at Miskelly’s, and the caramel cake is good, too, but she doesn’t really care for the devil’s food, even though that is absolutely Rubena’s favorite.

I started to think about how people in other parts of the country might find this whole furniture store-serving-cake-and-sweet-tea thing quite odd indeed, yet the only part of the story that seemed odd to me is that Martha never mentioned Miskelly’s pound cake. I mean, any Southerner knows that you live and die by your homemade pound cake, and it made me wonder if they’re still looking for the right recipe, or if they’ve found that people who shop in their store prefer cakes with icing, or if maybe they serve pound cake in the morning but not in the afternoon because pound cake is oftentimes a breakfast food in this part of the country, and really, I should tell my mama to call them, because her pound cake is the best in three states – maybe four – and if Miskelly’s served her pound cake there’s no question that even more people would want to stop by the furniture store for dessert.

And then my train of thought about the pound cake froze in its tracks.

Because I realized, in a moment of utter clarity, that somehow, over the last ten years, Martha has trained me to think just like she does.

And I didn’t even know it.

Which led me to my next realization:

Martha is like some sort of Southern Jedi, y’all.

Oh yes ma’am she is.

However.

She would never wear one of those Jedi robes because 1) they probably itch 2) they make you look three sizes bigger than you actually are and 3) brown isn’t really her color.

But who knows? Maybe Steinmart(s) will be able to pull together a cute little Southern Jedi uniform for her the next time she’s in Jackson.

And then she can stop at the furniture store for cake and coffee on her way home.

All righty. I just fixed myself a cup of coffee (regular, not decaf – because I am LIVING ON THE EDGE), cranked up some Watermark (my original pretend-BFF Christy Nockels is singing “The Purest Place” – somebody say “AMEN” one time), and decided I’d sit down and write a blog post.

It would be helpful if something had, you know, happened.

I should re-phrase.

Stuff has happened, of course – just not anything terribly bloggable. Alex has been going to swimming lessons in the mornings, and then we eat lunch, and then we have play time outside, and then he has rest time, and then I start supper, and then we eat supper, and then it’s bath time, and are you starting to see why I don’t have a whole lot to say?

I did write a post a few days ago about how stinkin’ hot it is, but then I figured no one’s day would be improved by reading about my dislike of the heat and how the heat that I don’t like makes me sweat and I don’t really like sweating either.

But certainly this post you’re reading right now is going to improve the quality of your day by leaps and bounds.

So, in the absence of anything exciting, here are pictures of some random summertime fun.

This was one day last week when it was terribly hot (DID I MENTION THAT I DON’T CARE FOR THE HEAT?), so I let A. water the plants on the deck. But he tried to water his mama instead. At which point I thanked the Lord for closed doors.

This was one day when it was terribly hot, so A. had little mid-morning ice cream treat. And then tried to use the remote control to make me go away.

It was a tender time.

This was one night when it was terribly hot, so A. decided to go back inside my brother and sister-in-law’s house. Because, you see, there were no mosquitoes indoors.

This was one day when it was terribly hot, so A. settled in for a nap in the comfort of his air conditioned playroom. A nap with Pluto, a stuffed frog, and three DVDs stacked neatly on his finger. Which is exactly where DVDs should be.

And you know what? Looking at these pictures of my four year-old little man reminds me of a very important fact: FOUR TOTALLY ROCKS.

I am loving four.

Not even the heat can change that.

It’s just that I love four a little bit more in the air conditioning.

Where it’s cool.