This Is Not My Finest Bloggy Hour

13 March 2008 by

So we have the small matter of a five year-old’s birthday party tomorrow.

And I still have to put together the favor bags and go buy drinks and ice cream, not to mention that I need to CLEAN MY FILTHY HOUSE.

However, I have managed to procure all manner of Pirates of the Caribbean-related party wares. And you’d better believe that every single child at the party will be sporting a Fundana.TM OH YES MA’AM. Because we like to keep it festive around here.

Anyway, this has just been one of those weeks where the blog has gotten my (admittedly lukewarm-ish) leftovers. I do apologize. But it’s also been the first week since I came home from Africa that I’ve felt like our little family has been firing on all cylinders, and that has been a huge – HUGE – blessing. It’s been a good week.

Also: today, on the way home from school, Alex told me that Pontius Pirate made Jesus die on the cross and THAT, THAT IS WHY, MAMA, THAT PIRATES ARE THE BAD GUYS, BECAUSE THE PIRATES HURT JESUS.

It’s an interesting theological perspective for sure – it’s just a shame that it’s not, you know, accurate. So somehow between now and tomorrow I need to convince my child that Jack Sparrow is neither directly nor indirectly responsible for what happened to Jesus. Or else we’re going to have untold emotional and psychological trauma at the birthday party.

Good times.

See y’all in a little while.

Filed Under: Rambling

Hello, How Are Y’all, We’re Home

9 March 2008 by

Well, the wedding was absolutely beautiful.

Beautiful.

Did I mention that it was beautiful?

It was. Totally beautiful.

But in case you were wondering? A “spring forward” time change is just a wee bit hateful when you have to be at an airport by 7:30 in the morning, which you may have known as 6:30 in the morning as recently as yesterday, even.

And if I start to think about how I was in the Pacific time zone and now I’m in the central time zone and so I was two hours behind my normal time while we were in California but then we jumped an hour ahead and then two hours ahead once we crossed back into central time only central time is now an hour ahead of what it used to be so pretty much I don’t have any idea what time it is or what time my body thinks it is and my feeble mind is not at all capable of sorting out this whole thing and OH MY WORD SOME SORT OF MATHEMATICAL FORMULA WOULD BE HANDY.

As long as it doesn’t involve any actual math.

And also: do you know what else I need?

My own bed.

Hallelujah.

See y’all tomorrow.

Filed Under: Rambling

Cali-For-Nie-Ay

8 March 2008 by

So yesterday the husband and I got on a big ole airplane and flew out to sunny southern California. And then, after we arrived, we went to a rehearsal dinner for our friends Todd and Marti.

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Because those two crazy kids are getting married tomorrow.

I KNOW!

And you know what else? Today we woke up to this view:

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It is sort of pretty here.

And just in case you’re wondering, we left the child at home. I mean, we didn’t leave him by himself or anything. We won’t do that until he’s at least, you know, seven. We feel that’s reasonable.

D. and I had a wide-open day today, and after debating what we could do to fill it up, we decided to go to Disneyland, which is TOTALLY what most 30-something married couples do when they don’t have kids with them for a weekend. Right?

Oh, I know. We’re a little strange. But we had a blast.

And I’m not saying that we got there early this morning or anything, but here’s what the parking garage looked like when we climbed out of the car.

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OH YES MA’AM.

We really did have the best time; plus, since the crowds weren’t bad, we were able to ride our favorite rollercoasters over and over again.

Which is why we rode Space Mountain four times.

And why we rode Tower of Terror at least five times.

And why I screamed myself silly.

Because I am, after all, terribly sophisticated.

Hope y’all have a great weekend!

Filed Under: Rambling

A Hair Collage

6 March 2008 by

So here I am.

At 7:30 in the morning.

In my pajamas.

With no make-up on.

Trying to show the internets what the Hair Wizard did yesterday.

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So as you can see, my photography is magical.

I was trying to show you the front and the back AT THE SAME TIME, but that requires skillz I don’t possess. And seeing as how I’m home alone, this is as good as it’s gonna get right now.

As a sidenote, I would like to report that yesterday, when I was leaving Mama and Daddy’s house to go to my appointment with the Hair Wizard, I looked at my child straight in the eyes and said, “Alex? You make sure you mind your grandparents, okay? Have an obedient heart, okay?”

And he looked right back at me for about five full seconds, and then he whispered:

“It’s okay, Mama. Remember? I’m at my grandparents’ house. I can do whatever I want here.”

I do believe he’s figured out the system.

Filed Under: Rambling

We Are Considering Sideline Careers As Nature Guides

4 March 2008 by

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.

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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.

191 Comments Filed Under: Africa, Compassion, Rambling

Internets, We Need To Talk About Dave Barnes. Again.

2 March 2008 by

Now I know – I KNOW – that when music resonates with me, I tend to go a little overboard.

Remember this past summer’s obsession with the Monk & Neagle CD, anyone?

Or my recent enthusiasm for Ronnie Freeman’s new duet with Christy Nockels?

Well.

I know I’ve mentioned Dave Barnes on the blog a couple of times. Because I think his Chasing Mississippi CD is pretty much flat-out brilliant.

Not to mention that he is very funny.

And I am a fan of the funny.

Just for the record.

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So tonight my friend Leigh and I went to see Dave Barnes in concert, and OH MY LANDS he and his band are so incredibly talented and entertaining and engaging and WHY ARE YOU EVEN READING THIS, YOU SHOULD TOTALLY BE ON DAVE BARNES’ WEBSITE SO YOU CAN BUY TICKETS TO A CONCERT OR SOMETHING.

Because if you can’t tell, I enjoyed his live performance a whole bunch.

Dave Barnes (it’s important to me that I use both of his names at all times, though I could not tell you why. Other than the fact that I enjoy saying “Dave Barnes” all together. It is also important to remember that I have never claimed to be normal.) has a new CD coming out in April, and while I haven’t heard it yet, I have listened to the songs on his website about 1,000 times and as a result of my obsessive listening expect to be receiving a large bill for bandwidth usage from his website host any day now.

Anyway, you can find all sorts of details about that new CD right here, and sidenote: two CD’s and a DVD for only $15?!?! What is this? 1987?

Also: there is a song called “10,000 Children” on his new CD that Dave Barnes wrote after being completely overwhelmed by a trip to Uganda, and after he sang it tonight I wanted to run to the stage and hug his neck and say “ME, TOO! ME, TOO!”

But alas, I did not do that, because, well, I did not want to be arrested.

In conclusion comma I would just like to say that I enjoy Dave Barnes’ music. I enjoy Dave Barnes’ band. And I especially enjoy being able to tell the internets about Dave Barnes because his music is stuff you can totally listen to with your kids without being afraid that they’ll pick up colorful new adjectives to add to their vocabulary.

As an added bonus, his music contains no high-pitched squealing by cartoon characters.

I for one think that is quite special.

And I hope you have a wonderful Sunday.

Filed Under: Rambling
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