A couple of weeks ago Alex started complaining about his left ear.

And by “complaining,” I mean that he started crying incessantly while holding onto the left side of his face and then screaming, “OW, OW, OW” whenever he took a breath.

I figured a trip to the doctor was in order, so off we went. The little man had a double ear infection, got a prescription for some antibiotics, and was as good as new in a couple of days. All better, I thought.

The day after our doctor’s appointment, I was telling Emma Kate what had happened, and she said, “you’d better watch that ear…sometimes amoxicillin doesn’t knock out those infections.” I made a mental note, and then started to talk about something else of the utmost importance.

Like, you know, my hair.

But oh, did Emma Kate’s warning ever echo in my own ears this morning around 2:00 when we headed into hour number four of the “OW, OW, OW” Reunion Tour.

New and improved! With fever!

So needless to say, we’re headed back to the doctor later this morning.

And afterwards, I have high hopes that the two of us will pile up on a couch and sleep for the entire afternoon. I don’t know how Alex is going to feel about that particular plan, but I’m ALL OVER IT, frankly.

Last night when the little man seemed to be hurting the most – before a super-duper dose of Tylenol started to kick in – the only thing that would stop the crying was watching “Monsters, Inc.” or a Mickey Mouse movie called “Twice Upon A Christmas.” I guess the movies distract him just enough that he doesn’t think about the pain, and I for one understand completely because I have nursed many a sinus headache by watching an old VHS tape of the MSU / Ole Miss football game from 1999.

Somehow hearing the announcer scream “HE’S WIDE OPEN! SIRMONES IS WIDE OPEN! TOUCHDOWN, BULLDOGS!” has a way of soothing the pounding pain that, under normal circumstances, would cause me to dig through every single drawer in our house in search of some sort of anvil and hammer combination so that I could try to alleviate a little of that pesky sinus pressure.

So that’s what’s going on here on this fine Friday. A tired mama. A tired daddy. But most of all, one sick (and tired) little boy.

God love him. I just want to make it all better.

And hopefully the doctor will.

Hello how are you my name is BooMama and this is my blog.

I think.

Honestly, I wish I had a better reason for why my presence here the last week or so has pretty much amounted to “Hey! Want free purse?” or “Hey! In Nashville!” or “Hey! Have question for singers?” or “Hey! Here is podcast!”

But the bottom line is that I’m struggling a bit with this thing they call time management. I can’t seem to carve out any time during the day to sit down and write without interruption, and then at night – which is usually my prime time for cranking out A Heapin’ Portion of Average – it seems like before I can turn around it’s ten o’clock and I am just too tired to try to put the words and the sentences together.

Also: the email. The email is a big, unanswered pile right now. And I love the email. I love reading the email. I love responding to the email. But alas, I am failing miserably with the email. Just in case you were wondering.

I’ve been working on a re-cap about Deeper Still for about, oh, forever, and I will get at least the first part of that posted sometime today. But tonight is when Wednesday night church activities kick in for me, so odds are that I won’t be doing any writing or emailing ONCE AGAIN because I will be small grouping and singing instead.

By the way, you know how I had that thing with my ear? And how I thought my singing voice would improve dramatically as a result of my Bionic Woman-type hearing? Well, I was wrong. I sound just as bad as I always have. Now I just hear all the badness better than ever before.

Really, it will be no surprise whatsoever if I find myself sitting alone in the alto section tonight. Because I now realize that in the past when I thought I was singing harmony, it was actually “harmony(?!?)” – a sound that would displease the ears of any mortal man.

And yet somehow it’s a joyful noise unto the Lord.

If that’s not grace and mercy in action, people, then I don’t know what is.

But the good news is that I know life will settle down soon, and I actually have two things coming up that make me very excited indeed:

1) We’re going to see Monk & Neagle with Emma Kate and her hubby.
2) I’m doing another CD giveaway in the next day or two.

Honestly, I think if someone were to ask me about my idea of a perfect day, the best possible scenario I could think of would be hanging out with my boys, eating fried chicken, drinking diet Coke (OVER ICE!) and giving away CD’s to the internets. With Monk & Neagle playing live in our dining room.

And you know, now that I think about it, that perfect day will pretty much be within my reach the night of the concert. I won’t be at home, of course, but I’ll have D and diet Coke and Monk & Neagle and a giveaway going on here at the blawg.
Hey – do you think M&N will care if I take me a bucket of chicken into their show?

I’m guessing they probably wouldn’t go for that.

But a girl can dare to dream.

So I found out this afternoon that I’m going to get to do a little Q&A with Monk & Neagle. Their new CD (yes, the one I have been talking about for two months now) comes out next week, and I am tickled to death to be able to do something fun for the release date.

And there’s no doubt that I will ask them a wide range of serious questions, including but not limited to: what kind of cereal do they like, do they have a favorite TV show from their childhoods, and when they think of a blogger named BooMama, is the first phrase that pops in their minds “restraining order”?

But then I started thinking.

(SHOCKING, ISN’T IT?)

Big Mama and I have loved your podcast questions so much, and quite frankly y’all are way better question askers than I am. Plus, I know that many of you have enjoyed M & N’s music as much as I have. So if you have a question that you’d like to ask the Monk & Neagle boys (or “Nickel Neagle,” as Alex calls them), would you leave it in my comments? Be sure to leave your blog URL (if you have one) so that if I use your question I can link to you in the interview next Tuesday.

Thanks, y’all!

p.s. For those of you who have emailed and commented to ask about the Deeper Still conference, I’m going to type up my notes and thoughts about it tonight or tomorrow. So much to say – and all of it good.

This week we cover a range of Deeply Important Topics: what to do about bare legs in the wintertime, how we like to spend our spare time, our ongoing efforts to develop a vast media empire and why marriage seems to be so difficult for celebrities.

Plus, we talk about Christy Nockels. But this is really nothing new.

And as an added bonus for those of you who have had a difficult time telling our voices apart, there’s a dead giveaway on this podcast: I’m the one who is on a cell phone and sounds like I’m participating in a really sub-par radio remote.

It is sure to be a tender memory.

Listen on the blog here:

Subscribe via RSS feed here.

…because I just finished eating supper with Sister and Barry and am now watching the Bulldogs play football. We’re winning by 21, but you probably know that already because you’ve heard Sister and me screaming like a couple of teenagers who just spied Zac Efron at the mall.

I’m going to write in great detail about the Deeper Still conference at some point in the next day or two – I just have so much to tell you. I learned so much and got me a FRESH WORD (COME ON, NOW) that hit me right between the eyes. It was an incredible two days.

Mandisa sang at the conference today, and if you have not heard her song “God Speaking,” please download it rightthissecond. It is absolutely beautiful, and it was so fun to see her back on the stage with the Living Proof praise team.

Which reminds me: Travis Cottrell is so stinkin’ talented and did a phenomenal job leading worship, as he always does.

And oh, by the way, my ORIGINAL pretend-BFF Christy Nockels was at the conference, too. She didn’t sing, and I didn’t meet her, but, you know, she was there, and just knowing that made me so happy that I had to call Emma Kate and Big Mama so that they could share in my joy.

And seriously, I thought of y’all a thousand times. It was such a sweet, humbling time of digging deep in God’s Word; I wish every single one of you could have been there. I was overcome with gratefulness for you this weekend, and I hope you know how much you bless my socks off every single day.

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. – Ephesians 3:14-19

Have a wonderful Sunday, y’all.