why getting older is the new getting younger.

it's 4:30 in the morning, and i am almost thirty.

ok, that isn't entirely true. it is actually 4:40am and i won't be thirty for two years. i just turned 28. i am almost sure that that is true. (since i have had kids, i have had a very difficult time remembering my age. i think it is due to a cocktail of hormones, exhaustion and trying to pretend that my kids' birthdays are more important than mine, when secretly i love my birthday the most.) but, i went an entire year thinking i was 28, only to turn the real 28 this past june. repeating that year made me take my actual-age-remembering more seriously. now, i won't forget. i am 28, two years until i turn thirty.

i realized this so fully, because i just woke up from a dream where i was sitting on the floor in the back seat of my grandfather's car telling everyone that i was thirteen. i kept saying it, over and over (like an actual thirteen-year-old would. how annoying would it be to be thirteen again? i can't even stand the thought of myself.) anyways, i kept saying it "i'm thirteen, really... i am!" the car was jam-packed with so many people, yet was still somehow unusually spacious. i was sitting on the floor, and on the seat above me was my friend lexi's brother, lindy. (don't ask me why he was there, i am pregnant and my hormones are even making my dreams do irrational things. i am completely out of control.)

so, when lindy looked at me skeptically at my last profession of being thirteen, i slipped. i vowed "i really am fifteen!" busted.

he looked at me with a little pity, and patted my back like i was his elderly grandmother. (i have met lexi and lindy's grandmother, she's seriously cooler than i am, and isn't really elderly elderly at all. but, when she gets super elderly, i know how her back will feel when it gets the you-poor-old-thing pat from lindy.

the thing that startled me out of this dream was not what one would expect. it was not the sudden realization that thirty "looms" in the distance. it was not how roomy grandpa's car inexplicably was, it wasn't the fact that lindy would let a pregnant teenager sit on the floor, while he took the seat... it was the fact that i lied about my age (and probably also because i was sleeping on my back, which forces my fetus to squish my bladder, which is always packed to the brim.)

but the real shocker here was that in my dream, i did not want to be older. in my dream, i was ashamed. i was so ashamed in fact i was willing to be thirteen again. that is the true horror that made this go from dream to nightmare. the reason this is so shocking to me is because a long time ago, i read a stupid article, by a stupid woman, in a stupid magazine that focused on stupid topics. in this article the woman seriously lamented over turning thirty... how thirty was the beginning of the end, how much your thirty-year-old body has changed since you were 20, how all the good times were behind her... on and on it went. she alluded to not being able to find a good man, and believed in large part that it was because she was getting old. even in my irrational dream state i could have told you that she couldn't find a good man, because she was so bitter about being thirty she couldn't see past the end of her nose... not because there was actually anything wrong with her, or being thirty.

from that article on, i vowed to embrace what would inevitably come. the age 30. i've actually collected a great deal of data in the past several years, and have found a few things out. 1) most of the woman i knew in their thirties had more money than i did, were smarter, had decent husbands (with the exception of the bitter article-writer who hates herself), and many had jobs that they loved, and/or children they loved even more than the dream job. 2) most the women i knew seemed a little more comfortable than i did. they knew what they believed in, and were fine with it. they dressed how they dressed - whether good or not great - and they were fine with it. they seemed to be in a stage where they kind of accepted who they were. they weren't unchangeable or anything, but they were done with the uncertainty of the twenties.

here's is what all my data-collection has taught me. (now i am only a stupid twenty-something, so i am probably wrong... but here goes nothing.)

the teenage years are marked by one major thing: we think we know everything. we are immature, kind of awkward for most of these years, and despite knowing everything... we are extremely insecure. for me personally, these years were also marked by big hair and being gangly. seriously, my brother-in-law dan, used to come to my volleyball games in high school and say that my knees looked like oranges on toothpicks. unfortunately, i graduated from high school in 1999, so i don't have the 80's to blame for my bad hair... unlike those lucky thirty-something subjects of my research at the time.

if the teen years are marked by thinking you know everything, then the twenties are marked by realizing you know nothing. if you thought you were insecure in your teen years when you knew everything, imagine the insecurity that comes when you move in to a dorm with strangers and realize you possess none of the knowledge you swore you had, and your parents lacked. in reality, the twenties are spent figuring out what you believe, who you are, who you hope to become and other tid bits of the like.

i started my family in my early twenties, so i can't say that it was a bad stage for me, just a lot of not really knowing enough about who i was. i got pregnant before i was married (exhibit a. in the case to prove that i knew nothing as a 20-year-old) so figuring out who i was and who i wanted to be, was perhaps a little difficult, because i was "wife" and "mama" while i was also "student" and "waitress." i know that not everybody knew as little as i did, but if we are honest, we were all pretty stupid in our late teens/early twenties. this is a safe place, and you can admit it here.

enter turning thirty. i think the thirties seem to be marked by self-awareness, improved self-worth and self-acceptance. i think the self-focused self-discovery of the teens and twenties, free women in the their thirties to be more focused on others (in a good way.) having done the research, turning thirty is not at all scary to me. in fact, i cannot wait to turn thirty. i really am completely excited about being in my thirties. i once told my friend kathy that for my thirtieth birthday, i was going to throw myself a huge party, and i was going to send out invitations that said "come to my party, i am turning 30, and i want to celebrate with all the people who helped to make me fabulous in my thirties!" kathy pointed out that that sounded a little arrogant of me, and that maybe i shouldn't brag about how fabulous i was in my thirties, since i was only 26 at the time. i think kathy was right, but she was also 29, three years closer to being thirty... which explains why she saw the flaw in my invitations, while i thought they were brilliant. stupid twenties.

i am going to skip to the forty-somethings now. women in their forties seem to go one way or the other... if they embraced their thirties and loved every minute of it, they are even greater in their forties. if, however, they fought their way through the thirties kicking and screaming, this is when the mid-life crisis hits. i think that the women who go bananas during their forties, are the same women who were afraid of turning thirty. you can't stop it, so it makes you crazy. for the women who don't go bananas, the forties are a time where the start putting themselves back on the to-do list (again, in a good way), and they buy things they have always wanted, but didn't really need at the time. the forties are when i will get really nice bedroom furniture. i am forty, i have waited a long time for this, i want a nice headboard.

fifty and beyond are admittedly, a bit of a mystery to me. i am currently conducting research about these years. i will say, the earliest trends in the data suggests that the more women fight the aging process, the more likely they are to go bananas. these are scientific studies, and i can't expect all of you to understand... so just try to keep up.

it's like this: my first car was a chevy something. i think it was mostly a chevy celebrity, but i don't for sure what kind of chevy it was because it was such a piece, that it had a trunk from a different kind of car... which is where the car type is written. (i'm sure it is written elsewhere as well, but i was a teenager - i knew nothing, and didn't know it.) the car was a gray matte finish, with a black trunk with a glossy finish. i had one hubcap, total, and no spare tire. i did, however, have a spare steering column in my black trunk, which was a bonus. so, the car was obviously not a lease from a dealership. the fact was that it was a piece of crap, but it was my car, and it was the only one i would have.

so, when i kept putting mile after mile on that car... i had two choices. i could pout and whine and complain about what was inevitably coming... or i could throw myself a little party every time the odometer hit a big number. the big number was coming either way. sure, it was tempting to covet the nice honda accord with all it's hubcaps, when i was out of gas at a busy intersection (with a tail light out and my keys locked in the car) but what good would that have done? i was still going to have to pry my foggy window down, climb in my crap car through the window, fish out the keys, dig in the trunk for the empty gas can (next to the spare steering column) and walk to the gas station. when i did that, i would drive my car until it hit 250,000 miles or until it died... whichever came first.

turning thirty, or turning 130 is sort of the same thing. you either will or you won't. i will either turn thirty or i'll die, whichever comes first. as far as i can tell, we can't stop it... nor should we want to. i would never want to go back to knowing less, being more confused, less sure. i especially wouldn't want to go back just so i could have my 20 year old body again... it would be nice, but i wasn't crazy about it when i was twenty, who's to say i would appreciate it any more now? so, the fact remains... it doesn't matter what kind of car you are driving, it's the only one we got and we're packing on the miles one way or another. if my odometer reads a big number, that just means i went a long way and the car didn't die. how can this be a bad thing?

i have to pee again. and eat a plum. happy aging!

90 minutes is really just too long.

okay. let's pretend we are now in the first week of march.

we are clinically insane people. here's why.

every year we drive to florida. we pack up pretty much everything we own (including our kids, ages 5, 3 1/2, and then 17 mos.) and venture out on the drive which is approx. 24 hours. there is actually a test to see if you are clinically insane. phase four of the test is this question: would you drive three small children to florida in one shot? if you answer yes, you are truly insane. phase five of this test is this question: when driving three small children to florida in one shot, would you, under any circumstances (including duress), take route 15? (now taking route 15 is the equivalent to taking a bike path. through a retirement community. in a snow storm.) if you answer yes to this question and anybody with authority finds out about it... i'm pretty sure they just put you in right in jail.

so far, my father-in-law is the only human to ever answer that phase five question with an enthusiastic yes. but, that is neither here nor there.

so. we're in florida, and we have two beautiful little girls who actually believe that you can grow up and be a princess for your profession. it's just what they do. they dress up, have royal balls and tea parties, talk in nearly perfect british accents, call each other "lady" (with a really sharp T sound, like "lay-Tee") and call their baby brother the grand duke. they wear hats, gloves, scarves, jewels, glass slippers, sunglasses, tiaras, and bunny ears... usually all at the same time. they are divine.

so, can you bring two of that species to florida and not take them to disney world? it would feel a little criminal not to. so, we saved up garage sale money and lemonade stand money to go to the magic kingdom for one day. it was like bringing them to their motherland.

they both carefully selected which ball gown they wanted to wear and i allowed one accessory. annalee settled on an ariel gown - post human transformation... so neither fin nor seashells were involved, trust me i would not have allowed it. marlie went as a blond snow white. they both decided on bunny ears with sequin detailing. very classy touch. the weather was beautiful, the tickets were overpriced and it was american capitalism at it's finest. a little disgusting, but for my girls... it was truly a dream come true.

now, when i went to disney world as a child, you could do disney in one day. at least we did. my mom would force us to sprint from attraction to attraction, mapping out show times and distances from one thing to the next. we would inevitably be the pale northerners running around frantically, wearing socks and tevas, and we looked like idiots (especially because i am pretty sure i also wore a fluorescent orange fanny pack, covered with a fine black mesh, set a little more toward one hip than the other. try not to covet.)

but, the point is we did it in a day. i can't imagine the disney world people are struggling financially... but i have a theory here. i am convinced that they have carefully and cruelly figured out how to make it almost impossible to do it in a single day. for example, when i went in the early 90's, you could be on your way to space mountain (which we peer pressured my mom into deviating from her map-plan and letting us go on several times in a row) and you would happen to run into your favorite character... mickey mouse, alladin, cinderella even. but, noooooooo... that's not how it works in the 0's. in 2009, they lock the characters up in some building and make you wait in line to see them. this, of course, takes anywhere between 60 and 90 minutes. even if you are sprinting as fast as your tevas will take you, you are NOT going to meet characters and hit pirates of the caribbean on the same day. it is impossible.

so, like good parents, we tried to convince the kids that they didn't really care about meeting the beautiful princesses in real life. then annalee, who is five years old, put on her lawyer face and made her case. in her mind, meeting the princesses in person was sort of like job-shadowing. she simply had to do it in order to become a real princess herself. could we deny them this right of passage? probably not, but we were gonna try. annalee leveled with us. she said "mommy, even if it takes all our hours, i really want to see ariel."

so, we caved. we went to ariel's grotto, which is a smart set-up. ariel herself is hidden back in a cave (so that the poor people who could barely afford this one day at disney, have to choose between seeing her, and doing anything else that day) and there is a long line of parents standing in a roped off area around the outside of a little sprinkler park. the kids can run around and play in the water - in their ballgowns - while the parents wait forever. i think this appeases the parents because we feel like "at least are kids are doing something while we wait."

we walked up to ariel's grotto and their was a sign there letting us know how long the wait would be until our little girls would fulfill their destiny. 90 MINUTES. we had an hour and a half to wait in line. if you break down the cost of disney world minute by minute... i think we spend about 40 bucks just in that line. but, this was why we were there, so we got in line and the kids ran wild in the water. harper, 17 months at the time, was very intent on fleeing the grotto and returning to the carousel ride - and he spent the entire time trying to escape. so, naturally... my attention was mostly focused on him. plus, i know the girls knew better and would never DREAM of leaving that area without an adult. they simply know better. or so i thought.

i look up. marlie, 3, is missing. i am completely frantic - only a parent who has temporarily misplaced one of their humans knows what i mean. i am terrified, angry, nervous (with a dash of embarrassed)... and running around like a crazy person looking for her. then i see her. she is holding the hand of a disney world employee and she looks busted, she has her head (which looks a little like a small bowling ball, covered in wild tumbleweed-like hair) hanging down very low, but her eyes are looking up. right on me. i run up to them and apologize to the lady. as i am walking marlie firmly back to the bench to get the whole story, i see another disney world employee going down the line of parents waiting to meet ariel, shouting "is anyone missing a snow white?" i was mortified. i went and told the lady that i had found her, and all the parents give me that look of "you negligent parent... losing your child like that. you should be ashamed of yourself." which i was. so i hope they're happy.

marlie and i are sitting on the bench. i explain to her how relieved i am that she is safe, and how disappointed i am that she disobeyed. then the story came spilling out. what happened was this... marlie (who is my strong-willed, free-spirited second-born... who pretty much has my personality and lack of delayed gratification. oh, and my attention span.) she is innocently playing in the play area... running around the large rocks in the middle, and weaving in and out of the water, when she discovers that from the very end of the play area, you can see the back of ariel's cave. this is where those lucky girls and boys who have waited 90 minutes to meet ariel, have their photograph taken by a disney picture man and of course their parents or other supervising adult, and then they joyfully exit the cave through a turn style. this is what all the good american boys and girls are doing. not my marlie. she sees that turn style. and more importantly she sees just past that turn style. into the cave, just far enough to see ariel herself. sitting on a rock, calling children up, one by one, talking to them in a perfect ariel voice, and posing for a picture with an exact ariel smile.

this was simply too much for marlie. she apparently could NOT contain herself. she would later report this to me. she crawled under the gate (aka the turn style) and walked up to the front of the line. ariel said "come sit next to me." so marlie did. marlie, i'm sure, showed ariel her shoes and her dress, and quietly whispered her name when ariel asked. at this point i don't think anybody realized that she shouldn't have been there. but, when marlie asked for her photograph to be taken, they realized there weren't any adults involved here.

first of all, i am completely shocked that she would do this. i can't believe that she would leave our supervision (which clearly wasn't adequate), cut off all those people, then have the audacity to get up there and demand that the photograph be taken! so, as she was telling me this (i am in complete disbelief) i asked her "did they actually take your picture!?" she said on the verge of tears "no, because they said i didn't have the right lady with me!" i then explained to her furiously, that i was the right lady, her mother... that she needed to stay with ME!

after many lectures and some time of sitting alone to think about what she had done while tom and i discussed whether or not we would allow her to meet ariel and get a legit picture taken with her... she knew she had one chance to redeem herself. here is what she said in her needlessly loud three-year-old voice, "mommy, i know that i disobeyed and it was dangerous. it was disrespectful to all the other customers. but mommy..." (insert long pause, as if this was the crowning moment of her argument. this was her chance to explain why she did it. knowing it was wrong, why she had no choice but to take that chance...) "...but mommy... ariel is not a statue... and her tail was real."

that is a three-year-old way of saying, "i'm sorry, but what were my options!? i had to see that tail."

in a blend of anger, and trying not to laugh out loud... i left her there alone to stew in fear that she would never have that photo to relive this adventure, while tom and i stepped aside to discuss her fate. tom's parents, who came with us to disney, gently reminded me that this was, for her, a once in a lifetime opportunity and maybe today wasn't the day to drive home that lesson. they pleaded her case, and tom and i did end up letting her have a legitimate meeting with ariel and many pictures were taken - both by the disney picture-taker, and by me... the right lady.

bamboozled, quite literally.

so i have not posted in a long time. after a little bit of verbal abuse from my fanlets, i have decided to post - or at least try to post - more frequently. twice a week as my friend sam firmly requires. (i say fanlets because i don't think they can technically be called your fans if a) they are the only twelve friends you have, b) they are related to you, or c) they are willing to verbally abuse you a little bit. also, i say fanlets because as far as making up your own words goes, i'm... fine with it.)

so, this is how we're going to do it. i am going to take my fanlets on a journey back in time... to all the dates i meant to post but didn't. for today's journey, we are going to go back to valentine's day. *i would like to apologize in advance for my reckless and excessive use of parentheses in this post.

for valentine's day tom and i unknowingly got each other the exact same gift. this story of our gift buying and exchanging shows the major differences in our personalities. but the fact that we ended up getting each other the exact same gift, in the most polar opposite way possible kinda says a lot about us and our relationship... and about how i believe god paired us uniquely together - to both irritate the junk out of each other, and also to complement each other in the most profound ways.

many years ago, for a wedding present, some of my wonderful friends decorated tom and my first "apartment" while we were away on our honeymoon. (now our first apartment was a beautiful deluxe penthouse suite in a big city high rise, it was gorgeous. wait, actually... it was a bedroom in my sisters basement. i was knocked up and we were broke. it happens.) part of the lavish decorations included a lucky bamboo plant, which we have always called "our love fern." (this plant nickname is in reference to one of my favorite movies, "how to lose a guy in ten days," which for the longest time i couldn't remember the title of, and i kept calling it "ten things i hate about losing a guy." but that is really neither here, nor there.)

so. the love fern. while i took excellent care of it for many years, and in many homes... from the den of our poverty (my generous sister's basement)(grand haven, michigan), to a converted horsebarn with a mold problem (wayne, pennsylvania), to the top floor of a home we shared with an elderly man named lefty (willow grove, pennsylvania) to a great little apartment above a couple from singapore (landsale, pennsylvania) to our very first owned home (rochester, ny). it survived many moves and many spils, and the many rough pulls and grabs from lots of little chubby hands. until, one day... inexplicably, the love fern died. actually, it's totally explicable. i overwatered it and put it in direct sunlight - and you bamboo lovers out there know that both are ill-advised. fried it to a crisp.

the bamboo plant died about a year ago, and tom (being unable to let go...) has kept the plant remains on his desk, wrapped in a paper towel that says 'RIP love fern.' so, for v-day, we both unknowingly bought each other a replacement fern (which, if you haven't picked up on yet, isn't a fern at all... but rather a lucky bamboo.) i bought mine at the florist in our local supermarket, and it is beautiful - but looks nothing like the original. now, tom went to great lengths to find an exact replica of the original. he ordered his online from a florist in california. he had it shipped to new york just in time for valentines day. it looked exactly like the original love fern, and was dead upon arrival. apparently he didn't open it up soon enough and it died in the box. when he actually did open it, there was a piece of paper inside that said to 'open immediately.' he was not happy that the warning was INSIDE the box that should have been opened immediately.

when we sat down to celebrate valentines day, i gave tom several ryhming clues that sent him and the kids on a scavenger hunt to find cards, treats and the grand finale... our lucky bamboo. when i saw tom's face... deflated and disappointed, i thought maybe it was a little too early to replace the love fern that died. maybe it was just too soon. or perhaps, after all is fried and repurchased, you really can't replace such a beloved fern to begin with.

then, tom sadly goes to fetch the crispy, air-deprived lucky bamboo that he has special ordered from california, had delivered, and had stored in a drawer. in the box. on its side. not so lucky. but...he was right. i would never find it in there.

ruth.

a close family friend of ours has been battling brain cancer for some time now. yesterday the doctors said they give her a few weeks at best. we say that all the time when somebody is terminally ill. we say "they give him 6 months," or "they gave her a week." what is it with that? i know what it means, but isn't it such a lie? they can't give ruth a few weeks. only god can give us more time in this life, and only god can take that time away.

sometimes i feel like that makes god seem so cold and distant, just up there like a master puppeteer... deciding our fate based on his whim. but, the truth is that god can give ruth a few weeks, or months, or years. or god can only grant us moments more before we die. in some ways, that puts us all in the same vulnerable boat, that life can end for us any time. on a friends blog, it references james 4:14, saying that we are but vapors that will cease to exist. some of us vapors may linger a little longer, while some may vanish almost as soon as they came to be. i don't know what will happen to ruth. but, i do know that as i sat across from her watching tears fall down her cheeks, and as i heard her say "these are tears of joy..." i knew that ruth gets it. she gets that whatever time she has is a gift from god, and that going home to an eternity of worshipping him will be an even greater gift.

one joint to rule them all.

we had a birthday get-together for tom's 29th last week and it was just for "grownies" as my kids would say. however, even though no kids were in attendance, we ended up sitting around in a huge circle bouncing a balloon around, trying to keep it up in the air. our friend joe has a way of turning any social activity into hilarious feats of strength. so, his rule was that whatever body part you hit the balloon with, you would have to consider it removed from your body - from the joint down, unable to use it more than once. all the grownies were sitting around using different joints - an elbow, hip, a shoulder, even a desperate pelvis was once used - trying to keep that balloon up off the ground. it sort of made me question the difference between a party with kids, and a party without.

don't try to figure out why i wrote that. there is no real explanation for this sort of behavior.

my sister, bethann, her husband and their two boys just left. they came from michigan, my motherland, and stayed for the week. we had a great time with them, as usual, and the kids did quite well together i must say. the week was wonderful with my sister. we talked, we saw a movie in the grown-up movie theatre (for a small fortune) and we overhauled her whole wardrobe. we even took pictures of newly assembled outfits as a guide for when she returns home and panics.

having five kids in the house was a wake-up call. they did great together, but i just kept imagining doing it myself because i have definitely always thought we will have five kids. we talk about adopting one more time, and having one more biologically. five kids. that is a lot of humans. right now we are a family of five. but a family of seven? i am afraid we would become that family with a million kids, that nobody knows any of their names (probably not even us), and people just think of us as the family that sort of looks like the united nations. i hate thinking of myself walking around with really frizzy hair, looking haggard, calling out a list of names, with a blank stare on my face, hoping that a herd of children (with collicky hair and some sort of sticky mustache) will come running. why, oh why is that the image that i have?

people can have five mustache-free children right? kids that have hair that lies normally on their head? this is possible isn't it? i can have kids whose names i remember. and even if we do look like the united nations when its all said and done, i may not necessarily look haggard right? i mean, i have seen mothers with a lot of kids that don't permanently wear a robe... or a long floral dress. why do i have this idea that if we have five kids, i will be issued a long, pastel, floral jumper as my permanent uniform? do i have to wear blouses? will i start serving huge pots of off-brand franks n' beans? where are these images coming from? does anyone even know what i am talking about? more importantly, will somebody out there stage an intervention if i am ever able to sit on my own braid?

everyone says that you will know when you are done having kids. i would like to know i am done. we already have a house full. money isn't exactly overly abundant. harper produces enough drool to rival lake ontario. i can't remember that last time i showered. i haven't gone to the bathroom alone since 2004. i spendapproximately 1 million hours of every year sorting through kids clothes that are too big, too small, too stained, out of season, or too ridiculous to wear in public. haven't i had enough!?

maybe i love kids. maybe i trust god to provide. maybe i am clinically insane. maybe it is a combination of the three... but i just know i'm not done. when consulted on the matter of how many children to have, my daughter marlie (3 1/2) holds up both hands (showing ten fingers spread impressively far apart) and says "mommy, you should actually have this age of kids." it's a bad sign when i am taking family planning advice from someone who just told me she was "choking" because her pants were too tight.

i got the joy.

"to youth and natural cheerfulness like emma's, though under temporary gloom at night, the return of day will hardly fail to bring return of spirits. the youth and cheerfulness of morning are in happy analogy and of powerful operation; and if the distress be not poignant enough to keep the eyes unclosed, they will be sure to open to sensations of softened pain and brighter hope."

-emma, by jane austen

i love this novel, and i especially love this excerpt. i go through the day stressing or worrying about things that i know won't really keep me up at night. "...and if the distress be not poignant enough to keep the eyes unclosed..." jane austen makes sleep sound like such a wonderful little healer. you can stress all day about something that seems so important or so upsetting, go to sleep, then wake up with total perspective. upon waking you are "...open to sensations of softened pain and brighter hope." i love that. i once heard somebody describing sleep as your body's way of cleaning off it's desk. your brain has to sort of sift through everything that was put into its "inbox," decluttering spam and junk mail, and re-prioritizing tasks that need accomplishing. this makes sense to me, because when i wake up, i often have a perspective shift on what is tolerable, what is important and what is urgent.

now there is, of course, the occasional (or not so occasional) tragedy that causes distress that is poignant enough to keep the eyes unclosed at night. this little quote only refers to the youth and cheerfulness we might experience when the relief of morning comes. but, sometimes, what is slipped onto your desk is suffering from which morning brings no relief.

today in my email devotional that i recieve daily, it said "...a person who forgets what god treasures will not be filled with joy..." this is so convicting. i don't know how many times i have prayed for joy, but this is a reminder that joy comes only if i remember what god values. do you know what the bible says about suffering? to consider it pure joy. isn't that just what we want to hear when crap is being shovled onto our desk? no. but, god values suffering. and god treasures us drawing near to him when we suffer. so, even when the youth and cheerfulness of morning cannot relieve or soften pain... we can still experience true and uninhibited joy knowing that we need "...not be afraid or discouraged... for the battle is not yours, but god's." (2 chronicles 20:15)

my 15 month old son, harper, has a small chenille blankie, which he calls his "picky." he loves it. it is soft and white and smells like saliva. when he sees it, he roars at it like a lion, and then he kisses it. when he kisses it, he smacks his lips needlessly loud. he's in love. as soon as you say "wanna go na-night?" he drops whatever he was doing, and sprints as fast as his little bow legs can take him, laughing wildly the whole time. he loves his picky, his crib, his little ocean music machine, and he loves to say hi to all of these things as soon as his bedroom door closes behind me. "hi! hi! hi!... (pause)... hi!" maybe his desk needs to be reorganized, or maybe he is just sleepy and super pumped about it. who knows. but harper thinks that sleeping is god's gift. and i think i am starting to agree. jane austen suggests that sleep is the healer, but perhaps sleep is just a little gift from the healer. perhaps.

so here's to sleep, to whatever saliva soaked object comforts us, and to god's goodness for allowing us the chance to have joy, even when morning fails to bring return of spirits.

my first thought tonight... is about friendship. how precious and valuable it is. there is nothing like a friend who asks you for help, or advice, or company. a friend that accepts those things has got to be the best. this isn't really a change of prior opinion, but the strength of that has become particularly profound to me. while a little cliche, true friendship really is hard to find. i have developed a checklist i am going to use from now on to put potential friends through a sort of qualifying process. this will, of course, be neatly listed below.

1. a good girlfriend should look different in every situation. sometimes they should cry with you, sometimes they should make you laugh until you pee just a little, and sometimes they might need to verbally slap you in the face. (this is always for your own good.)
   
2. a good friend should always pray with you when you need it, and absolutely offer treats of many kinds.
   

i realize now that the bullet points weren't necessary, because i really only had two points there. but, i don't think that's any of your business and i am weary of talking about the list. please stop bringing it up.

my second thought is that i have a really nice husband. he is kind, humble, thoughtful and very, very patient. he lives with me, so i think that also qualifies him as a saint. he spends time with and takes care of our kids because he wants to, he laughs at pretty much everything they (or i) say, and when we are all really annoying and most people would complain, he finds the grace to say our little peculiarities are "cute." i do not say any of this to brag, but i find myself appreciating him much more than i have before and so sorry to ever have taken him for granted. i know that love and marriage aren't easy, and ours certainly has not been... but, even when it gets super hard, thomas is still good. he is good.

alright. that's enough. i promise i will not write of love and friendship in the same blog ever again. it got pretty touchy-feely there for a minute. but, we're out now and i don't think it'll happen again.

i am off to read, and hopefully finish, emma. then i am going to see how long i can balance on my excercise ball without touching my feet down. i will add a link to my next blog that will lead you to my homemade petition to get excercise ball balancing an official olympic sport. there will also be a link to petition that we bypass the formality of creating an official sport, and just award me the golden medal because i assure you that nobody will ever beat me in excercise ball balancing. ever.

it's okay to say poop deck twice in one blog.

starting this blog has made me keenly aware of how uninteresting i can actually be. it's a little sad, but it really comes to me, largely, as a relief. i spend much of my time feeling pretty chaotic - which, in my mind, somehow guarantees good blog material - but finding that i am not as exciting as i had hoped is better news than being such a complete lunatic that i have constant chaos to write about. i guess the best way to put it would be saying this: if there were hidden surveillance somehow involved in this analogy, much of the footage would look like a fish that inadvertently landed on a poop deck. i'm just flopping and flailing around my life... just loopy, spazzy, and remarkably gangly for a fish. just twitching around trying to remember what it is i am supposed to be doing. chaotic? quite. interesting? not so much.

today when i was a few blocks from picking up annalee from pre-school, i lost all power-steering capabilities. i describe that like it is a super-power b/c in the world of mini-vans, power-steering really is a magical power that propels my big, silver van around corners with ease, and without thought or concern on my part. today, i lost the magic and gained a true respect for the super power behind power steering. i kept driving (which you should apparently never do). but, i was just a block or two away and while lights on my dashboard were flashing, and there were beeping noises in surround sound... marlie (3 years old) concurred that our car didn't look broken, so we kept moving. i have a seriously deep fear of being excessively late (or forgetting altogether) to pick up one of my children from school. so far, so good. and i wasn't about to let a really heavy steering wheel stop me from a perfect record.

needless to say, when i went in to get annalee (on time thank you very much) one of the pre-school moms asked me if i drive a beautiful, fashionable and super cool silver mini-van, and i replied (with my flowing hair blowing in the wind) "why, yes... yes i do." (okay. so, she really just asked me if i had a silver van, and we were inside where there was no wind and nothing was flowing. but i am trying to liven things up a bit.)

i told her that it was my van, and she informed me that she saw something hanging from the bottom of my van and when i turned the corner and barrelled through a huge puddle, she saw that it was no longer in the shape of a loop but was in two pieces. we got the car towed and are assuming the loop was a belt, and is not a belt anymore. but is simply evidence that the flashing lights and the beeping sounds are in fact a warning to stop driving your vehicle or you will make a bad thing worse. i, however, have no regrets b/c instead of seeing annalee sitting in the office alone (probably broken out in hives) because i wasn't there... was worth the inevitable cost of fixing a hanging loop. and that, ladies and gentlemen, is what a gangly fish on a poop deck looks like in human form.

made out of family.

welp, here goes nothing....

i guess i should start all this by saying that i am not really a "blogger" by nature. in fact, i am inherently pretty anti-technology. now, i know to most of the civilized world a blog isn't exactly considered the cutting edge of technology these days... but, for someone who thinks "the blue 'e' makes internet" and is satisfied with knowing nothing else... a blog is a really big deal.

don't get me wrong. i am not satisfied with being an ignorant fool all the time - just technologically speaking. quite the contrary, i actually can't get enough of "knowing stuff." when i told my beloved sister-in-law, carlie, that i was going to write a blog, she excitedly encouraged me to finally put all of my useless knowledge in one place. i think i am secretly proud of retaining information so easily, even if it interests no one but me and carlie.

so that is what this blog will start out doing: relieving my tireless mind of some excess information, tips, questions, thoughts, rants and an occasional cry for help i'm sure. while that is its intended purpose, i would like to go on record saying that i make absolutely no guarantees regarding what it will actually become. i encourage participation from whatever participants there may be, so feel free to leave a remark or ask a question. i am, however, an enormous baby so please take it easy on me. be honest, but no verbal abuse will be tolerated on my blog. other than me. i reserve the right to verbally abuse if i like.

i don't really know what to do next. so i will resort to my fall-back option of filling awkward silences with off-beat and sometimes inappropriate stories about my three children. i will start with a safe one for now. my oldest daughter, annalee, turned five today. five years old. this made me consider several things, which i will neatly list below.

1. i have been a parent - an actual mother to a human - for five full years. and she's actually pretty delightful.
   
2. can i keep describing myself as a young mom? sure, we started a little earlier than we planned (more on that later at some point, i'm certain) but, it's not like i was a teenager. i mean, i'm 27 and i think that still sounds young. but not when you've spent the last five years in pajama pants that are way too short for you.
3. i am exhausted, but have survived the trenches of mothering babies, toddlers and now pre-schoolers thus far. it wasn't pretty at times, especially in those short pants, but we are surviving. some days, it even feels like we are getting ahead. okay, that is a total lie. it never feels like that.

i guess that is all for now. i will leave you with a sweet and funny thing my middle daughter, marlie, said to tom and i the other night at dinner. he was jokingly asking her if she was made of various materials - i think food was involved - like "are you made of ham? are you made of cheese?" that sort of thing. marlie said to us, as if we were ridiculous for not already knowing, that "we are made out of family!" somehow, they get it way more than we do. they have these clear ideas about life and our make-up and what is important, and over the last five years... i've gotten a glimpse here and there of life through their eyes. i hope that this blog is a way to share those little discoveries and also panic out loud when i need to. join me, won't you?