Active

Every time I am at the gym, the episode of the Kardashians where Kim is having a PSORIASIS CRISIS is on. How many times have I watched Kim-Dash whine, "My whole career is about being photographed in a bikini!!!"  Watching her say these words has obviously had no effect on me while on the treadmill. This is not a conspiracy at all, in fact. I am not hard-pressed to ramp up my distance and incline and speed because Kim is looking all vampy voluptuous with her eyelashes the length of most fighter plane wings. Nopers! I am totally not moved to self-consciousness that Kim still somehow manages to look slammin' even though she is panicky patty about her spotty skin, while I am huffing and puffing all sweaty betty thinking, Does no one else find the painful irony in this?  That I am all tomato-cheeked and smelling like the floor of a horse stable while I watch Kim carry on her monologue with a camera pointed solely on her, moaning how she can't possibly go in front of the cameras--and what if the tabloids found out about her skin problem?  WHAT THEN?! Dear Diary,

Am so broke, cannot afford cable television.  All's well, though.  Can catch up on Kim Kardashian at gym.

Yours, Sweaty Betty

*** Had an epic weekend of travel and family and surprises. Cannot wait to regale you with stories of aforementioned episodes. For now, here is a picture teaser. xoxo

Sweet little soft shoe stepper. Columbus Feis, 2011

*** And you know how I like to put the f-u-n in fundraising. Thanks for being a fun person and supporting ASH!

Nothing broken

What flavor frustrated are you? Are you the frazzled type of frustrated, all unkempt slop-haired, buttonholes fastening the wrong buttons? Or are you the emotional frustrated, when the customer service line won't let you talk to a real human bean, you just cry. You sob. You wail. I'm the angry frustrated. It's a most unbecoming situation when I am angrustrated. I know that my husband really loves me because he has seen the horns of my frustration rear and he doesn't try to sneak out the back door and run to Louisiana. Though he was measuring me the other day and he said something about how wasn't it cool that I was just small enough to fit in a XL Flat Rate box. I wonder if that had anything to do with the one he had addressed to Republic of Philippines?

The last couple of days, urrrrrgoooosh, I've felt so frustrated that Things Were Not Happening on My Time Table. I was hopping mad today and my sweet daughter asked me why I was frustrated and I told her it was because things were broken and she asked which things were broken and later she asked me if things were still broken OH, CHILD, AREN'T METAPHORS TRICKEHH and all I could think was that I was a massive idiot. Nothing was broken here: the roof over our heads, the cereal bowls in our cabinets, the hearts that thump the bass beat of this sweet cacophonous song we're writing together as the tightest band in town.

Nothing broken here.

*** Why are you cast down, Oh my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall yet praise Him, the help of my countenance and my God. - Psalm 42:11

***

Nothing.

Nothing broken.

Nothing broken here.

*** Hey! Love your comment love below. But also! I'm trying to raise $310 for ASH (ten moneys for every year of life as I turn 31 flavors next month). Won't you buy some band-aids for Kenya?

Morning Lessons

I was very intimidated by the idea of this interlude, this space we're in right now. I knew that we'd be moving away from friends and Baby Boot Camp and cable whereby one can wake up and at least have DVR'd Ellen DeGeneres with whom to dance. I knew that there would be a definite day by which jobs and school schedules and other scheduled activities would begin. But even an unscheduled day in the land of tending to wee kidlets is several eternities long, broken up by too infrequent naps (too frequently interrupted). But the past week of our new life in our new home has taught me that there is opportunity in the clean slate. One major shortfall in my role as a mother has been to cultivate my children's spirituality. I have planted seeds (reading books, saying prayers, pointing out object lessons when they appear to me), but the actual business and rhythm of spirituality in our homelife was just not something into which I invested a lot of any time. I felt a burden for doing a better job of this, especially since the lack of worship in my home was clearly a reflection of my own spiritual condition.

So, we started this week. Baby Girl and I. On Monday, I told her we were going to do "morning lessons." She cried. Not softly. We got through the requisite Bible verse. That was about it. I didn't really have a lesson plan or anything. I was just trying to carve out time between the Super Why computer games and the ballerina tea party soccer picnic. You know, the usual morning regimen.

Day Two went more promisingly. She actually became quite animated when I grabbed the Beginner's Bible. By Wednesday, she was asking me when morning lesson was going to be, and telling me that she was ready for morning lesson, and, "Mom, I'm weddy for morning wessonnnnnn!"

Yesterday, during Morning Lesson, which may or may not be my favorite time of day, I asked Baby Girl to name 3 ways to show that you love someone.

"Um. Playing games."

"Yup, playing games with someone is loving."

"And, hugging."

"Yep, that's two."

"And puppies."

*** Happy sabbath, everyone. Love and puppies to you.