The Pile I’m Standing In

This tree is at the turn-around point on my morning walks with Sally. It stands on a grassy knoll overlooking the water, solitary and content.

I love my kids.

Some days I have to convince myself more fervently than others, but the fact remains: they’re pretty awesome.

I say this tonight in particular because, well, it was one of those nights, and I need a little reminder that they do things other than yell at me and say they want to live somewhere else where they can do whatever they want.

(By the way, if you’re inclined to let them do whatever they want, I’ll drop them off on Thursday. They’ll be ecstatic.)

Finally I shut the whole thing down and put them to bed at 7:30. Which is awesome, because their room is still not clean and we’ll have to do this all over again tomorrow.

But still. They’re pretty cute.

Right?!

Kind of excited about my latest techie adventure. A few days ago I shot two video clips on my iPhone, then I downloaded the iMovie app and edited the two clips together.

I think I’m inadvertently amassing a diversity of skills and tasks I can perform while in my pajamas watching 30Rock, and having an iPhone makes this much easier.

If I wanted to, I could have published the finished video to YouTube right from my phone, then posted it to my blog using the WordPress app…. RIGHT FROM MY PHONE.

Amazing.

But I wanted to add intro titling, and the iMovie app doesn’t have this function so I downloaded the edited video to my laptop and added the titling there before posting to YouTube.

Pretty fun. Except I have no idea why the size formatting is off. Will have to figure that out for next time.

It was Tuesday, and Bryan surprised me with tickets to Mike Doughty at Neumos.

I knew we’d be up late, but I got a little wide-eyed when I saw what time he’d be on stage. You see, on most nights around 10:15, I’ve already fallen asleep in the middle of a 30Rock episode.

But thanks to a yummy drink (or two) at the Lobby Bar and a street vendor hot dog, I stayed awake.

AND we scored this awesome wide open vantage point from the side, because standing on my toes to see over the 6 foot tall guy blocking my view and elbowing the drunk chick out of my personal space is SO 10 years ago was never my thing.

And THEN Bryan spotted Little Miss Sunshine – that chick in the front row who looks like she’s plotting twenty five ways to castrate her boyfriend.

Lighten up, honey. It’s a rock show, and you have the best seat in the house!

Shortly after I snapped this photo, she pulled her phone out and started texting. When Mike Doughty saw this, he reached down, grabbed her phone, and shoved it in his back pocket.

Reason #42 why that man is brilliant.

Every Tuesday the silly boys go to a Cub Scout meeting so Ruthie and I get some crazy serious girl time. And as you can see, monochromatic pedicures are for the not exciting people.

And when our toes were properly polished, Ruthie set to work on a new “tattoo,” and she told me she wanted to be a tattoo artist when she grew up.

First of all, Duh.

Then I was all, “You know you have to draw what other people want on their bodies, right?” because she’s not so much about design collaboration.

All I got was a shrug.

On Sunday last week I started wearing contacts again for the first time in two years.

On Monday, Ruthie poked me in the eye and my contact disappeared. Into thin air.

Gone.

Usually when my hard gas permeable contact lens pops out, I hear a little tick as it hits the floor. Or it lands in my lap or I find it in my bra. For twenty-five years I’ve been that Drama Queen who yells, “NOBODY MOVE!” when the tiny plastic disk hits the floor, and then it’s miraculously found among the dust bunnies. Only a couple times in the 25 years that I’ve worn contacts has it completely disappeared.

But last week as I did my usual sweep over my sweater, in my cleavage, on my lap and the floor beneath my feet, I found nothing. Ruthie whined, “Mommy, can I move? My arm hurts.” Thomas giggled. My kids sat frozen in place, literally not moving as I had commanded.

One by one I brushed my hands over their arms, their legs, and the ground near where they sat, all the while listening for that familiar tick of the contact hitting the hardwood floor, brushed loose from an unsuspecting piece of clothing. But the contact did not turn up.

I checked under my chair, under the cushion, in the laundry basket that sat next to us. I repeated all of the above several times. Nothing. It was gone, probably carried away by Murphy and his fucking Law, who was likely sitting by the pool at a Vegas hotel, smoking cigars with the tooth fairy who, by the way, never shows up around here.

It was an accident that Ruthie poked me in the eye. She was sitting on the arm of my comfy chair, playing with my hair as I searched for something on the internet. As she brushed a piece of hair from my face, her pinky grazed over my eye and I never felt a thing.

But the next time I blinked, I couldn’t see my screen.

“What just happened?!” I yelled.

As the search went on for my missing contact, I became more agitated. I was angry that it would not be found. I was angry that I can’t seem to have nice things. I was angry at Ruthie for “causing” it to happen. I was angry that I can’t afford to replace the contact lens.

There was nothing I could do about it, and this infuriated me. There was no one to blame for it, but my rage needed a target.

After hearing Ruthie’s voice echo in my ears again, “It was an accident!” I realized I’d been barking all my frustration at her.

“I’m sorry, Ruthie,” I said. “Sometimes when things don’t go my way, I want to blame somebody for what happens.”

“Like I do sometimes?”

I smirked. Surprised, and yet not, by how easily she made the connection. “Yeah. Exactly. Will you forgive me?”

“Yes.”

We hugged and I calmed down and put on my glasses, resolved to be spectacled forever.

The next night Bryan and I were out late, and when we got home the kids were in bed. And because I can never seem to accept defeat, I lifted up the chair cushion to look for my contact one more time.

I swear I’m not making this up, but it was sitting right there. Right next to the pink pencil, Z-bar wrapper, and roughly $1.42 in change (among other disgusting things), not at all obscured from view.

It absolutely WAS NOT there the day before. I’d looked several times, feeling for it all around the couch crumbs and on the bottom of the cushion.

I should have taken a picture of it, but I was too exasperated to do anything but roll my eyes to the ceiling and beyond and yell, “THAT’S NOT FUNNY, GOD.”

I feel overwhelmed this week. Weighty things are on my heart, and a busy schedule intensifies the emotional stress. In addition, several friends are in the midst of weighty circumstances as well.

My first reaction is to want to do something – about their circumstances and my own – but there is often nothing I can do fix or change the circumstances. This is not an easy pill to swallow for a task-oriented person.

Recently Thomas and I were talking about things that were opposites, and he blurted out that Jesus was BIG and outer space was small.

It was so great how matter-of-fact he said it.

This is the child-like faith God desires for me to have – a faith not jaded by cynicism and chronic eye-rolling, or even by my own expectation of how God should solve the problem.

Most of the time my ego is too proud or my fears are too dark or my anger too festered to rest in his peace. But Thomas would think this is silly, for how can my anger be too big for God, my grief too deep, my circumstances too weighty?

I wish I were more like Thomas.

When I lose my temper and yell at the kids, I take the short view. I just want them to shut up, or sit the fuck down, or put on their jacket, or quit antagonizing each other.

When I eat poorly to satisfy a craving, I take the short view. A bowl of cereal will get my blood sugar back up, chips and salsa are easy to grab, and I looooove a good charbroiled hamburger with a side of fries to fill my belly.

When I delay a task because I’m having “me time,” I take the short view. I want to read just one more blog post, refresh Pinterest one more time, read another chapter, or lay in bed a few extra minutes.

When I do the chore myself rather than put up with their whining, I take the short view. I’m tired, they’ve been fighting me all day, it’s so peaceful when they’re not in the room, I’m just not up for being the bad guy.

I could go on an on, but these are my hot spots, my most frequent offenses.

So many decisions I make are based on what I want in that moment, and I’m continually amazed by how short-sighted I am. I’m less surprised by how selfish.

In everything I do, Christ beckons me to take the long view.

I hate the long view because it doesn’t allow for my selfishness or laziness. I’d rather lay on the couch and yell at the kids than get up and walk them through their conflict.

The long view is harder. It tries my patience. It interrupts me.

I hate the long view so much I’ve been staring at this post for days trying to figure out a way to wrap it up in a neat little bow of cheeriness. But since that’s not going to happen, I’ll talk about Jesus…

God had a plan – a magnificent dream. One day, he would get his perfect home again. And one day, he would wipe away every tear from their eyes.

You see, no matter what, in spite of everything, God would love his children – with a Never Stopping, Never Giving up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love.

And though they would forget him, and run from him, deep in their hearts, God’s children would miss him always, and long for him – lost children yearning for their home.

Before they left the garden, God whispered a promise to Adam and Eve: “It will not always be so! I will come to rescue you! And when I do, I’m going to do battle against the snake. I’ll get rid of the sin and the dark and the sadness you let in here. I’m coming back for you!”

And he would. One day, God himself would come.

The Jesus Storybook Bible, by Sally Lloyd-Jones

Jesus is the ultimate long viewer. He is patient and long suffering. That’s a Bible word: long suffering. Looooong suffering. As in, a loooong time of watching me do the same thing over and over again.

Compare that to what I am: short tempered. As in, NOT long suffering.

Jesus models the long view for me every day.

He modeled the long view for me twenty minutes ago when I “nudged” Ruthie off the bed with my foot because she played dead after I asked her to brush her teeth. If I were God, I would have rolled my eyes at me and said, “Dude, you can’t be serious! AGAIN?! Where is your PATIENCE, yo?”

Because apparently if I were God, I would talk like Jesse Pinkman.

Thank God I’m not God.

Halloween always reinforces my love for public school. I know it sounds like a strange correlation, but it’s one of the only times a year that I realize just how rooted we are in our neighborhood.

There’s nothing quite like the squeals of third grade girls as they run into friends on their ghoulish walk from house to house, or the look of surprised awe when they realize a teacher lives in their neighborhood.

Thomas couldn’t get over that one. It’s like he thought all the teachers slept under their desk or something. “You mean she LIVES here?!”

We even scored a pair of shoes for Thomas that a neighbor’s son outgrew. It’s not every day you get a pair of Keens in your trick or treat bag.

Encounters like these are one of the reasons we chose public school – we wanted to connect with our community. And every year I know more trick-or-treating faces, and every year I know more of the neighbors who great us at their doors.

Last year when I started working part time, Bryan bought me this rice cooker to help with easy meal prep, and it’s been a life saver!

One of the easiest dishes I make requires just a few minutes of prep in the morning, and a few minutes when I’m done working.

This is what I do in the morning:

1. Add rice, water, salt, and seasoning to the pot.
2. Add 3-4 frozen chicken breasts to the basket.
3. Set the delay timer.
4. Press the RICE button to start.

Seriously. That’s all I do. Sometimes I add chopped onion to the rice, but you get the idea.

This is what I do before we eat:

1. Shred or chop the cooked chicken, and add to the pot of rice.
2. Add a bag of fresh or frozen broccoli to the pot.
3. Pour in a sauce, like Yoshida’s Teriyaki or Panda Express’s orange sauce.
4. Stir it all together!

Even when I serve this with a salad, it’s super quick and easy, and my family gets a hot, healthy, home cooked meal.

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p.s. This isn’t a product placement or sponsored post. I really just like my rice cooker.

I loved this post – Beware of the List – over at Writing and Living. I, too, am a non-list person surrounded by list people (*cough* Bryan *cough*). I could make a list all day long of what I need to do, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to look at it.

Seems to me like lists are best used by List People.

However, I’m turning into quite the List Hacker.

For instance, I use a daily Bible reading plan, but I’ve been working on the same one-year plan for three years now. It gives me structure, but I don’t obsess over it religiously.

I loved Staci’s book, The Organized Heart, because it reminded me that organization isn’t about making lists and following rules, but about worshipping God in everything I do.

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Also read Bare Minimum Mode over at Conversion Diary about being intentional with your seasons of downtime. I get in this mode often, but I usually find myself here, rather than making a conscious decision to pull back.

When I’m in Bare Minimum Mode the priority tasks important to my family are: laundry, grocery shopping, and family dinner. The bathroom may be gross and the living room full of clutter, but by George we’ll have clean clothes and a hot meal.

What are your priority tasks when in Bare Minimum Mode?

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I’m terrible at making transitions. I don’t know anyone who is, really. Are You Wearing Bungee Cords? is a great post about living in the moment and fully crossing the bridge into whatever is coming next.

I love that Bryan balances out my Control Freakishness by having the kids design their own pumpkins. They had some awesome drawings that involved teeth and scars, and I kept hearing Bryan say, “I’ll see what I can do.”

He did great, of course.

Carving six pumpkins made for a bit of a crazy Saturday night, but so fun.

I just noticed I matched the wrong pumpkins to the wrong drawings in a couple pictures below, but you get the idea.

“Before long, the king made himself at home and God gave him peace from all his enemies” (2 Samuel 7:1, The Message).

This is the verse that stared back at me this morning when I opened my Bible after a long hiatus of being “too busy” to read the Bible.

The king referred to here is David. He’d just spent the previous few years running from a mad man who tried to kill him, and fighting wars to defend God’s people.

No doubt he was tired – bone weary as well as emotionally spent. His best friend was killed, he watched another man become so consumed by his own lust for power that he eventually fell on his own sword, and he struggled to understand God’s presence in his circumstances through years of war, conflict, and strained relationships.

In the end, God’s promises all came to pass, as they always do. And when they came to pass, God gave David a season of rest.

Three things come to mind when reading this story:

1. David faced circumstances outside of his control, as we often do. He couldn’t change Saul’s maniacal behavior or bring Jonathan back to life or go back to the way things were when he was a simple shepherd boy on his father’s ranch. I’m sure that would have been a nice alternative to years of war – sitting in an open field, playing the harp and watching the sheep eat grass.

   If it were me who was uprooted from my blissful life and plopped into the middle of David’s plot, I would’ve spent valuable energy writing blog posts about how sad I was to leave my awesome, introverted, non-conflicting life behind.

   Most of the time we can’t control what’s happening to us, but we can control how we respond.

2. David was all in, as they say. Sure, he had doubts. Sometimes he wondered where God was in the midst of his circumstances, and sometimes he wished he was dead. But according to the many Psalms he wrote during that time in his life, he didn’t seek comfort in wine or women or shopping or complaining, but brought all his lamenting to God.
3. When God gave David a season of rest, he worshipped. I’ve noticed this about all the patriarchs of the Old Testament: God sustains his people through some really tough shit, then he provides a season of rest. And while his people are resting he re-tells the story of everything they just experienced, play by play, while reminding them of every instance that he provided for them.

   God is a delicate documentarian. In these playbacks he captures the heart, the spirit, and the accurate facts because he knows his people will forget, lose heart, and try to do things on their own (like build golden calves to worship, for instance). But like a loving parent, he reminds his people that he is always with them, that he’s always been with them.

   While David rested, God spoke through his prophet, Nathan, and recounted everything David experienced from the time he was a shepherd in his father’s fields. As per usual, he reminded David of all the times he provided.

   David responded in worship through adoration, thankfulness, and action…and then he went back to war.

Whatever circumstances I find myself in – whether emotional turmoil, financial hardship, or even just a busy schedule – God will not only sustain me in the midst of it, but he will provide a season of peace.

But it’s not the sort of peace where I catch up on laundry, sleep, and 30Rock episodes, but a peace that’s intended to remind me of who God is and how he sustained me through the day (or week, or month, or however long I’ve been slogging along).

He provides an opportunity for restful worship.

This kind of worship is what I’ve been missing, because no matter how much I “take it easy” in the midst of my current busy season, I can feel myself drying up like a leaf in October.

God doesn’t provide a season of rest so I can focus on myself, but on Him.

Photo by Steven Dewall

I discovered some new music this summer that I can’t stop listening to.

I’ve tried putting something different on because I think maybe I shouldn’t be so OCD, but it throws off my creative process, like trying to write with my left hand.

Don’t mock. We creative types are quirky about what keeps us in the zone.

The Lonely Forest is my top favorite right now (website).

They’re stellar musicians and song writers. Plus, they ROCK. Literally. Belting voices, vibrating walls, pounding base… this is how I like to write.

Here’s an acoustic version of one of their best songs:

And a live, in-studio version of another favorite:

Bryan says we saw them perform at a small music festival on Orcas Island a few years ago when they were still in high school, but I don’t remember.

Regardless, their album, Arrows, is incredible. It’s cohesive, deep, and layered, and I can’t stop listening.

This is just one of five new music loves – I’ll share more next week!

The Mop.

That’s it. I’m done. My experiment with long hair ran its coarse. I’m getting my mop chopped. I no longer do anything to it except braid it or put it up, so what’s the point, really?

WHAT’S THE POINT?

Below are some examples of hairstyles I pinned to my Pinterest board. Help me figure out what to do!

My criteria for any hair cut is simple: LOW MAINTENANCE. I hate fussing over my hair, and I can’t afford to get it cut every four weeks, so it has to be practical and have longevity.

I’m willing to blow dry it daily, but curl or flat iron only occasionally. I’d like to avoid hair products altogether.

I know. I KNOW. I’m a grown woman with a twelve-year-old tomboy mentality.

Option #1:

I basically see the two hair cuts above as the same, but one is blown out and the other is flat ironed. This is my favorite style inspiration so far, and the one I think looks most like me.

However: bangs.

I haven’t done that in, oh, I don’t know, fifteen years? Doesn’t one have to have one’s bangs cut often? This seems out of scope for my low maintenance criteria.

Unless: hair clip. That might give me some longevity between cuts.

Option #2:

This is another option I’m considering – keeping it longish but cutting some bangs.

But again: bangs.

Also: I’m tired of my long hair.

In conclusion: this is cute, but I think I’m over it.

Option #3:

I love, love, LOVE the cut on the left. I used to have hair like this and it really worked for me and I loved how easy it was.

However, when my hair was cut like this my face was more… how shall I say?… svelt. Yes, svelt. In fact, all of me was a little more svelt when my hair was cut like this.

Lately with my increased roundness, I’m not sure I’d like myself as much in this hair cut.

Also: I don’t know how to put on eye liner, and this chick looks smokin’ hot with her sassy hair and dark eyes.

And I love the idea of the haircut on the right, but I can imagine that with my blond-ish hair color and lack of texturizing hair product I might look a bit like the end of a Q-tip.

Or it would resemble a football helmet like Sally Field in Steel Magnolias.

Sooo….

What say you? I lean toward Option #1.