My New Helmet

Tonight Husband and Little Boy and I are going to A Gruesome and Ghastly Soiree for Freaks, Geeks and Monsters!

We were told that there were whispers of spookiness & tidings from the supernatural at our friends' house. If we dare to witness the haunting or tremble at potential alien abductions we must go. We also are to bring an offering to appease the dead - a tasty rotten treat or vile potion. Also we are required to have a disguise against the ghouls or at least a fashionable alien repulsion device!

If we did not RSVP we would have been doomed to dwell the fiery pits of hell without cable!

The event is sponsored by the Putrid Piccolos & Fiendish Friends League from Heck.

Now, doesn't that sound like fun!? How could we turn down an invitation like that?

Here's my fashionable Alien Repulsion Device:

It's my personal ionic field deflector helmet*, and I know it's going to protect me! Or at least get me into the party. Little Boy is going as Elmo and Husband is going as Afro Geek with Rectangular Ugly Glasses.

*also known as a colander covered in aluminum foil

Too Many Parentheses! (for real)

Tonight we're having a Roll Your Own dinner. Roll your own Sushi, that is. I love making that joke. Maybe it's getting old...

And the Little Boy was happy to entertain himself a lot this morning with only a little help from Mama now and then, so I have almost all the slicing and prep work done! YEE HAW!

Thursday nights here are great. It's often Sushi night. Our good friend (who introduced my husband and I and who's been my friend for 10 years) comes over and we eat sushi until we nearly pop and then we watch 30 Rock and the Office while drinking decaf coffee brewed so strong it almost needs to be chewed. Sometimes there's dessert in the mix, but not always. If she doesn't come here, then she and I go out and have sushi somewhere (Downtown is our fave) and Daddy watches the boy so the Girls can catch up. Then we come home to her house or ours and watch 30 Rock and The Office. And laugh our heads off.

I gave the Little Boy a haircut the other day. He looks so stinkin' cute I can't stand it! If I do say so myself I think I did a pretty good job. I did it while he was watching Teletubbies, and keeping the scissors out of his line of sight. It took about 30 minutes... and a lot of patience, but we're good on the haircut for now.

Speaking of Quinoa, (which we weren't) have you tried it? You gotta. If you want, ask me for the recipe, there's a great salad a friend invented, and I'm serving it along with the sushi tonight. Martha highlighted it on her show the other day (yes, I'm a closet Martha Stewart fan) and she says it has 8 amino acids! Who needs fish, when one can munch their way to perfect health (or maybe not) on quinoa! (Pronounced Keen-wa)

The above picture is one of the mini salads I made for tonight.... SO CUTE, don't you think? (tomatoes on the side, since Husband hates them and the rest of us love them!)

Baby Orajel, Buzz Saw Lady and The Oracle All Walked Into a Bar.....

Baby Orajel: No wonder the kid loves it. I have a sore gum in the back of my mouth. I dabbed a little bit of that stuff back there and WOW the pain is gone, faster than you can say BABY ORAJEL ROCKS!

And Buzz Saw Lady called me. Therefore, I cannot call her Buzz Saw Lady anymore. Lo and behold, I stopped going to the fundamentalist bible study and she called to see what happened to me. I told her It just wasn't a good fit. She asked if my kid liked the nursery. I said that he loved it. She said she felt she might have offended me. I told her it wasn't so much that I was personally offended or hurt but that it didn't feel OK for me to have a different opinion. She immediately began telling me how they had atheists and Buddhists and other religions in there before. (I did not meet any of these people. I doubt they still attend.) Anyway, It was very nice of her to call.... I was surprised, honestly. And I felt I should give her credit here, since I told you about that experience.

I talked to The Oracle (what I call my Spiritual Director) about this, and lamented about how I felt I ought to be able to be with Fundamentalists and be OK about it. Since I was one not all that long ago. She said "Well, I still can't." That made me feel much better.

So there's an invitation to myself. I now invite myself to become the kind of person who can someday do that, even if I never choose too.

See, the concept of Invitation is something I learned from a sister who teaches a class I took. She speaks often of invitation. For example instead of saying "I should be cool around any folks no matter what they are like. Because I should be centered or integrated enough that I don't need to be around people like myself in order to feel comfortable." I can INVITE myself to become the kind of person who can be around a diverse group of people and not feel angry or disrupted in any way.

Isn't that so much nicer? To take it even further: What if we had a God (and I think we do) who didn't tell us we SHOULD do this or that, or a Bible that told us we SHOULD do this or that, or a Pastor who did likewise, maybe we can think of God inviting us. The invitations in the Bible are many.... a Pastor or a friend who invites us to become a better human being, now that's more hospitable, isn't it?

Brennan Manning told a story at a conference I attended once that there was a woman he knew who had a plaque in her house that said "I will not SHOULD on myself today." He said it three times, and it took the first two before I realized he was NOT saying she had a plaque in her house that said "I will not SHIT on myself today."

Well, maybe it's the same thing....

Downer Post

Man. I'm trying to have a good today. I keep flying back and forth between feeling angry and like crying. Maybe it's the humidity - or the getting up at 4:30 with little guy.
Or maybe it's Aunt Flo or - whatever, I don't know what. I had no PMS this month really so maybe it's a delayed PMS.

I feel depressed today, and I don't say that very often. Seriously, I almost NEVER say that. Little guy didn't want to eat anything I put in front of him for breakfast. And cried a lot this morning, which is not like him. I ended up in tears. I don't know what he wants sometimes. Turned out he had a tremendously wet diaper - which I never thought to check, don't ask me why! So today we're working on pointing to the crotchal area to let me know when he wants his diaper changed so we don't have to go through this!! COMMUNICATION!!!!
He knows the signs for some things and absolutely refuses to use them except when it doesn't matter. I'm frustrated. And I don't really need anyone to explain this to me or suggest anything or give me a pep talk I just need to get it off my chest!

So we went for a walk. And got groceries. Hopefully stuff he will eat. He was a happy guy the whole way. Now he's watching Sesame Street so I can just take a break.

On a positive note, I have Sushi Thursday to look forward to........

Is Satan Blonde?

So I decided to give the bible study a second chance. The boy had so much fun in the nursery I wanted to let him have that again and I thought I should maybe grow up and just be cool with being around fundamentalists.
I am fine around fundamentalists as long as we don't discuss too much. Buzz Saw lady was there again, sitting RIGHT NEXT TO ME! I swear, I was really really really super tame, OK? But good old Psalms came up again and she said that the book of Psalms was a prophetic book. I couldn't help myself, and I said that while I think the writers of the psalms happened to get a few things right, they weren't prophets in the sense that Elijah or Daniel were or those guys...
Somehow this was threatening to her view of the bible so she spouts off "ALL SCRIPTURE IS GOD BREATHED! GOD TOLD DAVID WHAT TO WRITE!!!"
I just said "OK."
I wanted to run from there screaming, but I did not. Alas, I should have. Because after the "study" she cornered me and said "I looked that verse up and it's in the .....(a jewish prophetic book? something like that)...... so it IS prophetic!"
I told her I didn't mean to imply that God didn't inspire the writers of the bible, or that none of the Psalms were prophetic in retrospect but that they aren't written by prophets. David, when he wrote that particular Psalm didn't know he was prophesying.
I really tried to be polite and she would just not let it go so I said "It's OK... we don't have to figure this out or decide who's right. I'd like to drop it if you don't mind."
"We have to be right as christians, we do."
I said "Maybe you do. I don't. Have a nice week."
And I left.

My boy had a GREAT time again in the nursery. Buzz Saw showed up in the nursery later when I was on my way out the door and asked how my kid got such blonde hair.
I desperately wanted to tell her that he got it from SATAN, but I decided not to.

What's For Dinner?

Fried Rice, that's what's for dinner!
Everything is sliced and diced and ready to go. I love that feeling. We went away this weekend and I had no time to take care of the mess of a kitchen BEFORE we went, which is my usual pattern. I hate coming home to a kitchen full of mess and clutter right in my face! But this time I said Skrew it. (Yes, I said skrew it with a K!) And left it. And you know, I was OK with it.

We got home and were drained. Because we were at my mom's. That can be very very draining. She'd die if she knew. But she is these days totally draining. The older she gets, the more inward she turns and the more she talks and the more she repeats herself, as though I were never there for some of the stories. She'll tell me about the old barn and the ash tree and how there was a garden here and there and how my dad did this or that and I say "Mom, I was there, remember!? I'm the one who drove the truck that pulled that tree down. I drove the truck that pulled the barn down too, because Dad knew how much I love demolition!" And she just ignores me and goes on and on.... over and over. I'm honestly having a very hard time with this. I'm beginning to think this might be the onset of dementia? Or else she's just getting very self focused in her old age and doesn't care? I don't know. I've talked to her about it a couple of times and her response is "Oh, I just say whatever is in my head, I don't think about it first." So... obviously, she isn't concerned about it.

She started doing this before her stroke, and now it's 5 times worse.

I want to get to a place that it doesn't bother me... I don't know how to do that but I'm trying. I know that some of this is normal... I'm familiar with the process of aging, and have been through it with others.... my mom is doing something beyond anything I've ever experienced before.

Anyway, so we were drained. From the barrage of words and the stories and the micro managing she does of me when I'm working in her kitchen, etc.... No cleaning up of my OWN kitchen happened last night. We put the boy to bed after letting him re-acquaint himself with his toys and watch a little of the 101 Dalmations movie that was on TV. Then we watched stupid TV and stuffed our faces with comfort junk food and then collapsed into bed.

But today - today! The boy was entertaining himself just fine, and happy about it, so I got the kitchen cleaned up while we listened to Putamayo World Playground for Kids... which he loves. He toddled in to say howdy now and then.... see what I was up to. And I got it all done. Then he took a long long nap and I got dinner all ready except for the cooking. And it is all good.

I didn't obsess about the kitchen for a change. I just relaxed, and did it when I had time. And the time was there without me even stressing about it...

How about THAT!?