Random Updates

So, I tanked the one-hour glucose test, but--thanks to a mix-up with the lab--it took my doctor's office two weeks or so to figure it out. They ordered the three-hour test two days before we were supposed to drive down to Tennessee, and I couldn't figure out how to to squeeze it in before we left. I saw my doctor upon our return, and he suggested that--given the results of the one-hour test and the fact that I had gestational diabetes with Clementine--I skip the three-hour test and return to my diabetes doctor. So as not, you know, to waste more time.

But...it took the office of my diabetes doctor two weeks to schedule me in, and that was just for a consultation with their dietician. She gave me a brand new meter, today, and told me to check my sugar four times a day, starting tomorrow, and return in two weeks.

So, basically, if I need insulin (as I did with Clementine), it will be available for about six weeks before baby time. Chip may well be my first baby to bust up out of the nine-pound range. I guess it stands to reason that the person most concerned is the one with her nether regions in question.

In other news, the girls and I have been rocking the chore chart, and, this week, I've started "preschool" with them here at home.

Also, I got so sick and tired of punishing Miss Charleigh Evangeline (who was thoroughly unphased by both spankings and time outs) that I told Clementine: if she bites you, bite her back. I realize this doesn't exactly align with biblical principles, but it seems to be working, and I'm happy enough in not seeing fresh bite marks on my older daughter. Oddly, I don't think it's working because Charleigh has a new understanding of how much it hurts to be bitten (I wonder, sometimes, if Charleigh has a congenital insensitivity to pain!), but because Charleigh knows Clementine will do something other than cry.

I really do have my hands full. Clementine's grown up a lot just in the last couple of months, but Sister has hopped up on the crazy train. I do think I could potty train her fairly easily, but one thing at a time, right?

Jim's doing great: down 50 pounds since surgery and 100 pounds since the beginning of summer. He took the girls out for dinner and ice cream Friday evening, also for shopping on Saturday, and those just aren't things he would've done a few, short months ago.

Cade's settling into Junior High. Last year, he tried out to play bass clarinet--an instrument provided by the school--and was chosen. He seems to be enjoying that challenge. The two of us went out to dinner Friday night and had an amazing, two-hour conversation.

Charleigh's moved into a toddler bed, and she's talking in complete sentences. Clementine's writing most of her (capital) letters. Chip's kicking me to death. Yesterday, the girls and I went to the zoo, where I managed to push the double stroller (with both girls in it) up a hill that seemed big as Mt. Everest. That is all.

Weariness

Grandma Shafer gave birth to my one phobia by telling how she fell asleep on a couch in the basement and woke up to find a mouse entangled in her Aqua Netted hair.

Sometimes, it's not big things what take me down but a whole host of little things. Mouse things. Spying the gray cat ripping the head off a mouse just to the left of the sidewalk. Discovering enough mouse poop and shredded Food Lion bags under the kitchen sink that I call for the Shop-Vac.

It's the mysterious, stubborn stench in about one square foot of our living-room carpet.

It's a wet cough in the youngest and many, many wet days.

It's peanut-butter smeared across windows I Windexed, finally, just a week ago.

It's breaking up more than ten girl fights in one day; it's, over and over, attending to deep bite marks on (in?) one girl while spanking another and putting her in time-out.

It's toddler defiance and the sort of twelve-year-old absentmindedness that has one forgetting which bus to ride, to which parent's house, on the first day of school...causing a moment of panic in the mama who watches, by the roadside, the yellow bus whoosh by without even the slightest pause.

It's the longing for a marriage free of mundanity (because I've had that marriage, and it ended just over eight years ago) and the fear that accompanies a few days of mere coexistence...especially while he, freshly adventurous, loses weight rapidly and I transform into an exhausted, sick, swollen, version of myself.

It's wanting to take the little ones to the zoo but throwing up violently all morning, causing my beloved to be late for work. It's having--even after a breakfast of nothing but eggs and water--no legs with which to stand in the house for long periods of time, let alone walk the zoo.

It's my fellow Christians' endless politicking on facebook.

It's Grandma B.'s moving from assisted living into a nursing home and close friends' parents' dying suddenly while another close friend plays a waiting game with which I couldn't have empathized prior to January.

It's the weight of that same, old unanswered prayer.

And I know you know what I mean, even though your circumstances have been your own. Weariness. I feel guilty for feeling it and guiltier for writing it because--even as I snivel--I know: I am blessed beyond measure. Also, there are so many with greater problems, some of them in my own circle of family and friends.

I start crying and can't stop. "Do you even know why you're crying?" my beloved asks, and it's easier to shake my head than to explain: everything feels wrong, and nothing feels right. "You need help," he says, and I know I do, too, but not the kind of help he thinks. I cry and pray myself to sleep, and the next morning?

I start hearing voices in my head.

I hear the voices of the Millbranch choir. I hear George Byrd's voice, and Gary Byrd's. I hear Trish Washam's. I hear Cheryl Hutchinson's and Nadine Jeffers's, and they're singing a hymn I love but haven't heard for many, many years:

Come unto Me, I will give you rest;
Take My yoke upon you, hear Me and be blest;
I am meek and lowly, come and trust My might;
Come, My yoke is easy, and My burden’s light.

 
And sometimes, I think, all we can do is fight to get there, whatever that means: putting one heavy foot in front of the other, crawling on hands and knees, dragging ourselves through hot, steaming piles of crap-ola. Because the lyrics, the verses (Matthew 11:28-30), say: "Come unto me," not: "Sit on your hind ends and wait." There's a little more work to do, yet. Just a little more work. Just a little more to do.

The Joy of a Boy

"You're never going to believe what happened," Cade said, over the phone. "All of a sudden, there was this loud crash, and--come to find out--the rod in Dad's closet had fallen down."

"Had he been swinging on it?" I asked Cade.

"No."

"Had Tabitha [Cade's stepmom] been swinging on it?"

"No," Cade said. "We were all sitting together, downstairs, when it fell."

A little while later, Jim, the girls, and I picked up Cade. "What's your dad doing?" I asked. "Trying to fix the rod in his closet?"

"No," Cade said, "it came completely out of the wall."

"Was your dad swinging on it, when it fell?" Clementine asked.

"No," Cade said.

"Well, was Tabitha swinging on it?" Clementine asked. We all cracked up.

Sometimes, to be joyful is to open my eyes (and ears). I'm thankful to have my boy back after his spending a week in East Tennessee, with my parents. I'm thankful for Cade's dad Jason, who not only attended Cade's seventh-grade orientation, alone, to pick up Cade's schedule, but also did a fair amount of driving to pick up Cade from my mom.

"I've been around a lot of kids in my lifetime," my Mom remarked, "but I've never been around a kid  as easy to please as Cade." She went on to tell how she'd taken him to the fair and offered to buy him tickets for the rides; he wanted to ride only one.

I overheard Cade turning down new tennis shoes from Jim, and Jason said Cade turned down new clothes from Tab. He did ask me for some new underwear, offering quietly that he doesn't care for the style of his cousin's hand-me-downs; he likes well enough the hand-me-down pants and shirts. So I bought him some new underwear, also some school supplies (mostly from the Dollar Tree). We sharpened his old #2 pencils and rounded up lots of other things he already had: a hole punch, colored pencils, black pens, highlighters, glue sticks, scissors, a hand-held pencil sharpener, a pocket dictionary. He thanked me for my help (I think--after last year--he was just glad to have everything on the list. I laughed until I cried, tonight, reading about last year.); packed his own lunch; set his alarm; and crawled into bed.

"Goodnight, Blueberry," he said, referring to the absurdly round tummy under my blue tank top. (Jim had cracked himself up, earlier, with some sort of Willy Wonka, juicer reference.)  I love how Cade  slides his twelve-year-old hand across my belly every so often. I just love having him near. He reminds me that kids grow out of biting and hair-pulling, that they don't always dump their plates on purpose; fight going to bed; or pull all of the Clorox wipes out of the container, just because.

Today, Cade said, "Mom, I read The Five People You Meet in Heaven. I read it in one night."

"I haven't read it, yet," I said. "Did it make you cry?"

"No," he said. "I think it was supposed to, but it didn't."

"So who are the five people you're going to meet in heaven?" I asked.

"I don't think heaven is going to be anything like in the book," he said. "But it was still interesting."

I'm crazy about my big kid.

Overdosing on the Church

I've discovered: if I'm not careful, I can overdose on the church. It's scary to think it and scarier to admit it, but I'm learning: as long as I don't speak in anger, the Lord uses me best when I speak my scary truths.

Most everyone I know and read--especially on facebook and in the blogosphere--claims to be a Christian. So many of them clamor on about different things, thinking their religious actions and affiliations, even their political views, make them stand out as the real deal. I rarely find myself confused about where I stand on any given issue, just annoyed. I asked myself why the annoyance until I determined: people have agendas. They aren't just blathering on; they're trying, all the time, to convince others--me!--to climb up on their bandwagons.

I wish I were referring to Christians' earnest efforts to win souls, but their words add up to something much darker and more complex. In fact, their cumulative, persuasive efforts form a shouting match in my brain. I feel like my very own Jesus is being crammed down my very own throat, and from several angles all at once.

I start to wonder if there's something wrong with me because I don't appreciate so-and-so's eight scripture "status updates" per hour. What if my efforts in the name of the Lord, I wonder, aren't enough? What if I'm not focused enough? What if I'm not righteous enough?

Then I start feeling judged for behaving or thinking differently than other Christians.

When that happens, it becomes critical that I put on the brakes. I'm overdosing on the church. God may well be calling so-and-so to the foreign mission field, the haunts of the homeless, the abortion clinic, the drive-thru on Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day. He may well be calling such-and-such to stand on a street corner or march in a small-town parade and howl for souls. It's not really my business until it's my business, and, right now, it isn't. I need to concern myself with those things the Lord has called me to do.

I'm a small fish in a big sea, and that's alright. Maybe my ministry will grow as my faith grows, or as I become kinder, wiser. In the meantime, know this: I really, really love Jesus, and He loves me. We have a relationship, and it's like any other in that it has its ups and downs. I've learned: inside and in spite of my relationship with the Lord, nothing--nothing!--is safe or guaranteed beyond my very soul. It hurts, sometimes, when things don't go the way I'd like. I grieve; I rage; I break into countless pieces, in countless ways. But over and over again, I find: when I lift my head and wipe my wild eyes, He--having never left--is with me, still.

Sometimes I overdose on the church, but I can never quite get enough of Jesus.

Santa's Land in Cherokee, North Carolina

The girls had such an amazing time at Idlewild, earlier this summer, that I've been looking into other kiddie parks within a reasonable driving distance. (This has been my primary resource.) I read about Santa's Land Family Theme Park & Zoo in Cherokee, North Carolina and, with very little effort, talked my good sport of a husband into checking it out as part of our trip south to visit the parents.

Interestingly, I lived two-three hours away from Santa's Land from the time I was eleven until I graduated from college, but, until recently, I'd never heard of it. Likewise, Jim lived about two hours away until adulthood, but he'd never heard of it. In the process of trying to nail down when the park was built (I think I read 1966.), I learned, since visiting: the park is on PETA's radar because of its black-bear enclosures. Don't judge, but I didn't pay much attention to the bears. We have zoo memberships here in Richmond, and I was totally sucked in by all things vintage and tacky.

My eyes could scarce take it all in.

Even the trashcans amazed and delighted:

This friendly elf made the girls rings out of "deershoe" nails:

Clementine fed some deer:

And loved on Santa (Charleigh waved and expressed love from across the room, which was huge for her, so each girl was given a Certificate of Good Conduct):

 The girls rode rides:

We watched a magic show in the Jingle Bell Theater. Clementine was actually called on stage to be a helper!

Santa's Land is, obviously, a park for little kids or lovers of kitsch. It does offer a ferris wheel and one roller coaster, neither of which we rode. We didn't take the opportunity for a paddle boat ride, either, fearing that our water bug would jump overboard.

We saw a total of, maybe, ten kids all day. We never waited in line. And we loved that the park was interspersed with playground areas that gave the adults an opportunity to rest...or play, themselves!

Jim's Sweet Mom

Charleigh Turns 2

Charleigh woke up, this morning of her second birthday, crying: "I'm sick. My throat hurts," and she was running a little fever. I messaged the other mommies and told them best not to come over, but it's all good; we've been celebrating her birthday for over a week.

A week ago Tuesday, she celebrated with her besties at the Children's Museum of Richmond and Johnny Rockets.

Sunday, in Knoxville, Tennessee, she blew out candles at Mamaw's (Jim's mom's) with her uncle Terry (Jim's brother), who shares her birthday.

Later that same day, she had a second birthday cake in Scott County, Tennessee, at Nana's and Papaw's (my parents').

Incredible Cake by Our Friend Lisa Russ

In Her Birthday Outfit from My Parents

On Monday, she took a trip to Santa's Land in Cherokee, North Carolina. (More on this, later.)

With Mamaw

And her daddy says there will be ice cream, tonight, also the Snow White baby doll she asks for every time we go to Target.

Charleigh, we're so thankful that God sent you to our family. We had no idea just how much we needed a red-headed ninja. You squeeze us hard and bite your sister hard, but we don't have to talk about that second thing. You shower us with kisses and sing at the top of your lungs, and let's just say your future in church choir is iffy at best, but we don't have to talk about that, either. You're defiant and mischievous and fiesty, but I get you, Girl, and I love how you're afraid of neither the highest slide nor a good spankin' for climbing out of bed six times in one night. You're a water bug and a cuddle bug, and I can't wait to see just what the Lord has in store for you.