Hi Ho... Hi Ho...

It's off to school he goes!!

And I haul out the camera to capture the memory. The smile and the sweet pose and the magical moment preserved forever...

(Imagine a loud screeching of brakes.) But noooooooooo. I forgot. This is the boy I'm talking about here. The one who HATES getting his picture made. The one who... if you recall... says that hell is just people taking your picture all day. I wonder if the devil uses digital or SLR?

"Smile, honey! It's your first day of 4th grade!"

"No, silly! OPEN your eyes more! You look tired!"



"OK. Now you look scared. Not that wide."

"Stop laughing at me so I can get a good shot!"


"Well, fine then... be that way."


Happy School Days folks!

Just When You Think It Can't Get Worse

Let's all pause for a moment and thank the Good Lord above that I don't live in Southeast Asia.

As you may know by now, there's ENTIRELY too much Animal Planet viewing going on at our house.

Folks, brace yourselves.

There are snakes that fly.

Yep. FLY.

As if I could be ANY MORE AFRAID of them.

Now I find out that there are some species that will hurl themselves from their tree and glide through the air. Then they undulate their snakey bodies from side to side to go further. (Even the word "undulate" is wigging me out.)

Oh. Dear. Lord.



Imagine that skinny demon swooping through the sky above you.
That is just a million levels of wrong.

"Hell on Earth" pretty much sums it up for me.

It's when I find out things like this that I momentarily consider having our cable shut off. (Except I can't imagine a world without the Food Network or Design Star or Hell's Kitchen or TLC or Tori & Dean and now I've revealed too much.)

May God save us all from the flying snakes.

Warning: Following Information Gives You a Glimpse Into my Warped Mind

I have been avoiding the blog.

Not for any good reason... like more time cleaning my house or organizing my closets or catching up on my scrapbooking or going away to the woods on a prayer retreat or shopping for organic food or knitting my own clothes or earning money for my child's college fund.

None of that has happened.

Can you sense where this is going?

Old man Guilt is creeping in again.

"You didn't make the boy read enough this summer."
"You didn't take him to the pool enough this summer."
"You didn't lose 50 pounds this summer."

I even begin to let other people's words and actions affect how I FEEL about things. I begin to question my own God-given intuitions and decisions.

"You don't sit up and cry every night... so you must not miss your husband enough."
"You aren't very sad about school starting... so maybe you don't treasure your child enough."
"You aren't running a marathon... you must not appreciate the body God gave you."
"You aren't raising free-range chickens... you don't care about your family's health."

See what I mean?

It's NUTS!

(I'm nuts!)

For the record, no one has specifically SAID any of these things directly to me... It's all a broken record that I allow to play in my head... Loosely based on what people actually do say.

I let so much of the world influence my thoughts and motivations.

Just when we "grown-ups" think we've conquered that whole "peer pressure" thing... It comes back in other nasty forms.

Why am I so hard-headed when it comes to the truth? And the correct way to think?

"Since then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above...Set your mind on things above, not on earthly things."
(Colossians 3:1-2)

Nothing a Little "Shark Week" Won't Cure

Don't ya'll hate having a cold in the summer? A cold isn't my idea of fun at ANY time of the year, but in the summer? Gimme a break, here, Mr. Germ.

Stuffy nose + 100 degrees outside? No breathin' going on here.

Despite my youthful wildness (and there was plenty of it), I can say with sincerity that I've never had a hangover.

Until yesterday.

No, my husband's absence didn't drive me to the tequila bottle (yet).

This girl took herself some NyQuil.

Good Lord.

There ought to be awards for just getting that stuff down.
And the next morning?
I felt like I'd been run over by a truck.
My mouth was dry, my eyes wouldn't focus, my feet were heavy, and it took a lot of coffee to get me feeling somewhat normal.

Good thing I'm not a heavy drinker.

It's also a good thing the boy and I had the Discovery Channel to amuse us this week.

For those of you land-lubbers out there... it's been Shark Week.
Our most favorite TV week of the year.
We learn a LOT and get creeped-out even more.
And we vow,
"We're never going back in the ocean again!"
(Until the next time we go to the beach.)

We do love us some Shark Week.
What an amazing planet this truly is.

I just wouldn't recommend watching ocean creatures eat people while hyped up on NyQuil.

I LOVE Cooking Camp

Yep. You read that right. Cooking Camp.

Well, actually, it's "Culinary Camp."

And that's where the boy is going this week. Well, for three days.

He loved the first day. "Except for all the cleaning up," he said.

The best part?

HE BRINGS HOME FOOD!!

Real honest-to-goodness food that I did not have to fix. That's "prepare" for you non-Southerners.

And I am a happy momma! Today we had broccoli and bacon quiche and cherry turnovers for lunch! Awesome! And so much better than PB&J's. What a treat!

Except for the part during lunch when he informed me that the symptoms of the Norwalk Virus are vomiting and diarrhea.

Apparently they discussed food safety also. Yummy.



And now totally unrelated 'cause that's the way I roll..
While having a chat with my friend about "Positive Day," she asked,

"Do we get to have a 'Negative Day' too?"

Hee hee.

So then I decided to come up with some other good "Day" ideas:

"Yell At Your Kids Day" (Which comes much more than once a year at my house!)

"Lie Around the House Like a Bum Day" (Would we feel less guilty if it were a "designated" day?)

"Cry At the Drop of a Hat Day" (PMS, anyone?)

"Exercise is Evil Day" (Can this be 364 days?)

"Junk Food Day" (coincides with #4)

Those are just a few of my suggestions.

Positive Day!

I like to think that I have a friend in blog land. This friend has a very smart daughter. This daughter... after reading a very not nice review of a movie she loved dearly... decided that people should be more positive! Amen little sister!

She then went on to say that if (and when) she becomes President, she will declare a day for being positive! Amen again!

I like to think of myself as an optimist. But if I'm really honest, I do more complaining than being grateful.

It's just so easy to fall into the land of negativity.

Here lately, I've found myself in a few conversations about having a husband who's deployed to a war zone. Some people think we're crazy. Some offer sympathy. Others offer advice. Most are just curious.

Truthfully? It is not easy. It is not fun. But, it a choice we made as a family. A choice my husband made to answer God's call to love and take care of soldiers. Sometimes that means he's home, and many times that means he's not.

And we are all okay with that.

So... on Positive Day... I decided to list the positive things about having a husband who's deployed. I hope my list answers some of those curious questions. Maybe my list is just for me.

1. less laundry!!

2. more room in the bed!!

3. a smaller grocery bill

4. more eating out (see #3)

5. no arguments over what we watch on TV after the boy has gone to bed (I can watch all the Oxygen Network, Food Network, Lifetime, and HGTV I can stand!)

6. I choose the movies from Netflix

7. no pressure to make real food... you know, meals... the boy and I could survive on cereal alone

8. lots of extra time to spend with friends and family

9. a chance to build up our independence and courage (we all need more of that)

10. I can take up ALL of the bathroom counter and leave my mess out until it bugs me

I was gonna stop at #10, but...

11. everyday life becomes an adventure!

Happy Positive Day!

PS... I'm thinking of letting the boy make his own list for you. Trust me when I say you'll laugh.

Soccer Camp, Swimming, and Our Favorite Channel

It finally feels like summer around here.
No, I am not referring to the outdoor thermometer and its unholy numbers. I am referring to the fact that:

We are at home.

No one is sporting a 103.5 degree temperature.

No one is in the ER.

We have been in our pajamas more than our regular clothes.

We have eaten lots of cereal, chicken nuggets, mac & cheese, and chips.

We have enjoyed lazy lie-around and read afternoons.

Last week, the boy participated in Soccer Camp. He came home each afternoon roasted and tired.




And... we have been to the pool.




My personal favorite... hiding under a towel... eating Chex Mix. Good times.


And what better way to spend the dwindling days of Summer vacation than being a couch potato? With your cat?

Yep. I don't often write about the two cats that own the blog title, but this was worth sharing.

I came into the living room and saw this.


My cat was WATCHING TV.
Look closely. She has the remote.


And what are they watching? What else?


Ahhh. Summer.