Actual Unretouched Photo

I used to play the piano to relax and express myself.  Then I had kids.  Now I just scream and hole up in my room under the comforter I bought in North Carolina during one college summer.

I cannot tolerate macaroni and cheese or any other creamy pasta dishes.  The texture is just wrong.

I have no idea what happens to the time after midnight.  I look up at the clock and suddenly it’s 1:30 a.m. and I have no idea.  What have I been doing?

I wear socks and slippers inside my house year round.  Do you like me less now that you know that?

I would rather sleep in than go to a garage sale.  And I love garage sales.

My most recent bargain came from a thrift store.  I found one of those giant scrapbooking suitcase things, the one that costs fifty or a hundred dollars.  It cost me $7.00.  I guess it was relinquished because the handle is broken.  I figured out an alternative. Yes.  I “scrapbook.”  Go ahead, judge me.

I love to watch Jeff Lewis (“Flipping Out”) and all the “Real Housewives” (who aren’t really housewives) and Craig Ferguson.  And I really loved “NY Prep.”

My hair is driving me crazy.

A grayish sock has been hanging on my fireplace for . . . um, a long time.  I never notice it during daylight hours.

My neighbors just moved.  I never even met them.  I think they were military.  I feel kind of bad that I never met them.

I honestly cannot believe I thought I was busy in college.  I worked only sporadically, had no husband, no children and all I had to do was go to class and study.  Seriously.  That looks like an actual vacation now.  I’d pay money to do that.  Wait!  I did pay money to do that!

Now that my daughter’s birthday is coming up (the day before school–though the party is this Sunday) I remember why I wanted to give birth to her on September 10th, five days past my due date.  September 2 is a pretty inconvenient birthdate.  For moms, anyway.

I love magazines but don’t have time to read them.  So they stack up into unsteady piles. порно мультфильмы

I am in between novels which is a lot like being in a sailboat without wind or oars.  Not that I’ve been in a sailboat without wind or oars.  I would like to go sailing, however.

I would really like to be stranded in Tahiti.

We didn’t get up to Mt. Rainier and I can’t figure out how we can still go before snow falls.  I’m bummed about that.

I have a writing assignment due on September 1.  I haven’t yet started said writing assignment.  I’m a ‘do the next thing’ kind of girl and the assignment hasn’t floated to the top of the list yet.  But it’s pretty close.  Top of the list?  Prepare for Sunday’s birthday party.  And try not to die from the common cold.

I’ve been through almost half a box of the tissues I bought to send to the school.  It’s amazing how many school supplies we buy these days.

Today I yelled at my kids to stop yelling.  Which is kind of dumb.  I heard how dumb it was even while I was projecting my voice to out-shout them.

Now I am going to bed.  I hope I don’t wake up my sleeping husband.  Also?  I hope I fall immediately to sleep.  The common cold has been making sleep difficult this week.

I haven’t cooked a decent dinner all week.  I ought to be fired.

Fire me.

Please.

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I have lived a pretty careful life.  As long as I can remember, I have tried to do the right thing.  I have never been interested in exploring life outside the boundaries.  I don’t see anything wrong with coloring in the lines.

While my peers were drinking and dancing (both sins in the church of my youth), I was practicing sonatas on the piano.  While other girls were sneaking out of their bedrooms to meet bad boys, I was babysitting.  While some teenagers rebelled by sticking needles into their arms, my dad caught me wearing mascara once when I performed in a trio at the county fair.

I was a good girl.  I wanted to be  good girl.  I wanted to get all the answers right, no matter what test I was taking.  I listened to all the directions.  I read the manuals.

This strategy has worked well for me.  I have no skeletons in my closet, no scars or broken bones, no incriminating photographs.  I haven’t thrown up in anyone’s car, nor have I forgotten my underpants in anyone’s living room.

As it turns out, you can’t stop the tide.  While you are tending to the moats and shaping the sandcastles of your life, waves slip in and then crash over and sometimes, wash away everything you’ve built.

If I were keeping score, I would find this incredibly unfair.  I have made good choices and yet, bad things have happened.  I have acted appropriately and all hell has broken loose.  I have done the right thing and been rewarded with the wrong results.  Tidal waves have washed out the entire shoreline of my life.

Is there a lesson to learn?  (I am the kind of girl who wants to learn the lessons.)

Not really.  Life isn’t as simple as taking a multiple choice test.  Sometimes I don’t even know the questions, let alone the answers.

Crazy things happen, even if you alphabetize your spices.

All you can do is swim parallel to the shore so the riptide doesn’t sweep you out to sea.  And wear a really big life jacket.  Sooner or later the sea will spit you back onto the shore.

My friend, Sarah Markley, is posting about her marriage this week–about how she broke it and about how God fixed it. When Sarah originally told me her story, we were walking down a windy hill in Mt. Hermon and I was so riveted and distracted that I took a lot of wrong turns and led many people astray.  Seriously.  (Aren’ t you glad you weren’t following me?)

You’d never suspect that beautiful Sarah and her handsome husband ever had any issues.  I am always so grateful when people pull back the curtains and let you see inside their real selves.

She’s a gifted writer and I know you’ll want to check out her blog for this week-long series.  (Short posts, so just click and read.  You can thank me later.)

This is a blog book tour post.

Last spring, I went to a writer’s conference and submitted the beginning pages of a novel for critique.  The writer who critiqued my work was Tricia Goyer, who is “the author of eighteen fiction and non-fiction books, including Blue Like Play Dough. She won Historical Novel of the Year in 2005 and 2006 from ACFW, and was honored with the Writer of the Year award from Mt. Hermon Writer’s Conference in 2003. Tricia’s book Life Interrupted was a finalist for the Gold Medallion in 2005. Tricia writes magazine articles for publications like Today’s Christian Woman and Focus on the Family. Tricia also enjoys speaking. She and her family make their home in Montana.”  (Yeah, I just copied that from the PR stuff because it’s so late and I should have done this so much earlier!)

Anyway, Tricia is one of the nicest people ever . . . and I’m not saying that just because she liked my writing and was so encouraging to me.  She is one amazing human being . . . and her books are so fun to read.

Now, if I were to judge a book by its cover, I would proclaim this the most beautiful book in all the world.  Seriously, the cover is gorgeous (sunflowers, sunset, et cetera . . . check out the blog tour here and maybe you’ll see someone who has posted a photo of it since I am utterly incapable of putting photos in this broken blog.)

So, the book itself is a fun, easy read, full of characters you want to live next door to.  (I only read three chapters so far . . . sue me, I’m too busy!)   And here is some more information for you.

About Sunflower Serenade:  A small town summer . . .

The days are long and lazy, the corn is high, the sunflowers are in bloom, and everyone in Bedford is gearing up for the biggest event of the summer: the annual county fair. But when a Nashville music producer approaches Bob about using Heather Creek Farm to film a country star’s new music video, he and Charlotte are faced with a dilemma. Will they allow the glamour and enticements of big-city life to encroach upon their peaceful home? Will the excitement of celebrity drown out the simple joys of summer?

About the Home to Heather Creek series: Charlotte Stevenson’s world is turned upside down when her daughter, Denise, dies in a tragic car accident. She ran away at eighteen and Charlotte has never forgiven herself. Now, Denise’s children, abandoned by their father, are coming from California to live on Heather Creek Farm in Bedford, Nebraska.

Charlotte is uncertain about her ability to care for three grandchildren who are not thrilled to give up the beach and sunshine for snow and farm chores! But she sees a chance to make amends and will do whatever it takes to keep her fragile family together. Feel the courage, strength and commitment of this family as their lives unfold in the Home to Heather Creek series.

The books come in a series and you can order those here. However, if you just want to order Every Sunrise you must call the customer service number (1-800-431-2344).

Contest: Playing on one element of the book – big city entertainers vs. old county fair – the contest for this blog tour is City Girl Goes Country!  Share your funniest story (about you or someone you know) about a time when you as the “city girl” goes to the country or “country girl” goes to the city. Enter the contest here.

I received a free copy of this book so I could do this review.  Just so you know.

My daughter’s big goal in life is to climb Mt. Everest.  Then she plans to slide back down the mountain on the seat of her pants. She told me so tonight.

She also plans to have at least four babies.  She already has a place for them in her room, but she is very concerned about the fact that she does not yet have a carseat for them.  She has started to save her toys for her babies to use someday.

Yesterday at the shoe store she picked out some very sparkly pink Sketcher sneakers.  She tried to convince me to buy some metallic gold sparkly Chuck Taylors for myself.  I resisted.  She insisted.  I did not purchase them but she laughed and laughed as she pushed the box into my hands.  I might go back and buy them just to hear her laugh some more.  I said, “What would I wear gold sparkly shoes with?” and she said, “Buy a sparkly dress!”

I took her to Wild Waves tonight but it closed at 7 p.m. instead of 8 p.m. so we were there only an hour.  Still, she glided under the water of the activity pool, flung herself from the high rock into the deep water, floated around the lazy river ride, jumped over waves.  Then on the way out, she trailed behind me.  As I approached the gate, I turned to make sure she was with me and she wasn’t.  Then I heard wailing ten feet away . . . she had “lost” me when she’d gotten distracted by someone else.  I think her biggest fear is that she will lose me–even though I have promised repeatedly that I will never leave her.

On the way home, she asked if I knew where Great-Grandma is buried.  I recently found out, so I told her I do.  Then she said she’d like to go sometime.  She told me she wants to buy flowers for the grave.

And then she chattered the whole way home until I begged her to stop talking for just a little while.  She crowds all the thoughts from my heads with all the thoughts from her head.

I hope she always wants to shop with me and talk to me until I am weary of her voice.  I hope she always laughs at my jokes.  And I hope she understands that I will never, ever, ever lose her even if she wanders away from me.

Last Friday, I stopped by a garage sale with my two youngest kids.  We came upon a bunk bed, a white metal bunk bed, and my daughter began to beg for that bunk bed.  I said, “We don’t need a bunk bed.  I’m not buying a bunk bed.”

And yet, a few hours later, it occurred to me that I should have bought the bunk bed because then I could move my daughter’s bed to my son’s room and my son’s bed to my other son’s room and then, voila!  The teenager who has been sleeping on the floor because he doesn’t like his other sleeping options (an Ikea chair that converts into a bed OR the top bunk of the bunk bed in his room) would have an actual bed upon which to slumber.

I know.  It’s confusing.  No time to explain!

So I went back to the garage sale and purchased the bunk bed.  Then I spent the next hour carting the bed home (one piece at a time in the back of my mini-van.)

That set me up for a lovely Saturday full of cleaning so that we could shift the universe and place each bed in its new location.

Let me just say that we all have too much stuff.  And so I had to move lots of stuff so we could move the beds.

Also?  I had to use tools to take apart the bunk bed to get it up the stairs.  I did so without swearing, which is good since my kids were helping me.  And we only put a smallish scrape on the wall.

The project wasn’t complete until Sunday.  And I still haven’t quite put the finishing touches on everything.

Why I create this sort of work for myself is beyond comprehension.

Next up?  Planning a birthday party in ten days and making the dreaded phone calls to invite the party guests since I don’t have addresses for everyone.  I know.  I should have already invited everyone but where did the time go?  I’ll tell you.  I squandered it moving beds from room to room, that’s where.

My head hurts.

I’ve been thinking about friends lately and wondering if I have any.  If someone threw me a surprise party (please, don’t you dare), would anyone come?  If I died, would the church be empty during my funeral?  If I had to deal with a tragedy and had to call someone, who would I call?  Who would call me?  Would anyone call me?

I have a lot of acquaintances.  I’ve managed to meet people from one coast to the other and have a lot of folks on my Christmas card list.  I’m in touch with people I’ve known since elementary school and have connected with college classmates.  I know people.  People know me.  I have Twitter followers and Facebook friends.

But I have this nagging feeling that I am out of the loop, as if everyone else is making plans to do things that don’t involve me.  Delusional?  Just the facts?  I imagine the truth is somewhere between the two.

I just think everyone is having more fun than me.  I have turned into a self-centered adolescent with age spots and a sprinkling of gray hair at my temples.  I’m feeling sorry for myself and wondering what, exactly, is wrong with me.  (Please, that’s a rhetorical question.  No answers necessary.)

What is wrong with me?

When my friends went on family trips, my family broke apart.

While everyone else was partying, I was in the school library.

When my fellow brides were getting pregnant, I was busy being infertile.

When my babies were babies, I was the oldest mom in the church nursery.

When my college friends’ children were going off to college, my youngest was starting kindergarten.

I am always out of sync, somehow.  I’m too old.  I’m too fat.  I’m too quiet.  I’m too busy.  I’m too serious.  I’m too cynical.  (My hair is driving me crazy.)  I’m too religious, not religious enough, too introverted, not introverted enough, too ambitious, not ambitious enough.  I like to be alone but I’m so lonely.

I’ve had friends in the past, friends who listened to my stories, who confided in me, who telephoned to chat while we both stood at our kitchen sinks washing dishes and sharing our random thoughts.  I miss that.

I can’t seem to get past the acquaintance stage anymore.

I’m not sure what’s wrong with me.

All I know is that if I had to round up enough people for a party, I couldn’t do it.

Not that I even like parties, but still.  It’s the idea.  If I wanted to celebrate, who would celebrate with me?  If I were to mourn, who would mourn with me?

I know that when I’m feeling blue like this, when I feel alone, the solution is to reach out, to find someone else’s need and meet it.  To be a friend to someone else.  I know.  I do.

But I kind of wish I were just born an extrovert, one of those who seems to be a human magnet for other people.  Can that be learned?  I need to learn.

I tell myself that it’s the stage of life I’m in . . . and I try not to notice that other people in this stage of life have plans and people and places to go.  Who has time, anyway, when you have four kids, a full-time job, a full-time husband (ha), three cats, a half-finished novel, ivy which will not stop creeping and laundry which does not wash itself?

Well.  If I threw a party, would you come?  If Idied, would you cry?  If I stopped whining, would you cheer?  (Don’t answer.)

I know I’m silly.  I’ll likely regret this tomorrow, but maybe now that I’ve said it, I can stop obsessing and carry on.  Cheer up.  Things could be worse.  (And then I cheered up and things got worse.  Ha ha.)

* * *

(I owe emails to people.  That proves I have friends and if they read this, they’ll wonder if they don’t count somehow . . . but, of course, I’m not talking about them . . . just about the people in my immediate orbit, the ones who I would call if I were to throw a party, not that I ever throw parties, the ones who don’t exist here, not on a deep, intimate level anyway . . . which I’m sure is my fault because I am so guarded.  I’m sure that’s it.)

Did you see the episode of “Man vs. Food” recently that featured Red Mill Burgers in Seattle? (Here’s a blog post about the original filming.)  Well, my kids saw it–months ago–and then again recently. (I saw it last week.)

Awhile back we decided to find the place and eat there on a Sunday after church.  I used my handy iPhone to look it up, find the location and get directions.  Unfortunately, my iPhone did not tell me the following crucial information:

1)  Red Mill Burgers only takes cash and checks. No debit cards.

2)  Red Mill Burgers on 67th Street is small and on a Sunday afternoon, extremely crowded. (In other words, you will eat your burgers in your mini-van unless you have better luck than we did.)

3)  Red Mill Burgers is a take-out kind of place, not a sit-down with silverware while servers bring you food kind of place, so you stand in a line at a single cash register, place your order, hand over a lot of cash (for a burger place–for instance, this week it cost me nearly $60 for five of us to eat), and then you stand along the wall to wait with eight other people  for them to call your name.

The first time we ate at Red Mill, I had only $40 cash–which normally is plenty of cash to pay for our usual Sunday lunch at Dick’s Drive-In.  I expected them to accept debit cards.  That day, I bought plain burgers and we shared orders of onion rings and no one got a drink.  Very unsatisfying.

So, last week, I took the kids to the zoo and then to Red Mill Burgers–on a Wednesday afternoon at about 2 p.m.  It was still pretty busy, but we were able to snag two tall tables and five stools and eat inside.  I ordered the burger I saw on the episode (bleu cheese and bacon) and it was really a fine burger, one of the best burgers I’ve ever had.  (Proclaimed to be “one of the 20 hamburgers you must eat before you die.” in Oprah Magazine, they say.)  And the onion rings are amazing. One of my teenagers was unable to finish his burger.  UNABLE TO FINISH.  That’s a big burger.

I realized, after the fact, that dining with four children in a very crowded restaurant while perched on a bar stool, balancing a purse on your lap and trying not to drip ketchup on your shirt is not the best way to experience really good food.  How can you enjoy your hamburger if you are reminding your daughter to not slide to the floor?  And I had to keep saying, “Watch out!  You’re going to hurt your forehead if you keep doing that.” Don’t ask.  I don’t know.

So, if you go to Red Mill Burgers, here are my tips:

1)  Do not take a 6 and a half year old dining companion.

2)  Take a lot of cash.  More than you think necessary.

3)  Go on a weekday afternoon.

4)  Do not put a roast in the Crock-Pot for dinner on a day you eat Red Mill burgers in the afternoon.  No one will be hungry for dinner.

5)  Also?  Parking can be tricky.

Other than that, go for it.  I don’t see how you could possibly regret it.  Unless you’re a vegan or very frugal.  Or allergic to bacon.

And now, moving on.

Except that I don’t have time to tell you all about eating at Red Mill in Seattle yesterday, nor about the zoo.  I don’t have time to mention the weather (thundershowers?) or lament the state of the laundry (piled up, STOP WEARING SO MANY CLOTHES EVERYONE!).

That’s because I have to cook dinner and deliver the 11-year old to football practice and then when I get back, I will make my bed and then recline upon it (because I cannot lay or lie because I can never remember which it is possible for me to do).  I have a few books I’m reading right now.

I am so far behind that I can’t even see the person who is ahead of me.  (You know, if you were running a marathon and you looked ahead and saw . . . no one?  That’s me.)  School is coming but before that, I have to make phone calls and invite people to the pool party that I have yet to plan.  Which will take place on August 29, probably–I have to check the date and that requires an email and maybe a phone call.

Tomorrow two of my kids have haircuts scheduled.

The upstairs toilet is disgusting.  Just in case you wondered.

And even though I loaded the dishwasher, the sink is full of dishes that were lurking in other parts of the house.

I can’t wait until the kids go to school because I am delusional and have convinced myself that I will have more time.

While writing this, I have shushed my six year old three times.

I’d tell you more, but I don’t have time.

I didn’t think I was judgmental.  I just thought I was right.

Motherhood has cured me of a lot of that.  Before I had kids, I had a lot of certainties about parenting.  I was a much better mother before I actually had kids, as a matter of fact.  Turns out that kids haven’t read the manual, either, and don’t always do what the experts say they will do.  (Also?  Nothing like having children to hold up a gigantic magnifying glass to highlight your imperfections.)

But even beyond motherhood, just walking through life with open eyes and ears has made me realize how judgmental I am.  Was.  Am trying not to be.

When I was a teenager, “secular” music (that is, music that was not religious or “sacred”) was a sin.  We good Christian girls did not listen to it, nor did we hang out with people who did.  (I made an exception for Olivia Newton-John.  The music, not the person.  Why am I confessing this?)  But then I met a really nice guy at Taco Time where I worked–I can’t remember his name–but he was a big Motley Crue fan.  Maybe his name was Steve.  We laughed a lot and I realized that he–a heavy metal fan–was just a person like me.  Not scary, but funny.  And kind and a good worker.

When I’m driving, a slow driver or a weaving car will cause me to shout, “YOU IDIOT!”  (I know.)  My daughter will say, “Mom, just because it’s slow doesn’t mean it’s an idiot.”  She’s right, of course.  I judge because I cannot speed.  Dumb and unfair and a terrible example to my kids.  And what if that person ends up at the same place I’m going and we look into each other’s eyes and I realize what a jerk I am?

I tend to think that my preferences should be dictates.  Ask my long-suffering husband who likes to point out that I have about a million rules for living.  For example, no tattoos allowed unless you are a military man or a rock star.  And then I think of sweet friends who have tattoos and who am I to judge?  I am so quick to dismiss trends and ideas and people who don’t fit into my tidy little world view.  And how offensive am I?  Judging someone for something that ultimately doesn’t matter at all?

I used to shrink back when someone different entered my orbit.  How could we coexist with such different ideas about the world?  And then, I’d catch a glimpse into that other life and discover the similarities beyond the walls.

Of course, I have definite ideas of things.  I will never get a tattoo.  I won’t have my nose pierced or dye my hair purple.  I have no interest in rap music or understanding Kurt Cobain’s lyrics.  I intend to stay married until I die to the same man (lucky guy).  It’s unlikely that I will ever drink alcohol.  I have no plans to start cursing (much) and I will never, ever find the movie “Borat” funny.  I’d like all boys to wear their hair short and all girls not to call boys on the phone.  In my world, no one has sex outside of marriage and teenagers don’t use the ‘f-word’ on their Facebook pages.

I try to balance on this teeter-totter of ideas and peculiarities and particularities.  I have every right to sort through issues and trivial matters and decide what I think.  We all do.  But I find that I like people who aren’t on my teeter-totter at all, people who free-wheel through life with green mohawks and those weird discs in their earlobes and an interest in remote African politics.  Hey, it takes all kinds!  Who am I to judge?  I like those people, even liberals and people who think abortion is a valid choice and people who like to watch Star Trek.  (Most of them, anyway.  Some of them just get on my nerves and there’s nothing I can really do about that.  That’s the truth.  I never claimed to be perfect.)

I totally believe in absolute right and wrong.  Some things are always right.  Some things are always wrong.  But there is an ocean floating between those two island and that’s where most of us bob.  At least that’s what I think tonight.

Answer:  I have absolutely no idea.  (Question:  Why are you writing about this tonight?)