Sunday Morning Ramble

There comes a point in the life of a blogger like me when you have two choices: Either you can be completely overwhelmed by your spazzy slackerliness and how far behind you are on all the important stuff you meant to post—overwhelmed to the point of saying, “Why bother? I give up?” Or you can admit defeat, accept that you will never catch up on the newsy, interesting, or thoughtful stuff you’ve been meaning to post. And then you can post whatever first springs to mind.

And that there is my plan.

Sooo…

It is a Sunday morning, 7:43 a.m. Everyone is still in bed, asleep, except for me. I have been up since 6:02, when I woke up to the sound of my nose honking. Seriously. Honking. I tried not to wake Brice up with either my laughter or my honking, and I went to the bathroom to blow my nose. Well, I got rid of the honking, but I can still not breathe through my nose at all. Ah, I look forward to the day I can do so again. Until then, I shall be grateful that God gave us mouths to breathe through as well.

I tried to go back to bed, but what with not being able to breathe well, coughing, and snorting, I left again. Brice is on some medication right now that he can only take at night because it makes him loopy and sleep. Considering that the night before, he let me sleep for twelve hours straight when I was on cold medicine, I thought I should be at least somewhat considerate and not wake him.

So here I am, out on the couch, typing away. Can I mention, as a side note, that I am so grateful for laptops? Awesome invention.

Anyway, the girls are asleep as well, and I can only hope it lasts for a while yet. Last night was a spaghetti dinner at the church and a dessert auction. It probably doesn’t need to be said that we returned home with far too much sugar both in reserve for the next day and in our stomachs. So eventually they sugar-crashed.

There’s something lovely about being the only one up. It reminds me of Christmas morning—the magic of the light and the shadow, the stillness of the air, the way everything is faintly blue. It makes the world seem filled with infinite possibility. Which I suppose it sort of is, so maybe I should feel this magic all the time.

I think that’s about as philosophical as I can get this morning. I must revert to mundanities. (Please note: Microsoft Word does not recognize “mundanities” as a word. But I really don’t think “mendacities” is an appropriate substitute.)

This week Coriel wants to be a ninja and a nurse. We recently read a biography of Florence Nightingale (surprisingly fun for my anti-history brain!), and Coriel has been testing her nursing skills on all of us. I’m not sure where the ninja thing came from, maybe from The Magic Tree House series, in which one of the books has some very quiet ninjas. I think I shall try to emphasize this “quietness” aspect to ninjas.

Addra continues, quite regularly, to be a kitty. When she wakes up in the morning she crawls into my room on her cute little paws. Then she sits up and meows. As Addra’s kitty trainer, Coriel has taught her several tricks, especially how to beg and roll over. Then she gets imaginary treats.

Did I mention that Brice is on medication? His back has been hurting quite a bit lately, and he got himself to the doctor, who prescribed some muscle relaxant and pain killer to help his back relax enough to fix itself. It seems to be helping. Hooray! My poor husband has been hobbling, so this is good.

And me, I’ve been getting all wacky gung-ho about homeschooling (what?!?! you ask; yes, homeschooling; I promise to update you about this at some point. of course, considering how much stuff I haven’t been blogging lately, that may be an outright lie). And occasionally doing some of my writing. But more frequently avoiding it in lots of random ways.

Oh, also I reorganized the living room (again). I think this one might stick for a while. I’m liking it fairly well. And did I mention we finally have a central overhead light in the living room? Woot! And I reorganized the conservatory (aka the third bedroom) so it stopped looking like the local dump and started looking more like a place to learn and be creative and such. That was also a Woot! Yes, exciting times. Exciting times.

Hey, look at that! It turned into a sort-of update after all. Amazing. Now I’ll see if I can dump some random pictures in here, and we’ll be all set!

Eating microwave s'mores

More s'mores

You only wish you had my morning hair.

Baby hat I crocheted for friend Meghan to use as photography prop

Aviator hat to go with the other one (not to be confused with a crazy monster hat)

Coriel designed this photo and took it herself. Pretty great, huh?

Along with being a ninja, a nurse, and a photographer, she's also a
fashionista. This outfit was self-chosen.

Stories

So, my younger daughter is wailing in the other room. She's overly tired and isn't very consolable at the moment. It makes me sad that I can't do anything to both cheer her up and help her get the sleep she needs. Poor little pookie.

#1
Once upon a time there was a very tired pickle. [No Daddy, I want a story about an olive!] And that very tired pickle met a very tired olive. In fact, they were so tired that they found a nice little jar and fell asleep. But then a hungry student found them and blended them up into an olive and pickle paste and put them on bread and gobbled them right up. The student's friends said "Blech. Why don't you get a job so you can afford to buy groceries?" So the student went out and got a job. When he got his first paycheck, he bought bread and pickles and olives and peanut butter. Then he blended up the pickles and olives and peanut butter into a paste and put it on his bread. All of his friends said that was too gross and left.

#2
[Daddy, can I have a story about a singing orange?] Once upon a time there was a singing orange. A very grumpy singing orange. He didn't like anything that was not a complementary color to his orange peel. [What's a complementary color? Oh, it's a color that looks good with another color.] One of his favorite things to do was to go to really big parking lots and find cars that weren't complementary colors with him. Then he would sing his strange orange song at the car "hrrrrrruuuuuuuhnn". His grumpy song was so powerful that it would temporarily change the color of the car. Then all of the people would get very confused while they were looking for their car. If they were looking for a blue minivan, they would look all over. There's a red minivan, there's a white car. I thought it was over here somewhere. Then the song would wear off and they would say - oh, there's our blue minivan. [Editor's note: We don't have a blue minivan, that was just an example.] Well, one day, the orange found an old, rusty yellow car. He sang his song so loud that the wheels of the car fell right off! He thought that this must mean the car was very grumpy. That grumpy orange was smitten. The orange sang a special magical song and soon the tires of the car slowly put themselves back on. The orange got into the car and rode around with it from then on. You see, the orange had fallen in love with ... a lemon! [Did the orange think that car was a lemon? No, that's just a word for a car that breaks a lot. Oh, hee hee.]

#3
Once upon a time there were some people who worked in a very tall building. But they got bored with having to walk down all the stairs at the end of the day. So they built a huge slide that wrapped all the way around the building down to the ground. It was so much fun that soon other people came and started paying them money to ride the slide. They turned it into an amusement park. They also put in a big fireman's pole. [What's a pole? It's a long straight metal thing you can slide down, like at the park. Oh yeah.] They all lived happily ever after. [Older daughter explains: "Just because you live in a beautiful land doesn't mean that you live a beautiful life." I was pretty impressed by that final comment of the night.]

Ok, now my daughter has calmed down. I think she might actually let me give her a little hug now. Thanks dear for dealing with their CD a couple minutes ago. You're faboo.

Fssh & !Gr8 Wall

The first story of the night:
Once upon a time there was a fish that jumped so high it touched the moon. But it was so cold on the moon that the fish's tongue got frozen on to the moon. So then the fish had to call for help: hewp, hewp! Then a nice moon dog came and poured some warm water on the fish's tongue until it got unstuck. It fell all the way back to earth: aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Then it fell into a pond, where it made a splash ten feet tall! It swam around for a couple of minutes to get settled and then fell asleep for five days. But because it was a fish, it kept its eyes open, it didn't even blink. So if you jump to the moon, be careful not to stick out your tongue when you get there.
The second story of the night:
Once upon a time there was a brick wall a thousand feet tall and a million feet wide*. Some people that lived near the wall ignored it and planted their corn and wheat and raised their pigs and there were little puppies running around. Other people didn't like the wall and built houses that didn't have any windows in that direction. But there was one family full of kids who all wanted to get to the other side of the wall. So each of them chose something they could do. As they grew up, they practiced and learned. The oldest child was a boy, and he wanted to be a scientist so he could use some sort of science waves to figure out what was on the other side of the wall. He built a machine that figured out that the wall was a thousand feet thick, but he couldn't figure out what was on the other side. The next child was a girl, and she became the world's greatest rock climber. She climbed way up the wall, but at five hundred feet up, the wall changed from brick to really slippery stuff that no one could climb up. So she had to climb back down. The next child was a girl who loved to build machines. So she built a machine to drill a hole through the 1000 feet of brick to the other side. But half way through the wall, she got to a part of the wall that was so hard that it broke her machine and it couldn't go any further. The last child was a girl who learned how to paraglide so she could sail up and over the wall. On hot days, the thermals from the wall were great for gaining altitude. But when she got near the top, she found that there were some sort of crazy fans at the top of the wall that pushed her and her paraglider back down to the bottom.

The four of them got together and had a family council. What were they going to do to get past the wall? Well, they talked and talked and came up with a plan. The rock climber girl went back up the wall, but this time she scraped some of the slippery stuff off into a bag. It immediately got replaced on the wall, but she didn't mind because she was already climbing back down. The machine-building girl made a giant lever attached to the machine to push it forward and the paraglider girl made a huge sail that was attached to the end to pull the end of the lever. Then the scientist made a laser to shoot at the hard part of the middle of the wall to weaken it. The first girl smeared the goop all the way around the drilling machine so it would be super slippery when it started going again. They fired up the laser: VRRRRRRRRUUUUUMMMMMMMMMM!! It was zapping and melting. The sail went up and immediately the fans at the top started pushing it away. That pushed the end of the lever, which smooshed the machine forward. When it got to the partially melted hard part, the slippery goo helped it burst right through and all the way to the other side!


Well, they all followed the machine over to the other side. There they found a beautiful land that had only three families living in it. The families were very sad because they couldn't get past the wall and had to live all by themselves. Well, the family of nice children brought them over to their side of the wall and gave them clothes and food and built houses for them. They even gave them puppies to play with to cheer them up. The three families told them about how they had a terrible king who had become so afraid that anyone would take away his kingdom that he built that giant wall. Slowly his people became so sad that they mostly died off, leaving only those three families there. Fortunately, they had been rescued by those awesome kids and they never had to be lonely again.**

* Ok, to make it a really impassible wall, add one or two orders of magnitude to the width. 
** Probably something good happens to the kingdom formerly behind the wall, but I haven't figured it out yet. Any ideas?
*** It hadn't occurred to me as I was telling the story, but as I was writing it down I thought of all sorts of political messages you could get out of the wall. Rest assured; that wasn't the point of the story. It was just some kids who were awesome and got past a really big wall. And then they were  awesomely nice to the people on the other side. Yay awesome kids!  
**** I wonder whether my kids will end up weirder than me. It's a tall order, but getting raised on nightly randomness like this, they've got a good shot.

Lima (legume, not Peruvian city)

Our older daughter was very sad when I left to go to young men's tonight - not wanting to let go of hugging me, crying, etc. My fabulous wifey cheered her up and my daughter was once again ok with me leaving. But she did request a story about ... a lima bean. I told her she'd be asleep by the time I got back but that I'd write it down for her.

Once upon a time there was a lima bean named Louise. She was a good bean. She visited with her friends and neighbors. She brought them nice buckets of water for their roots or adjusted the mirrors on their lawns to shine more or less light on them depending on how hot it was outside. But sometimes Louise felt like there was something more out there that she should be doing. She knew that most beans were destined to be eaten right up by people or animals. She tried to envision herself being happy turned into a bowl of crisp steamed beans, or stir fried, or whatever else people do with lima beans. But none of those felt quite right. Maybe she would be featured as the secret ingredient for Iron Chef and somehow be turned into a fabulous appetizer, main dish, and dessert in less than an hour. Frankly, she didn't believe that was possible. But even if it was, it still didn't feel like her DESTINY.

Everyone has a destiny. Our destiny is to become fully awesome through the grace of our Savior and return to live with God in eternal families. The destiny of a mouse is to squeak and eat cheese and wipe out parts of Europe in the 1300s. And while the destiny of a lima bean is usually to be hidden under the table by children who don't want to eat them (thus feeding the population of mice in the world), the destiny of this particular lima bean was different.

One day Louise was walking around when suddenly a very hungry mouse came running into the lima bean garden village. The mouse was allergic to cheese, which made life very hard. It was even willing to eat lima beans. And it intended to gobble them all right up.

Knock knock Louise. Who's there? Your DESTINY!

Louise jumped out and threw the bucket of water on the mouse's head. Then she yelled out "Welcome to our fancy day spa! It's your lucky day, you get a shampoo and trim and a manicure for free as part of our grand opening celebration. Sit right down, that's a good mouse. Ok, now you keep your eyes closed so I can rub in the shampoo. Just one moment." She talked and talked while she sneakily tied up the mouse pretending it was for the manicure. When the mouse opened its eyes, it was very confused. Now it was both very hungry and wet and tied up. So it said "Um, thank you for the free spa services, but I seem to be tied up and can't nibble on anything to fill up my stomach."

Fortunately, Louise was a very smart lima bean. She knew that it was not time for her village to be destroyed by the mouse. But she also knew that there were several houses in the neighborhood that insisted on trying to feed lima beans to small children. And those children needed someone to help them. What's more, once the lima beans were cooked, they needed to be eaten by someone. If they couldn't be eaten by adults and wouldn't be eaten by children, they might as well be eaten by a mouse allergic to cheese. So Louise drew a very nice map for the mouse and explained which nights her new mouse friend would be most welcome.

So in the end, Louise became a great protector of her village while still helping deserving children and rodents. She lived to a very old age and became leathery and dry and green like all good old lima beans. Eventually she was found by a young artist who put her in a big museum. And to this day, whenever children walk by, Louise tells them how to save their lima beans for her friendly mouse instead of smashing them into their hair or pockets or the furniture. Truly, the world is a better place because of that heroic bean.

Are you?

Scene: Daughters are in their beds, waiting for me to come in and check on them. Their room is dark in a somewhat futile attempt to get them to stop playing with each other and go to bed. They've finally settled down and so I come in very quietly.

Younger daughter (realizes I'm there, but can't see me): Is you my mommy?
Me: No, I'm your daddy.
Younger daughter: Is you my daddy Bise Aldn Say?
Me: Yes! (big happy smile) Yes I am.

Pegleg Pete the Pirate

Tonight's storytime. It seemed like a good plot at the time while I was making it up : )

Once upon a time there was a friendly pirate named Pegleg Pete. [Interruption: Daddy, I know why he was called pegleg, because he had a peg for a leg. Why was he called Pete? Me: That's just what his mommy and daddy called him when he was a little baby pirate.] Pegleg Pete loved to do three things - steal people's treasure, sink their ships, and bake. Whenever he would attack a ship, he would take all the gold, then sink the ship. As everyone fell into the water, he would throw them life preservers because he was nice. Then he would send out little individual boats that each had a cookie. Once the people were in their life preservers, they could grab a cookie and gobble it up. Pegleg Pete would say "I've stolen your treasure and sunk your ship, but at least I gave you a cookie!"

One day, Pete was sailing to attack some ships when a ship appeared out of nowhere. 100 pirates swarmed aboard and stole all his treasure and then sunk his ship. As he started sinking, a beautiful girl pirate appeared and threw him a life jacket. It was one-eye Suzy! Then she let go of a balloon with a brownie attached, which floated over to Pete. He said, "Hey, that's what I do! Can I go on a date with you?" Suzy replied "If you can find me" and sailed away.

Pegleg Pete spent the next year sailing the seven seas looking for One-Eyed Suzy. When he finally caught up to her, she went on a date with him. They got along great and soon became the most ferocious pirate duo on the seas. Whenever they sank a ship, they would have races to see whether the boat-cookies or the balloon-brownies would get to the sailors first. [Interruption: Who won? Me: Well, sometimes one of them won, and sometimes the other. Daughter: Please tell me about the first race - who won that one? Me: The brownie won the first race. The cookie won the second race. On the third race, a giant shark jumped out of the water and chomped up both the cookie and the brownie. Daughter: So no one won! Me: Yep. And the shark liked them so much that it followed the pirate ship for a while instead of eating up the people in the water. That made the people happy even though they didn't get a cookie.]

Addrorable

We were eating dinner. My older daughter didn't want to try any of the delicious crock-pot curry chicken divan that my amazing wife made. So she lost a token (try two bites of a new food, get a token. Avoid eating two bites of a new food, lose a token. Get ten tokens, we get to go out to Double T Diner together). My other daughter also didn't want to eat the rice. But she was gobbling up the rest of her food. All was normal at the Stay household. Then my younger daughter stood up on her chair and said very loudly "I HAVE NO POWER". We all glanced at each other to see if there was something we were missing (we weren't). So we looked at her. She looked back and smiled. So we all had a good laugh. Both daughters were happy and laughing, so it didn't seem to have been a true protest about her relative lack of self-autonomy. It was just one of those random and wonderful things.

The point of this story is that even if you have no power, you can still be happy. Today I'm going to work on embracing that idea as I go to my fairly powerless basement-dwelling job : )