Good Morning to You

The following conversation took place this morning between Halle and Noah:

H: Hey Noah.
N: Hey.
H: Does your stomach hurt?
N: What?
H: Does your stomach hurt?
N: Nu mubble do fuhnumma whut.
H: Mine does.

You people who live in Chicago or New York, you pay special attention. Today is the middle of April, and it is going to be 96 to 98 degrees, with humidity in the upper 80%. "Wrong" doesn't even begin to describe it. This is supposed to be SPRING, for crying out loud! I shudder to think about what "summer" will bring. But who'm I kidding? We skipped right over winter and went into pseudo-spring around January. Summer's gonna last from now till October.

People ask me why my mom is moving to Michigan, and I want to say, "They have these things called 'seasons' up there--she wants to know what that's like. She's almost forgotten."

And, yes, I realize that complaining about it does no good. The funny thing is, even after 20-some-odd years of living in Texas, I'm still taken aback by this kind of weather. I know it's coming, but every year the reality of it causes my whole being to wilt a little bit.

On a totally separate note, Angie wins the prize for most harrowing (and interesting) blog post. Read it. Then look at the following pictures. This is what happened to Angie's car (with her in it) about 8 or 9 years ago. She was going about 70 mph when one of the tires blew. The car flipped one and a half times and landed upside down. Unbelievably, she wasn't injured all that badly then, either. What, some scratches and a sprain? A headache? I don't fully remember, I just remember it wasn't nearly as bad as you'd suspect from looking at the pictures. Hey, Ang, ever seen the movie "Unbreakable"?

Re:

I've begun reading the Lord of the Rings again. I just finished the Hobbit a week or so ago, and enjoyed it, of course. It had been about 5 years since I'd last read it. The trilogy, on the other hand, I read about the time "Two Towers" (the movie) came out. A couple of thoughts I've had as reading (and none of this is deep or witty)...

I am determined to read more of the trilogy. Let me explain. Last time I read it, I did what I do with most books: I skimmed the lengthy descriptions and moved on to the action. It's a bad habit, I realize, and Tolkien would be appropriately horrified at me for doing it, but that's what I do. I'm going to try not to do that this time. At least, not as much. But one of the reasons I enjoyed the Hobbit was that it didn't have the pages and pages of description that the trilogy has. I appreciated that. I also realize that was Tolkien's idea of a children's book. Not sure what that says about me.

My other thought was, of course, about the movies. About a year ago Aaron and I saw a trailer for a "Hobbit" movie. We were really excited at first, then as we watched it again (and a third time), we began to question the authenticity. Sure enough, it was a fake. Hats off to the person who actually took the time and energy to fake a movie trailer. I really don't understand why you spend your free time in that way, but you did a decent job. Having said all that, I'm not so sure that a "Hobbit" movie would be that good. Having just re-read the book, I think a "Hobbit" movie might feel anti-climactic after the trilogy. There's just not as much depth of story, or action...I don't know, it could be really good, but I think it might be a little disappointing.

And speaking of movies based on books, we watched "Pride & Prejudice" the other day, and really enjoyed it. I thought it was very well done. It made me want to read the book again. I wasn't sure if I HAD read the book (I get the 18th-century female-written books confused--Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Pride & Prejudice. I know they're very different in tone and all, but I can rarely remember what happened under which title.) But several things were familiar, so I remembered this was one I'd read, and I was able to identify the title with the plot. I think I'd attributed several of the P&P happenings to "Jane Eyre". My apologies to the authors--it's been a while since high school. Does anyone have a copy of P&P I could borrow?

And speaking of high school (I'm on a roll here!), I got a message from my senior class officers that they're beginning to collect contact information in preparation for our 10-year reunion. It's sort of strange. And that's all I have to say on that subect.

Aaron and I are injury buddies. We discovered last night that we both have a cut on the knuckle of our right pinkie finger, and neither of us knows how it happened. And we individually discovered our injuries yesterday. Isn't that weird? I think that's weird. Even Aaron was mildly impressed with the weirdness.

And finally, Halle turned 7 yesterday, and we partied down. Here are some pics, courtesy of Mendy. Our camera is currently being ravaged by Canon, Inc. to see if they can fix it. Without discovering that it has water damage.

More

I've been inspired to blog more by reading past issues of Holly's blog (see "long-lost Holly" on the right).

How do people keep their houses clean? This is a serious question. I've been staying home for, what? almost two years now, and I don't think my entire house has ever been clean all at the same time. If the kitchen is clean, the living room is messy. If the living room is clean, the bathroom's dirty. If the bathroom's clean, hell must have frozen over. I think my main problem is that I live with 4 other people, and Abbey. As I'm cleaning one room, those other people are messing up another room. And it's not like I'm all that great at keeping up with housekeeping as it is. I'm too busy blogging, or reading other people's blogs. Or even working, like lately. More on that in a minute. The thing is, if I don't clean the kitchen every day, twice a day, then it doesn't stand a chance of staying clean. If I don't pick up the stuff from the living room at least three times a day, then it won't stay clean. And then the bathrooms, my bedroom, the girls' room, the laundry...it overwhelms me. And I've never been exactly consistent with my housework. I have very good intentions though. I even vacuumed today.

On to work. I've been copyediting the content of the website for the Waco chapter of Habitat for Humanity. I've really enjoyed it. I get lost in the work, in a good way. It's absolutely thrilling. To think that I can make money doing this (one day)! I'm still very green and have to look up a lot of things. But I have reference books--joy of joys! I get to look stuff up all I want! Only one with an editor's heart can understand how splendid that is.

Question: does anyone use firefox for their internet access? We just switched from IE, and I'm having a small but important problem. When I copy something from the internet (firefox), the formatting is lost when I paste it into Word. Ideas? Solutions? This has relevance to the work I've been doing. My temporary solution is to use IE when I'm working, and firefox for everything else, but that doesn't seem very efficient.

Now I must go clean the kitchen.

The Baseball Song

by Halle

Make up your own tune and sing along...

Baseball, we love you
Baseball
Baseball, I love you
But I love soccer more
Because I can't catch the ball...

Miscellaneous

I've wanted to blog several things lately, and just haven't. So this is going to be really random.

I wanted to post pictures of my few iris blooms, but our digital camera (that we got for Christmas) is not working. Oddly enough, it relates to the iris blooms and why I wanted to post pictures of them. Let's start at the beginning. I was expecting a bumper crop of irises this year. I've got loads of them around the yard and expected to get some great blooms. But we have had roofers working on our roof for the last 2 or 3 weeks, and they dumped the old roof right on top of most of my flower beds. As a result, the flowers are in shock and refusing to bloom, so I wanted to show you how pretty the blooms I DO have are, and how the loveliness of our new roof is, in the end, worth the lack of flowers. But it rained several days while they were working on the roof, and we had a couple of leaks--nothing big, but one of the leaks was directly over our desk where we keep our digital camera, and it got pretty wet. All will be well with the camera though, as it's still under warranty. You'll just have to trust me about the flowers.

The library thing isn't what I expected--it involves abstracting, not editing, so I'm not sure I'll do it for too long. But since it's volunteer work I don't have any qualms about (politely) quitting if I hate it. On a more positive note, the United Way and Waco Habitat for Humanity have both contacted me about doing volunteer copyediting, so it looks like I'll be getting some good experience there.

(Warning: following content may be considered TMI for some people.) My son has a penis. This probably comes as no surprise to most of you, but he has just discovered this fact, and is fascinated. Luckily his fascination is limited to diaper changes, so it's not like we're getting weird looks in the grocery store, but it has made diaper changing infinitely more difficult. EVERY TIME he has to do a visual and physical check to make sure it's still there, and when the diaper is, ahem, more than just wet, it makes for a fun little adventure trying to keep hands from getting nasty. Jackson assured me this was normal at our last checkup (actually before Noah's self-discovery), so I'm not worried, just slightly annoyed.

Did you know there is actually a term for throwing something out of a window? I did not know this. It seems odd to me that people actually came up with a word for it, instead of just calling it "throwing something out of a window", but there you go. The word is "defenestrate" (dee-FEN-uh-strayt). Use it in a sentence this week and share your experience.

Last week was a difficult one for me in dealing with the loss of Baby Moore. I had a lot of moments of re-realizing that he was gone, and hurting for Brooke and Adam. In the midst of that, the last lines of Chris Rice's "Come to Jesus" were comforting, and I thought I'd share.

And with your final heartbeat
Kiss the world goodbye
Then go in peace, and laugh on Glory's side,
and Fly to Jesus
Fly to Jesus
Fly to Jesus and live

The last line really got me. Not "fly to Jesus and sleep". Not "fly to Jesus and cease to exist". Fly to Jesus and LIVE. Oh, we grieve that he didn't live here, that we didn't get to hold him and hear his laugh. We don't understand why, and we hurt, and cry. But we can carry on, because somehow there is Hope in the sorrow. Adam's recent blogs have spoken volumes about this. There's no hype, no false platitudes of faith, just raw, honest pain and questioning, and unexplainable hope.

That's all for now.