Corbin is gone to church camp for the week. In our parent orientation Sunday, they stressed the fact that, “No news is good news.” That sent my little brain off on a tangent thinking about some of the ways that my life has changed since I stopped watching the news.

It’s not like I cover my ears if it comes on or anything, I just don’t seek it out. I have a general awareness of things going on out there. It just seems that every time I happen to hear the news it’s the same old stories. Most of it involves people showing other people their wobbly bits. I just really don’t know why that affects my life in any way. I’m fairly certain that if my children were ever “exposed” to such horrors, they, like me, would laugh and get away from the person. No news here, just some random perv.

Not seeing the news has impacted so many things that I’m just now realizing. Evidently there is a tropical storm headed for Florida right now. There was a small chance it would come here to Houston, but it didn’t. This whole even would have previously consumed my life. I would have been constantly checking the weather sites and blogs to see if we were in the path, or maybe the path changed… And why? It’s effin’ rain already. If it did end up coming here, I’m 99.9% sure that I would hear about it. There is no need for me to spend ANY time seeking out useless information.

Something that struck me earlier on the hurricane front is the fact that Grandma hasn’t uttered a peep about the current tropical storm to me. This is interesting because if the news says it will sprinkle she psycho calls me to see if we are okay. This means two possible things to me: Possibility #1 she’s mad at me because I have been busy canning and haven’t called her much in the past few days, or Possibility #2 that she is starting to get it that I really don’t obsess about the news. hmm Probably #1.

  Anywhooo, speaking of canning, I have made 21 pints of fig preserves as of midnight last night. The tree is still laden with fruit. My fingers are still sore. So much more work to do…

Our fig tree is cranking this year. I have already harvested about 50 lbs of figs. Yesterday I peeled figs for preserves for 5 hours. About 3 hours into it, the skin on my fingers started to show blisters from the acidity so I put on gloves. This morning my nail beds are all bleeding and painful. What a ‘tard! I’m off to find recipes I can use for my figs that don’t involve peeling them, since the trees are still FULL of figs. Ugh…

Last night I had a dream about an underground house. I’m fairly sure that I have had dreams about this house before. In the dream my cousin and her family are needing a place to live so I mention that I have this little underground place they can fix up. I told her that it had flooded before but since it was summer they probably wouldn’t have to worry about that. Then I realize that I haven’t even really be in there. Evidently it was there when we bought the house, built by previous owners, and I have never gotten around to going into it. I go down there to check it out and it turns out to be this massive place with all sorts of rooms and stuff in it. Maybe I should start digging around in the back yard looking for doors? 🙂

I recently read a book titled Made To Crave. There was some really good stuff in there, but the outcome has been that now I totally beat myself up over every package of yellow zingers. It has been revealed to me that I’m putting my sweet tooth between me and God. The book spouted a steady stream of bible verse after bible verse related to food that I totally didn’t follow. The book says you should repeat a few positive affirmations they give you to help you deal with food cravings. The very first day after I completed the book, I went there. I was dying for a frosty. Truly dying… So I
prayed for the strength to fight through it. A few minutes later… Corbin and I are sitting in the drive-thru at Wendy’s. After a long long wait I get up to the window, and they only prepared 1 frosty for the two of us. It actually worked! I left without my frosty. I’m such a freaking junkie I have NEVER repeated that process again. I’m scared to death to beat this apparently. I am so freaking jacked up! I think I need to read the darn book again or something…

I started this post, and an email came in so I got distracted reading it. Now I’m sitting here reading a CaringBridge update by a former classmate who has a 4-month-old baby who was born with serious problems. I started this post thinking about how bad I feel about not being smart enough to find a shampoo I like that won’t strip the color from my hair… and now the wind is completely out of my sails on that. (Thank goodness right?…)

Right now more than ever it seems like there are some big words floating around my little world. Disability, adoption, and Faith in Action seem to be the themes for the past few weeks. My very best friend is going through testing to determine if her unborn baby will have any trouble. (There were some troubling test results that require further investigation.) Another friend’s son has recently been accepted into the Special Olympics program. And then there is this mom whose son is struggling to survive every day of his life so far. Some other people close to us are going through an adoption. Again and again in my reading I keep coming across the concept of Faith in Action. David is too. Could all of this tie together?

We were talking about the prospect of being empty nesters in a few years (7 or so) and he is pretty much on the same page as I have always been about adoption. We can’t imagine a house with no children living in it.

The only thing is that I am pretty much the worst mom ever. For one thing, the twins are out tonight attending a midnight screening of The Avengers ON A SCHOOL NIGHT!!! Granted, they are with a youth pastor, BUT STILL! They have SAT’s Saturday. And then this evening Corbin came home from the neighbor’s house with his whole tummy scraped from sliding down a tree trunk with his shirt off. He was trying so hard to hold back his tears and I didn’t even hug him! I applied antibiotic ointment etc., but I know what I really should have done was take his little wounded self in my arms and coddle him. I know that would have been a worse thing since he was trying to be so tough in front of David, BUT STILL!! A real mom would have done it.

UGH! Maybe I should just go back to beating myself up over my lack of girl skills because the only shampoo that really makes my hair feel clean and soft is Head and Shoulders which it strips the color out leaving me with a big ole’ orange mess atop my gourd.

Today has been a really slow moving day. The twins visited a church with their friend AJ. I watched our church service online in my PJ’s, and that’s pretty much all I have done today. My brain felt like scrambled eggs all day because I’m so used to running around town all day every weekend. I really need to learn how to just chill out.

I also want to note that right now I’m reading John Woolman’s Journal and I’m listening to The Aplogy of Socrates on audiobook. My goal for this year is to finish the books I’m reading before I start other ones. While it seems that I have already broken this rule, I think I should add the caveat that I can only READ one book at a time and LISTEN to one audiobook at a time. 🙂

Like I said before, my brain is out of whack more than usual today so I’ll probably have to come home and edit this post. The kids just made it home so we are headed out to their Reach celebration. More on that later. 🙂

David and I don’t have an anniversary. I’m sure we do, we just haven’t a clue when it is. I am fairly sure that it happened sometime in 2003, but there was never a day that I can recall being “the day.” So it’s been pretty much 9 years. Part of that is because we spent a really long time totally smitten over each other before we ever even held hands. Anywho… periodically we declare that it is time for us to celebrate our noniversary. It was declared earlier this week that today we will have a noniversary date. The plan is to drive way out to the east side to eat at Iguana Joe’s. (They just don’t know how to do Tex-mex here in The Woodlands.) After we eat we are heading over to my grandma’s house to clean her guns for her. I know that probably sounds really hilarious to some people. Those people must not be from Texas. 🙂 hehe

Seriously though, I love surprising my grandma so it will be so much fun because she will be very happy. The guns haven’t been cleaned since my papaw died in 1985. Several a/c units have been stolen from houses on her block, and I’m afraid that if someone tried to steal hers she might try to shoot them with an old, unmaintained gun. That could be really bad.

As far as our romantical noniversary date goes, I don’t think there could be a better place to go to think about lasting love than my grandma’s. While my papaw died almost 30 years ago, he is still an ever-present part of that house. Her devotion to, and admiration of him has never ceased. She still keeps all of his tools lined up out in his tool room just the way he had them. Except that his clothes aren’t hanging in the closet anymore, (I’m sure she still has some things he wore in there somewhere) I could totally see him walking through the doorway. and sitting down on the rocking chair eating a blue bell popsicle.

Sometimes I think it is sad that he left her so early, but I never dwell in those thoughts. I know my grandma well enough to know that she doesn’t go there. I think she knows they will be together again, and that is just fine with her. She can wait. That’s real love.

Today I was inspired by a guy who blogged about his experiences during Lent. Although mine was no where near the magnitude of his, I have just finished a little journey of my own. I regret not recording all of the amazing progress I saw in my life over the past few months. I’ve started this blog today so I can look back and remember as I (hopefully) continue this evolution.