Busy Until He Comes

Crying Foul.

2012-02-01T11:55:00.000-08:00

The sun is out, and even though we’ve only just crested from January into February, it feels like spring outside. The air is warm enough to shiver through a walk with just a sweater. The shadows aren’t too cold to stand in while the dog sniffs absently at whatever he smells. The little birds are chirping animatedly from the underbrush. And a thick floral scent from some of the earliest flowers hangs in the air and reminds me of honeysuckle. It’s not honeysuckle -- it’s not a vine, and the flowers are small, white, and practically petalless – but it smells like honeysuckle, and it’s blooming between the apartment buildings where we walk.

The other day, I was reading an essay by G.K. Chesterton: “In Praise of Grey,” or maybe it was “In Defense of Grey.” In it he talks about weather, and how English people should not complain about their weather because they are the only people in the world who have true weather. (I cry foul on that. Chesterton had obviously never visited the west coast of America, where he would have found weather remarkably like his own.) He says that people should never sneer at grey weather because grey is the most various and obliging kind of weather. It can be soft like cashmere or threatening like judgment. It brings out the bright colors in one’s surroundings and lets them speak for themselves. Furthermore grey represents a state of doubt or hope: hope that something else might be coming in a little while.

I sympathize with Mr. Chesterton. I can enjoy a grey day and appreciate the difference between puffy clouds, rain clouds, thunderclouds, and hanging mist. I know how to look at the skies and wish that the clouds would give way to an invigorating rain or wander through our local park and feel that faint fairy chill that a low lying fog brings in. But I respectfully submit that when a person feels hope on a grey day, the supreme hope is for a day like this. Dwellers of cloudy climes may find grey friendly, familiar, and even interesting, but when we hope, we hope for sun, except for the odd occasions that we hope for snow.

Grey can be glorious. Clouds add character to any skyscape. A pure blue sky, especially in a flat landscape, can be overwhelming, but add a few big, puffy clouds, and the whole things becomes playful, like the heavens decided to go sailing. Add some charcoal overtones to those clouds, and the sky becomes dramatic with a touch of impending downpour and a sense that something big might happen. Every sunset or sunrise is better for having clouds around it. They bring out more color and give the color more surfaces to play on. Even a solid grey sky can be exciting if there is some variety or energy in the clouds.

But grey is ultimately limiting. Every parent has had or will have to explain to a child that the sun doesn’t really go away when the clouds come out. It just hides behind them. The clouds cover it up. Clouds come between us and the sun, between us and the blue expanse above us, and if they stay around long enough, we begin to forget that it’s there. Sure, we know that if we got in an airplane (I almost wrote aeroplane, that’s how enmeshed in Chesterton I am at the moment), we could go above the clouds and see the vast blue sky and the rays of the sun, even more brilliant for being above the smoke and the dust held in by the clouds. However, our daily practical consciousnesses forget that the blue exists. The spectrum of our sight adjusts to focus that much closer to the ground. It’s like we’ve had eternity cut off from us in a physical way. We forget to think in terms of the whole when the half is pressing in on us.

That’s why a clear blue day like today is so invigorating to people who live in cloudy climates like ours. A clear day and a big blue sky are a revelation in a very real, physical way. The world comes back into perspective, and we remember the sublime sense that we are very small creatures in a big, beautiful world. The sky is big and deep, and it’s not empty either. It’s blue and vast and full of who knows what. Grey may make the individual object, the brilliant leaf or the immediate building, stand out more, but blue brings them all together in the vast consciousness that there is one great sky and we are all beneath it. On a day like today, I feel like I can see the whole world if I just get high enough or walk far enough, and moreover, if I could see it, I could understand it all somehow. That’s the power of, ahem, illumination.

Tada! Table.

2012-01-26T10:58:00.000-08:00

Have you ever had one of those projects that seems like a good idea, and is a good idea, but if you had known how much work it was going to be . . . Well, in this case I would have done it anyway, but you know the feeling.

We have an old table. I'm not sure how old it is. We got it from Tanya, a fellow Navy wife with four kids. She got it from a little old woman who said, "A big family needs a big table." But when Tanya's big family was moved to Virginia, the Navy refused to move the table. It was too heavy. Tanya could't afford to ship it herself, so she offered it around to her acquaintance.

At the time, I was full of dreams of a big family to come, so I jumped on the chance. Seth sure was surprised to come home and find a huge wooden table and six chairs where a little white formica circle had been. But the table had been through a lot. It's finish was worn. Its underside was covered in food particles. It needed work.

Now anyone who knows me knows that I love a project. They also know that unless I have a pressing deadline, that project ins't going to get done. We've had this table for six years, and only now, two dwellings later, is it getting the attention that it's been needing since the beginning.

My excuse is that the table is big and solid. It's a real pain to move. When I first got it, we needed four navy wives to carry it to my house. We couldn't get it in through the screen door, so we had to lift it up onto the front porch and maneuver it through my front door, down the hall, back through the kitchen, and into my diningroom. That is definitely an experience to repeat as little as possible. Plus now we have a garage, which makes handy-work less dependent on the weather. It's hard to refinish a table in the rain.

So when we unloaded our moving truck last October, we just left the table in the garage. It sat there for a while until we found a store that sold refinishing equipment (Fred Meyer has a wonderful selection). We used Formby's Finish Remover, which I was told is much easier than sanding. It is easier, but it’s not faster, and I'd call it a toss up between the smell of Formby's and the feel of sawdust.

Still, it was a thrill to watch the uneven old finish scrubbed away and revealed bare wood grain. I wish I had a picture of myself all kitted out in my grubbies with safety goggles, ventilator mask (wow that stuff stinks), and heavy duty rubber gloves on. Boogaloo wasn’t sure what to make of me the first time.

The wood underneath was very pretty. And the new stain gave it a reddish color that I wasn’t anticipating.

The really fun part, though, was spreading on the polycrylic. You might have seen those Minwax commercials where the stain and poly just glides off the disembodied brush in a perfect line and a perfect coat. Nuh-uh. Poly drips, and so does stain for that matter. The polycrylic runs out halfway across the table, and the overlapping gets thicker than the non-overlapping points. And the drip marks stay there forever. There is no smooth and even coat. There is coating, sanding, coating, sanding, coating, and calling it good enough!

Still, it's fun because the table becomes shiny and smooth and looks like furniture again. A part of me wanted to keep going until I had the perfect coat, but the objective part of me said, "All you're doing is taking the stain off. It's time to be done with this." We moved it upstairs, screwed it back together, and called if finished. Still, good enough was good enough to get the ultimate compliment: the words “I’m impressed” from my husband.

A rainy day walk.

2012-01-19T19:44:00.000-08:00

The dog needs to go out. He paws my chair leg and looks longingly at me as I finish my breakfast.
“Ok, Max. Ok.” I glance outside. It’s raining in that picturesque, dimpled puddle sort of way. Not ideal walking weather, but a walk in the rain could be fun. I turn to my daughter.
“Hey, Boogaloo, Max needs to go out. Do you want to go for a walk?”
“Go for a walk,” she seconds. After a pause she adds, “Get pants on.”
“Yes, that’s a good idea.”
We run upstairs to get socks and, in her case, pants (I already had mine on, thank you very much.) and then run downstairs to get our boots. Her boots have little monkeys on them. Mine have umbrellas in pink, green, and blue. Highly appropriate. We put our boots on, zip up our coats, put the leash and harness on the dog, grab the umbrella, and head out the door.
Then we hit our first kerfuffle. Boogaloo wants to bring her stuffed dog, but she wants me to carry it. She wants to carry the umbrella. I tell her that if I have to carry the dog, I’m going to put it back inside. She reconsiders. Doggy gets stuffed in her pocket. Up goes the umbrella, and honestly, she looks like a little mushroom because the umbrella is wider than she is tall and hides everything except her legs.
We meander down the sidewalk toward the park. The rain patters on the hood of my coat, and I can see it making dark patches on my shoulders already. Max pulls me to one side so he can find the nearest tree. Some needs are very immediate. Boogaloo stomps past us at a brisk pace, and I begin to worry that she’s heading toward the playground. I don’t really want to spend that much time out here. It’s a little wet to stand idly by while she runs up and down the swaying bridge, up and down, up and down. Time for a mommy diversion.
“Hey, Boogaloo, come see the puddle.” I have no aversion to puddle hopping. In fact, if my boots didn’t leak, I’d do it myself. Boogaloo comes to investigate the puddle. It’s a doozy: all the accumulated water from three sidewalks and a patch of grass is funneling into one dip in the path. The water is at least three inches deep, and the puddle is several feet wide. It’s just too tempting. As Boogaloo leaps in with both feet and makes several splashes, I shuffle through it, plowing water aside and leaving a wake behind me. “Whee, whee, whee,” Boogaloo shouts. Yeah, kid, I know the feeling.
We go hunting for another puddle, and now I notice that the water from our big puddle is being funneled out into the roundabout and into a little creek bed between us and the nearest housing development. I look back at the park. There are several currents of water running down the edges of sidewalks, across the pavement, and into this little creek. There’s a depression in the curb so the water can get through. The whole park is subtly sloped so that all the water will run to this one point and travel down this dry creek bed rather than flood out the houses below us. I never would have noticed. What a marvel of engineering.
I follow the creek bed, and Boogaloo tramps along behind me crowing, “The water, the water.” The creek extends the length of the park and joins with an unofficial stream at the border of two other housing developments and runs through a little divot between them. That’s a lot of water for a little divot. I wonder how it all stays in.
Max takes this moment to finish his business, and as I bend over to clean up after him, the first drops of water run off my coat and onto my blue jeans. I straighten up and feel the back hem of my coat. Water wrings out in my hands and dribbles through my jeans to my underwear. Ew.
“Boogaloo, let’s go back.”
“Back,” and we tramp along until we get to the roundabout, where Boogaloo stops to splash in the puddle again.
“Boogaloo, Max wants to go back inside.” Max really wants nothing of the sort, but now the seat of my jeans is beginning to soak in earnest, and I can’t seem to keep my coat hem from touching me.
“No want it, Mommy. Puddles.”
Sigh. “Boogaloo, we are going to walk back now.”
She acquiesces. Then she tries to hand me the dog.
“No, Boogaloo. You wanted to bring him. You carry him.”
We make it to the sidewalk, and then she veers left toward the playground.

“Boogaloo, we are going home.”
“No, Mommy, slide.”
“No slide. It’s time to go home. Look, you can pick which path we take. There’s this one.” I point toward the short path that takes us directly into the apartment complex and home by means of two covered breezeways. “Or this one.” A slightly longer path through the trees which lets us out on our street. “You pick.”
“This one.” She points defiantly at the longer, wetter one. Then she tries to hand me her dog again.
We start wandering down the path. Between the clouds and the trees, the path we’re walking is pretty dark still, but it’s really not that much drier than the open air. Some places on the pavement are dry, but only because the trees catch the water and concentrate it elsewhere. Max forges on ahead, drawn into the underbrush by his ever active nose. I really don’t want to go into the underbrush, so I pull him back and turn around to look for Boogaloo.
She’s standing still, staring at the umbrella which she’s holding in front of her. I’m not sure what it fascinating her, but her hood is down, the trees are dripping on her head, the dog is pulling on my arm, and I’m losing patience.
“Boogaloo, let’s go.”
“Here, Mommy. Take doggy.”
“No.”
She tramps a few steps, kicks a puddle, and then pauses to rearrange the umbrella on her shoulders and the dog in her arms. She reconsiders, rearranges again, frowns discontentedly and holds out the umbrella. I take it and hold it over both of us. No, she wants it back. She tries to hand me the dog.
“No.”
We walk a little ways, and then she stops to rearrange everything again. There’s the slightest trickle of water by her feet, and she seems to want to make a puddle out of it. She jumps in it, but it doesn’t splash, so she kicks it a little and watches the water break around her feet. Then she sneezes, but that doesn’t signal the need to hurry up. Step, step. Pause. Step, step. Wander. Step, rearrange. Rearrange. No, I will not hold the doggy. Rearrange.
I walk to the nearest path lamp and stand beside it, pretending the that light can also make me warm and dry. The lamp itself stands about waist high and has a domed top, and I’m randomly reminded of the diabolical alien robots the D’aleks from Dr. Who. Is it ironic, cozying up to something that resembles a world-destroyer for light and warmth? A cold spot forms in the hollow of my neck, and the water that is soaking through my coat begins to trickle down my chest as well as my rear. No, ironic is cozying up to a streetlamp in the pretense of staying dry.
“Boooogaloooo!”
She hastens a couples of steps and rearranges herself. I am cold, dagnabbit, kid. Keep going. I wait. She comes a few steps closer and offers me the umbrella. I take it gladly, and we proceed in comradely silence for a few moments as I hold it over both of us. Then she wants it back. I don't fight it. I haven't got the energy to fight it. I try to think about warm things like hot cocoa and fresh baked cookies, but then I remember that I'm the one who has to make them happen, and I decide that I'd rather just crawl under the blankets and pull them up over my head. I want to be home.
We’re on the right street now. I can see our door. She sneezes. She tries to hand me the dog, but I take the umbrella and use it like a carrot in front of a mule. That’s right. You want the umbrella. Walk a little faster. Keep moving. Keep moving. Max tries to pull me toward an interesting smell, but I'm not having it. We are going in one direction and one direction only.
By the time we get in the front door, Boogaloo has caught my nasty, petulant mood. She tosses the doggy on the floor, sits down on the step, and tells me in no uncertain terms which parts of her are wet and need to be dry.
“Mommy, socks off. . . . Mommy, pants wet. Take them off. Take them off.”
I peel off her corduroys and toss them aside. She stalks up the stairs. As I peel off my coat and hang it up to drip, I think lugubriously of sleep and dry clothes. Why are walks in the rain so much fun again? Oh that's right, because it's so much fun to come in and be done with them.

Tidbits on a high note and a low note.

2012-01-16T14:55:00.000-08:00

1. It's snowing! For the second time in two days, tiny white flakes graceful angel feathers perform their mesmerising dance outside our windows. They're not sticking, and they only fall in spurts, but they mark the first snowfall of the season. "Oh, look at the snow," Boogaloo says. The news last night spent a full five minutes covering everything from people's personal reactions to the possibility of icy conditions on the morrow. They showed pictures of snow-covered roads and parkinglot accumulation that barely reached half an inch. And then they poked fun at themselves by pointing out that according to the mediorologist's scale, what we have here is only a "trace" of snow, technically no snow at all. Much ado about nothing you might say. Only in Oregon. Still, we hope the mountains are getting a share of this. We've been short on moisture this year.

2. Hypothesis rejected: We had a hypothesis that the Broncos could not lose if Seth wore his lucky jersey. Well, Seth wore his lucky jersey yesterday, and I wore one of Seth's other Broncos shirts. The Broncos still lost pretty spectacularly. Their season ended last night in a painful defeat to the New England Patriots, 45-10. Oh, ouch. Congratulations to the Patriots who played some flawless football and took no prisoners. We turned the game off halfway through the third quarter, and I said a prayer this morning for all the disappointed Broncos fans, all the satisfied Tebow-haters, and all the people who said they were going back to church if the Broncos won. .

Still, I have officially crossed over into Bronco fandom. I went to amazon.com and put a Broncos sweatshirt on my wishlist. After all, fandom is like love. A true fan isn't put off by losses and does not alter when it alteration finds (sorry Shakespeare). I mean, look at the Raiders. Look at their fans (normal ones excluded, Alan). There is no greater committment. And in the family I now live in, well, one has to have an allegiance of some kind. So, good bye, nominal Seahawks allegiance. Hello, fledgeling Broncos committment.

3. A Word of Wisdom from G.K. Chesterton for all readers of supernatural fiction:
I was reading the comments on a Twilight article a couple of weeks ago (I know, I know), and I noticed one from a woman lamenting that a Christian nation should be so caught up in a movie about vampires. Well, she was obviously unfamiliar with the material, but I thought about her question anyway for a while. And then I read this passage in an essay by 20th Century apologist and captain of imagination, G.K. Chesterton, and thought it applied, especially to me:

I can fancy in such a stormy twilight some such smell of death and fear. . . . I could sit here and write some very creditable creepy tale. . . .Only, you see, this mood is all bosh. I do not believe it in the least. . . . For there is nothing so delightful as a nightmare, when you know it is a nightmare.

That is the essential. That is the stern condition laid upon all artists touching this luxury of fear. The terror must be fundamentally frivolous. Sanity may play with insanity, but insanity must not be allowed to play with sanity. Let such poets . . . by all means, be free to imagine what outrageous deities and violent landscapes they like. By all means let them wander freely amid their opium pinnacles and perspectives. But these huge gods, these high cities, are toys; they must never for an instant be allowed to be anything else. . . . [They] must be his dolls, not his idols. His central sanctitites, his true possessions, should be Christian and simple. (Chesterton, "The Nightmare," from The Essential G.K. Chesterton Collection, Kindle ed.)

All in all, I don't think Chesterton would have had a problem with the Twilight franchise in itself. He liked fairytales in which the hero finds himself in a strange world and makes good in it. At the same time, a little warning against idolatry never hurt anyone, and applies to any captivating series.
4. I finally get a picture of me on my blog (see above), and Boogaloo took it. I had to jump in front of the lens, but she pushed the right button. Clever girl.

Go Broncos!

2012-01-12T20:32:00.000-08:00

This is Boogaloo's favorite outfit of late. She wears it with her monkey boots (which also get a lot of use, in case you were wondering, Mom), and she goes everywhere in it. Yesterday, she pulled if off the hanger and changed into it just to go the park. But we're all wearing the orange and blue pretty proudly since Sunday. Seth has four Broncos shirts, and he has worn no other shirt all week. Even I find myself unintentionally sporting blue and orange. I need to find some official gear so I can fit in with the family.

Seriously, who wouldn't want to be a Broncos fan right now? Wow, what a game! Seth has been predicting Tebow's success all season, but last Sunday blew us away. When Demaryius Thomas caught Tim Tebow's pass at the beginning of overtime, we thought he'd get some good yardage. But then he kept running and running and running, and suddenly there was a touchdown. And we were screaming and screaming. Even Boogaloo was jumping up and down and yelling "Go Broncos. Go Broncos." We were so amped up, we had to go out for ice cream to settle down.

Then we followed Tebow headlines all week. I love reading the comments under Tebow articles. One comment said, "I am a diehard Steeler fan, but I will be cheering wholeheartedly for Tebow and the Broncos against the Patriots next Saturday." Another one said, "If Tim Tebow and the Broncos can pull off another win like this one against the Patriots, I am going back to church!" Amen.

I'm not used to having a team to patronize. If anyone had asked me in high school or college if I followed a football team, I would have replied, "Well, I know that Steve Largent played for the Seahawks once." Yeah, when I was eight. There are those who would argue that "my" local team (i.e. the Seahawks) weren't worth following at that point, but as I have since learned, that wouldn't stop a real football fan. But now, having fallen feet first into a first-class football family, I find myself liking football. I don't exactly follow stats, but I'm actually beginning to pay attention to who is in what division so I know how hard to cheer.

And following the Broncos is fun right now too. Seth is no fair weather fan. He's been following them since 1986, probably before Tim Tebow's mom made the fateful decision to keep her youngest son. But even he, my steady, ain't-got-time-for-that-hysteria, it's-all-about-the-numbers husband, is following Tebow mania like the quarterback is a rockstar. Seth says he knows it's pathetic, but he has to click on Tebow headlines. I tell him not to worry. I've only just kicked the Kardashian headline habit, and Tebow is more worth following than they are. Besides, if the Broncos go all the way to the superbowl, which would you rather say: "I knew it all along, even when the pundits were doubting. I called it every step of the way." or "I didn't follow it all that closely. I didn't want to be uncool."?

The perfect present

2012-01-07T19:39:00.000-08:00

You know you've found the perfect present when it gets duplicated a day later by your mother-in-law. Because my darling Boogaloo has an annoying habit of hiding in my cupboards, Seth and I decided that we should get her a hiding place of her own for Christmas. We looked at a lot of tents on amazon. There were tents with turrets and tents in camoflage. There were tents with dragons on the side and tents with Bob the Builder. But my Boogaloo is rapidly developing into a girly-girl, so we decided to get her the girliest tent we could. Voila!

She loves it. She drags it upstairs and downstairs. She tumbles in and out of it. She "disappears" into it, and calls, "Mommy, where you go?" We have a blast.

Well, this past week, after Seth got back from Taiwan, we dropped down to Seth's folks in the Salem area to celebrate Christmas and see some family. And while we're waiting to open presents, we begin discussing the presents we've already opened. We mentioned that we'd bought Boogaloo a tent because she spends so much time in the cupboards. And my mother-in-law froze.

"What kind of tent?" she asked.

Yup. That kind of tent.

What a to do. Do we leave the tent in the box and return it for something different? Well, no. Because everyone else is opening presents, and we've already told Boogaloo that we're opening presents, and this year, she's finally figured out what opening presents means. So we let her open it. We even let her set it up.

After all, we didn't pay for it, and she loves it, and what kid doesn't need a back up? The way she uses the one in our livingroom, I am totally anticipating early rippage. Still, next year, we are going to coordinate more carefully with the grandparents.

Speaking of Christmas presents, did you know that Taiwan specializes in coral jewelry? Now I do. My sweetie brought me home a wonderful coral bead necklace. One of the only perks of having a husband who travels is the exotic presents he brings home.

Considering New Year's Resolutions

2012-01-05T18:31:00.000-08:00

I remember reading about the romance of a ship pulling into a harbor and hearing the shouts of the stevedores as they moved about the business of loading and unloading the boats. Somewhere else I read about the cries of the cockneys as cabs pulled in and out of the coachyard of an inn. Both instances had sufficiently impressed their authors so as to comment on them, but I never thought about the poetry of such a situation until today when I pulled into an Oil Can Henry’s for an oil change. There were several mechanics moving around the autobay, assisting each other in the details of the three separate cars they were working on. They would shout to each other in a rhythmic sort of way, combinations of numbers (“447903”), technical terms, and cues (“Checking engine on number threeee”), and the whole thing sing-songed around the bay in a chorus of call and response that will probably go on as long as people work on things together.

All this goes to say that I was two quarts low on my oil, my transmission fluid is filthy, and I’m due to change fuel filter. I took care of the first one. The other two will have to wait a couple of months. There are apparently a couple of leaks as well. My poor car is getting to the point where I wonder if some of the more expensive treatments are really worthwhile, but on the other hand, a Buick is supposed to be good for as long as you take care of it. I might change my own air filter. That’s not hard to do. This year, I resolve to take better care of my car if at all possible.

There is something about the beginning of the year that adds impetus to turning over a new leaf. Not that the leaf will always stay turned. I heard on the radio the other day that 75% of people break their new year’s resolutions, 33% of them in the first week. And then we give up. Once it's broken, it's broken. But the energy inherent in new birth at least inspires the desire to make ourselves better people.

I think there's a Biblical precedent for this desire. I was reading the beginning of Exodus, when God instituted the Passover, and he made it the new beginning of their year. Life began from that point; they had a new identity. I can't speak for the people of Israel at that point, but I know that now, the Passover represents a time of cleansing. A Jews for Jesus representative told me a few years ago that to the Jew at Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, leven or yeast represents sin. Passover is the time to sweep it out of one's home and life. Jewish housewives spend a lot of time sweeping up every bit of yeasted bread that they can find, leaving just a symbolic crumb for their husbands to dispose of (as a symbol of their responsibility as spiritual head). All yeast is disposed of to begin the year without sin.

I’ve been having mixed feelings about making New Years’ resolutions this year. It seems like everything I’d like to resolve, I’ve already resolved, broken, and put back together again. I just didn’t wait for New Years’ Day to begin. I mean, if something needs fixing, fix it; don’t put it on your calendar. Things like reading my Bible more astutely, praying more, exercising more, getting out of debt, and paying more attention to the people around me have been on my radar screen since last spring at least. Since I feel these things are really necessary to my physical and spiritual health, New Years’ Day didn’t really add a lot of urgency. It just reminded me that I didn’t have any new resolutions to make, and that I haven't been keeping the mid-year resolutions as well as I would like. In essence, my plate is full, and I just need to keep eating steadily.

Untraditional Christmas

2011-12-31T21:06:00.000-08:00

Have you ever just had the urge to stick a pair of antlers on a white Siberian tiger? Like slapping the trappings of something you're used to onto something a little foreign to you? Okay, I'm stretching the metaphor a little bit. The Boo decided it would be fun to decorate Grandpa's stuffed tigers. They don't seem to mind, and they make for a great photo opportunity. Thinking seriously about this Christmas, though, that's the sort of Christmas we had. Not quite traditional.

The traditional Christmas at my parents' house has a very specific structure. Everybody arrives at least two days in advance. We go to the Christmas Eve service. When we get home, we eat scrambled eggs and badger my parents into opening presents that evening. Present opening has a very specific structure too: we turn out all the light except the ones on the tree, we start with a reading of the Christmas story, my brother Ted passes out one round of presents, we sing a Christmas carol, and then he passes out another round of presents, and so on. Then the next morning, after everyone is awake, we open our stockings, drink lots of eggnog mixed with orange juice, eat cinnamon rolls, and prepare to eat ourselves silly, play board games, and complete at least one jigsaw puzzle. That has been Christmas up to this point.

But this year, the combination of economy, life changes, and just plain growing up induced us to alter a few things. None of us live at home now, so three of the siblings didn't get in until Christmas Eve. (I, on the other hand, being devoid of a husband, showed up a week in advance to help with the baking.) We decided to exchange names instead of getting presents for everyone from everyone, so there was only one round of presents, and it happened on Christmas day, after the Sunday morning service, at the same time as opening stockings. We did read the Christmas story. We did not sing any carols. There was no jigsaw puzzle. But most striking of all, we didn't even finish one carton of eggnog between the nine of us. Mom was sincerely distressed because she's supposed to be avoiding sugary foods, and she'd bought three cartons of eggnog to make sure there would be enough for my hollow legged brother and brother-in-law.

I'm not complaining about the changes, at least not seriously. The idea that Christmas is a flexible entity has been coming on gradually for me. I remember feeling a lot more awe of the sacredness of it when I was little. Then the dimmed lights and the carols sung felt like a connection back to the first Christmas. I remember lying under the tree and staring up through the branches at the patterns made by the lights and thinking abut nothing but the lights and how beautiful they were. I remember Christmas presents being a lot more exciting (possibly because I didn't have to tell people what to get me) and stockings being at once mysterious and satisfyingly predictable.

But then the order started getting mixed up, and I went off to college and got married, and I had to get in on the Christmas rush myself, being possessed of my own househod, and things just got screwy. Like my mother-in-law told me once, Christmas isn't as magical once you're responsible for making the magic. It's better when it seems to come out of nowhere, like Santa Claus or the angels. It used to just develop around me and then sink slowly back into the tide of the new year. Now, I'm behind the scenes, and even in my simple home, it's quite the production. This year, like several years past, we didn't get a tree because Seth wasn't going to be home. I didn't get Christmas cards out again (my apologies), and we had no family picture to send either.

Still, I think I liked this year. It was nice to cut back on the shopping and focus on three people instead of eight. Comforting economically too. It was nice to spend time with my folks and watch eagerly for snow that never came (as per usual). With less time an attention spent on presents, Boogaloo got to play more with her aunts and uncles, and she didn't get bored with anything, like she did last year. I got to spend a little bit more time reflecting on the enormity of God's love and the promise of peace on earth and a lot less energy worrying about making an unforgettable experience. (Of course, it helped that the celebration was at my parents' house, and they had the majority of the responsibility, but I like to think that I lightened that responsibility somewhat.) Maybe Christmas should always be this simple. Then we would like it more.

Meanderings of the mind.

2011-12-14T19:37:00.000-08:00

It's Wednesday, and I have nothing to write about. I have to write today because I didn't write on Saturday, and if I let myself slack until next Saturday, well, I know it just won't happen at all. But while I've been musing on any number of things lately, none of them seem worthy of a whole blog post. I wish the sports commentators would just let Tim Tebow play football, and Kardashian headlines are beginning to disgust me. I have promised myself that I'm not going to look at anything regarding the presidential election before January 2nd, and life is just life as usual.

Isn't it funny how life as usual can seem like a bad thing? Somewhere in one of my notebooks I have a collection of lines that I'd like to build a novel around, and one of them is, "Everyone wants to live on the edge of the epic. No one realizes that epics only happen when the world has been turned upside down." I meant it as a corollary to Gandalf's "So do all who live to see such times." People living in peaceable places want excitement and heroism. We want to be part of something exciting and gripping. People who are heroes, if they have any sympathy with their fellow man, wish that their actions hadn't been necessary. After all, in order to save someone from a burning building, the building has to be on fire.

I don't go around looking for burning buildings, and I pray fervently that I will never have to make the decisions that characterize the epic or tragic hero. But I, and I think a great many Americans and probably Europeans too, feel separated from the great struggle that we know is part of life. The popularity of RPG video games and fantasy novels. We want a struggle. We want a challenge, and we don't want it to involve paying bills or being nice to that person in the next cubicle or making sure the toddler brushes her teeth. I think we want to feel that we're having an impact in a style of life that seems casual or even isolated, and the daily routine of keeping our heads above water doesn't satisfy that feeling.

It's silly really. We only need to look at our current economic state to see that when one man can't meet his daily obligations anymore, it pulls the guy who's next to him and who depends on him down too. One man can't pay his rent. Without the rent money, the landlord can no longer pay his mortgage and send his son to college at the same time. Etc, etc, etc. If my house isn't clean, I'll get ants, and the landlord will have to spray. If the laundry isn't done, then the Boo has to wear pullups. Trees get cut down to make the paper. My carbon footprint increases. Our little decisions to be responsible do make a difference.

And even we, in middle class suburban America, are in the heart of epic conflicts that are hard to see but are no less real. The battle against death and his cohorts disdain and despair is multi-faceted and never ceasing. It engulfs the poor and the homeless, the unborn, the lonely, the elderly, the environment, and the ill. Just because we aren't facing dragons or invading hordes doesn't mean that we can't shape the world. We just have to be willing to invest persistently and keep our hobbit sense handy. After all, the struggle is a lot more epic when we remember how small we are and that we have to be faithful with a little before we can be trusted with a lot.

Hearing, asking, doing

2011-12-07T18:35:00.001-08:00

Oh, what a day. It seemed like one continuous litany of "no." "Boogaloo, come upstairs and go potty." "No." "Boogaloo, let's get dressed and take Max outside for his walk." "No." "Boogaloo, stay out of the fridge." "Boogaloo, let's clean you up." "Boogaloo, stay in the cart." No, no, no, no, no.

Does it not occur to kids that parents have reasons for decreeing what they decree. I'm trying to remember back to my early childhood, but my brain is just too foggy. I'm pretty sure I was a lot like my daughter (though Mom says she resembles my little sister more in attitude. Go figure!), but that's not really the point. When do they begin to see reason? Or when do they begin to accept the pattern because I know that I'm being consistent, at least in all the important things.

Case in point, this morning after breakfast, I was on the computer, and I hear the familiar 'pop' of the fridge opening. Now she knows that she is not allowed to get stuff out of the fridge. If she gets something out on her own (juice is the usual culprit), she loses that privilege for the rest of the day. So I say, "Boogaloo, close the fridge."

She gets an impish grin on her face. "No." Then she runs for it, leaving the fridge open, of course.

"Oh, that's cute," the observer says, and some small, treacherous part of me is inclined to agree, hindering my attempts at discipline. Boo wants to play with Mommy. Oh boy! However, when the entire day from morning hair brushing to evening tooth brushing is made up of these antics, I begin to wonder what I'm doing wrong. I am so tired, so tired, of being thwarted by a three-year-old in all of the simplest necessary matters of daily life. She's not being mean or rebellions, just mischevous, stubborn, self-willed, and difficult.

As always, reflecting on my relationship with a child leads me to reflect on my relationship with my Father in Heaven. You know, there are passages in the Bible when he calls Israel (and by extension all of humanity) stiff-necked and harded headed. How many things out of the things I do all day are the rough equivalent of getting into the fridge without permission or soiling myself on the playground and refusing to admit it (she got a spanking for that one. Yuck.)? How maby times a day do I do something without thinking or just because I want to do it even though I know that it doesn't square with the guidelines that God has laid out in plain view? And how does he feel about that? There are times in the Old Testament when God seems torn between hugging Israel close to his breast and throttling them within an inch of their lives.

But love always wins out. God's love won out with Moses. It did under the prophets. It does with us, little though we deserve it. (Sometimes I think the little, persistent sins should do more to frustrate God than the big, once-in-a-lifetime sins. Such sins are like saying, "Lord, I know you're great, all-knowing, and have my best interests in mind, but I'd really rather have this than you." Sheesh. Very Romans 7). I suppose it helps being omnipotent and omniscient. He knows that it will all work out in the end.

My love for Boogaloo wins out. She's still in one piece, happily fed, cleaned, and snuggled up in bed. I hope she has no idea how frustrated I got today. For one thing, she seems to think it's funny when I pull out my hair, and for another, it's not about me anyway. It's about getting the job done.
Sufficient unto the day is the trouble thereof, and today is done.

And then Calvin gets into it.

2011-12-03T18:23:00.001-08:00

Remember Calvin and Hobbes, the comic strip from about ten years ago (or maybe fifteen. I lose track of these things) -- the bratty little kid with his maybe-imaginary-maybe-not pet tiger? He's been making a reappearance at my house lately. Boogaloo discovered him on the bottom shelf of the bookcase in Mommy and Daddy's bedroom and has been dragging him all over the house. Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat is downstairs by the printer while The Essential Calvin and Hobbes is peeking out from under our dresser. Revenge of the Babysat occupies a permanent place in the diaper bag. There are enough pictures in it to get a cranky Boogaloo halfway through the grocery store.

So I've been refamiliarizing myself with the antics of this spiky-haired six-year-old. He's such a devilish little manipulator with such a huge imagination. I was a little like that as a child. The real world wasn't half as exciting to me as my imaginary worlds, and I would gladly have kept a pet tiger if my stuffed animal collection had afforded it (I did have a baby seal and a stuffed unicorn. They were exciting). The scary thing is that I can really see bits of him in Boogaloo. Not that I'm worried about Boogaloo picking up on any of his behaviors, but some of them might be there already.

It's such a treat to see my daughter picking up something I love and enjoying it on her level. Granted, she's three. She doesn't even read yet. She has to rely on the pictures and the facial expressions for her entertainment, but that's more than enough. Bill Watterson is such a talented illustrator that even a three-year-old can get something out of his pictures. She reads the books so studiously too. She doesn't laugh or comment. She just raptly turns the pages. I hope she isn't mistaking Calvin's world for reality. In a couple of years, she might be asking us for a tiger.

But the reason I'm thinking about Calvin tonight is that when I'm not picking up Calvin and Hobbes, I've been glancing through Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion ( the former is named after the latter, you know). The Institutes makes a good break from Augustine and The City of God, and sometimes they even play off each other. I was just reflecting on Augustine's studied abhorrence of the pagan gods that were set up as rivals to Christ. Then I turned to Calvin and pick up his analysis of the Ten Commandments. It was a completely random justaposition. That's just where I happened to be. Calvin goes the same way. Anything is to be done rather than to set up a rival to God. As Calvin points out, everything we do is done in front of God's face, so setting something up in God's stead is like a wife cheating on her husband with him in the room.

Instead, Calvin encourages us to simply give God the credit for everything. His is a simple formula:
1. Adoration -- Recognize everything that God is, does, and had done. This includes obedience and submission of conscience because obviously, God being God, he's right.
2. Trust -- I like the way he phrased this one. "Trust, is secure resting in him under a recognition of his perfections, when, ascribing to him all power, wisdom, justice, goodness, and truth, we consider ourselves happy in having been brought into intercourse with him."
3. Invocation -- "the retaking of ourselves to his promised aid as the only resource in every case of need."
4. Thanksgiving -- because everything comes from Him, all of our gratitute goes to Him.

Calvin presents this formula with a "duh" sort of attitude that would have done his namesake credit. You can tell that the majesty of God and the following submission, trust, invocation, and thanksgiving, are all very obvious to Him. He understands that some people don't accept what he's saying, but that doesn't stop him relying on it. And yet his world was no less complicated than mine. Gosh, it was a good deal moreso. He had the reformation of a whole city, a whole continent, and the analysis and expression of the whole truth of the Word to worry about. I'm just trying to be a wife and mother. The winds of thought and whisper don't shake him; why do they wobble me?

Reading Augustine.

2011-11-30T18:16:00.001-08:00

I've started reading Augustine's City of God. Two things have struck me. One, what he says is pertinent for our attitudes even today. In his day, the pagan citizens of Rome were blaming Christianity for the fall of Roman prosperity and security. Today, "sophisticated" society blames religion for the world's ills. Augustine's reply was, in sum, "What have your gods ever given you but a bad example and the demand that you follow it?" Perhaps our reply should be, "What would you rather have direct men instead?"

Secondly, Augustine really hated the theatre. Of course, the theatres in Ancient Rome were instruments of adoration and emulation for the pagan gods, but Augustine places them above the games in a list of degradations. He seriously thought that the games (and people died in teh arenas) were less corrupting than the theatre. He spoke disparagingly of tragedies and comedies because they were only human stories, but he abominated the stories of the gods and approved of banishing poets, who took creative liberties with serious matters and perpetuated licentiousness in the population by telling the shameful stories of the gods, as suggested by Plato.

He really takes my breath away sometimes. He's not very reformed, if I may say it, at least not in the modern sense. He doesn't seem to believe in coopting something of this world to use if for Christ. Of course, he might have felt differently about mystery and morality plays if they had existed at that point.

Boogaloo at the Beach.

2011-11-27T17:12:00.001-08:00

We decided to take advantage of the long weekend and the decent weather to take Boogaloo to Seaside, OR and let her get a taste of the beach. After a month of work and housework, we were pretty keen to get out of Hillsboro and do some exploring.

The first thing that we discovered is that Seaside is a little farther away than we expected. This charming picture was taken on the way there, not the way back as might be imagined.

Once we got there, we had a late lunch on the boardwalk. Boogaloo was more interested in the sights("Seagull, Mommy. Seagull, Daddy."), but she did actually look at the camera.

This is Boogaloo before Mommy foolishly coaxed her out into the tidal area.

This is Boogaloo after a roller surprised us both and took her off her feet. The terrified look on her face as she lay on her back in the surf was funnier, but really, if I had taken that picture, what kind of a mommy would I be? She was seriously scared that she would be swept away, and not even mommy's death grip on the front of her jacket reassured her. As soon as we got her on dry land, she looked at me with a pout and said, "Wet." Yep, that pretty much sums it up.

Daddy shows Boogaloo the seals at the Seaside Aquarium, one of the oldest aquariums on the West Coast. Unlike other aquariums, Seaside actually encourages you to buy fish and feed the seals.

Their seals are all bred in captivity, and they sit up and beg for treats. They can be quite insistent.

On the way back, we stopped at a roadside shop that boasted 18 types of jerky, including alligator and yak. We didn't buy alligator or yak, but we did get some wild boar ("made from the meat of a feral pig." appetizing!) and buffalo. Expensive, but good.

Confuscation

2011-11-27T15:20:00.001-08:00

Have you ever watched something and watched it and watched it and thought, "Something's just not right"? That's how I've been feeling for the past week whenever I think about the latest Muppet movie. We've been looking forward to it for quite a while. We all love the Muppets, Boogaloo especially. She's been running around the house yelling "Frog on d'pay" from their football ad all week. But when we went to see the movie on Wednesday, something just wasn't right. Boogaloo enjoyed herself. She watched the whole movie raptly. She sang along with the theme song and ran down the aisle shouting "Muppet show, muppet show." (The theatre was pretty empty, and most of the chuckles were appreciative, so I didn't worry about it.). Seth and I weren't as satisfied. Seth looked at me over dinner and asked, "Is it bad that I thought the previews were funnier than the movie?"

I felt the same way, and it bugged me, bugged me to the point of keeping me up at night. Well, actually, I've been sleeping poorly lately, but while I was lying awake, I was analyzing The Muppets, and I think I've figured it out. It sends a conflicting message. The main idea is that the Muppets represent a return to innocence no longer represented by American entertainment or corporate interests. They need each other, and we need and want them.  It says, "We want you to like us, but you're really a dork for doing so." Why else would they have their main proponents be such losers?

"Hey, wait a second," you say. "I've seen the movie, and I thought Gary and Walter were good guys." Yeah, sure, they're good guys, and their devotion to each other is touching, but it's the only outstanding or redeeming character about them. By the time they're adults, waking up in matching pajamas in the same bedroom, presumably in their parents' house, and marching down the street in matching pale blue leisure suits (not practical for the bus, I can tell you that!), I started to feel that something was amiss. Gary has to be at least twenty-eight, with Walter not far behind, and yet neither of them appear to have a job, a degree, or even a commercially useful skill. Gary has been dating his lovely, intelligent, employed (and unsatisfied) girlfriend for 10 years, and he doesn't even have a desire to separate that relationship from his relationship with his brother. I mean really, talk about failure to launch.   It kind of proves the cynics right.
So I guess I never really bonded with the main characters. Kermit was the first person that made my heart leap, and by that point, I was already off.  They had set up the wrong atmosphere: a pathetic atmosphere that begs us to like them out of pity, not on their obvious merits. They had apologized for something that wasn't readily evident, and that never helps solidify your case. It only makes people wonder what's wrong with you and doubt you more.  By the time the wheels really started rolling, and the Muppets were doing their inimitable thing,they had already implied that you couldn't be a fully realized person and like what they do, and that was kind of insulting.

After all, I like the Muppets, and I like to think of myself as mature and responsible. I like to think I would have tried to save their theatre too. Furthermore, they've never fallen out of the spotlight. Are we really supposed to believe that the frog who taught us that "It's not easy being green," can't get an audience with any network executive he wants. And the Muppets may seem like good clean fun compared to some of our reality tv, but they're really not all that innocent. "The Muppet Show" was not a kids' show.  They blew up cute little birdies and ballerinas. They had their go at great art. They had their go for women's lib and animal rights. The antics of Miss Piggy backstage (and Gonzo occasionally) were PG-rated at least. The Muppets were snide in all their silliness with a dose of hippie idealism and skepticism to mellow it out. They delighted to give you what you didn't expect, and there is a little bit of that in the movie, but by the time we see it, we've been set up to believe that it's not entertaining. So the whole time, we watch with conflicted feelings, half ashamed of liking the antics on the screen.

My husband should be a professional football analyst.

2011-11-19T16:22:00.001-08:00

Turning from the Kardashians to a more wholesome controversy, my husband and I are Denver Broncos fans (he by choice and I by osmosis), and we have been eagerly following the development of Tim Tebow into an NFL quarterback. Following this "discussion" that's happening among sports commentators, I find it hard not to be in awe of my husband.

From the beginning, the commentators have all been split on the matter of Tim Tebow. He was a college phenomenon, a national championship winner, a Heisman trophy winner, and a celebrity before he hit the NFL. But he doesn't play typical football, and he's a hard match for professional offenses to work with. The Broncos have been faced with the challenge of changing their offense to match their quarterback instead of having a quarterback who steps into their offense. But he's winning.

I am a confessed Tebowist. (See Tebowist defined: http://espn.go.com/espn/page2/story/_/id/7250435/tim-tebow-inspires-dj-gallo-proclaim-tebowist) He's a Christian and he's outspokenly pro-life. I would cheer for him even if he didn't play for my husband's favorite team. If I didn't have a more objective football fan in the house, I would totally become one of those Tebow jersey buying, coach squabbling, "every knock against Tebow is a knock against evangelical Christians"-griping type of people. Of course, if I didn't have a more objective football fan in the house, I might not even know who Tim Tebow is, so take that for what it's worth.

So I asked my objective football fan what he thought of Tim Tebow when Tebow became the Broncos's starting QB, and he told me this:

"Love, a lot of people think football is just about the numbers. Tebow has something different. He's not an NFL level quarterback, but he has these intangibles that make him a winner. Now, you look at Kyle Orton. He is a good quarterback. He completes more passes in a game than Tebow does in three. But the Broncos weren't winning under Orton. They wouldn't get fired up under Orton. They get fired up under Tebow. That is an intangible, and it gets them victories. Is he a great player? No, but he inspires other players to greatness."

"Oh," I said, "kind of like George Washington." It's a recognised historical opinion that Washington was the charasmatic glue that held greater geniuses like Nathanael Green and Henry Knox together in a team. Seth holds to the opinion that Washington was brilliant in his own right, so he ignored this. Maybe he didn't hear me.

This past week, after a stunning victory over the Jets (you should listen to the commentators. They really are stunned.), Seth called me over to the computer and showed me a clip of the second-to-last play of the game. D. Thomas catches a long pass and delivers a tremendous stiff arm to his would-be-tackler. "That's the Tebow effect. The offense is rising to his enthusiasm.

"And the defense too. You know, the Broncos haven't really had a defense for the past few years, not since the Orange Crush, actually. It's just not something the Broncos are known for. But tonight, the defense totally rose to the challenge. They held Mark Sanchez, who is recognised as a good quarterback, to 13 points. That is Tebow's influence."

So I read a few articles and listen to the commentators after Thursday's game (Seth was playing them pretty non-stop Friday night.), and guess what they're saying. "You know, I'm starting to believe that Tebow can lead this team." "His intangibles really make the difference." "The defense knows that if they can hold the other team to a low score, somehow Tebow can do something special in the fourth quarter to win." "His team believes in him, and they go out there and make things happen."

And I thought, "These guys sound like my husband. Wow. I married a really smart guy. He ought to analyze football for a living."

The downside to independence.

2011-11-17T18:58:00.001-08:00

G.K. Chesterton wrote "The principle that all creation and procreation is a breaking off is at least as consistent through the cosmos as the evoluationary principle that all growth is a branching out. A woman loses a child even in having a child. All creation is separation. Birth is as solemn a parting as death."

I've been reflecting on this passage from Orthodoxy for the strangest reason. Boogaloo no longers needs me to wash her sheets every morning. She has now slept drily through the night twice. I no longer need to get up in the middle of the night, pull her out of her puddle, pat her down, dry her off, strip her bed, and settle her back on clean sheets. From here on out (with a few exceptions, I'm sure), my baby will only need me for nightmares and vomit episodes, at least between bedtime and breakfast.

For most people this would be a point of celebration. Hooray! She's dry through the night. Maybe poop in the potty come next. I actually felt kind of displaced. At first, I really didn't like it. Ditto for her growing potty independence during the day. She doesn't need me anymore. I feel as if I've been sloughed off. My maternal programming dictates that I do something that isn't necessary any more. I have this urge to go where there's nothing to do.

I guess that's the process of raising a child. I wasn't bothered by her attitude of independence (she is, after all, three) because it was so obviously undeserved. Now she's starting to deserve it. She can button her own buttons and zip her own zippers. She hangs up her own coat and chooses her own shoes. She thinks she can get her own snacks, but I still intervene there. Most of the time I appreciate that when she does what she can do, I am freed to do the other things I need to do, but sometimes, it just goes against the grain.

Chesterton continues his profound thought thus: "It was the prime philosophic principle of Christianity that this divorce in the divine act of making (such as severs the poet from the poem or the mother from the newborn child) was the true description of the act whereby the absolute energy made the world.
"According to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it. According to Christianity, in making it, he set it free."

I wonder if God feels this kind of pain when he watches us grow up. But then God doesn't have to be worried about being needed. He's the upholder of the universe. And he wants to see us grow up. He can go with us through everything we grow into. I'm just starting to realize that my little girl is going to have separate activities, separate pursuits, a separate life. Sakes alive. What am I going to do when school starts?

There and back again . . . in time for supper on Saturday.

2011-11-12T20:06:00.001-08:00

It's official. We are now fully residents of Hillboro, Oregon. What makes it official, you ask? We finally moved my car down from Bremerton. Due to lack of drivers under various circumstances, we have had to leave my poor car sitting neglected in the driveway of our little house until now. We couldn't drive it down the first time because Seth had to drive the moving van. And then we couldn't bring it down when I went up to clean the house because Seth was in Taiwan. So finally, after a month, I am reunited with my battered Buick, and we are once again a two car family. The only thing we have left in Bremerton (besides friends and memories, of course) is a house.

It was interesting being a one-car family for a month. I was used to running the house independent of Seth's schedule. Independence is kind of necessary when your husband may or may not be on the other side of the world. (Of course, if he was on the other side of the world, I had sole use of the car, so it balances out.) If something had to happen, I just needed to go make it happen -- groceries, doctors appointments, church functions, brief trips to friends houses. They were all just a matter of course. But over the last month, I've actually had to plan these things around my husband's schedule, and the funny thing is, it didn't really interfere with our lives. Having a car only twice a week was enough. In fact, it was kind of nice. It made me focus on my home and my kid. Fancy that.

But we couldn't just leave Billie the Buick sitting in Bremerton. People want to move into our little house, and they can't do that if we're still occupying the driveway. We left for Bremerton after work on Friday. Seth got us a room at the Bremerton Hampton ($89 with AAA discount), I packed the duffle and deflated the dogcrate, we tossed it all in the Jeep, and we made it to Bremerton about nine o'clock at night. We even got a bottle of wine and watched the lights on the bay, in between telling Boogaloo to get back in bed. Then we turned around and came back this morning. Now I don't have any more excuses to keep me from getting out and getting things done.

An unexpected milestone

2011-11-10T19:27:00.001-08:00

Well, it's been a rough week in the world of headlines. Kim Kardashian's divorce is turning ugly. Joe Paterno has gone from potentially resigning to fired, and Ashton Kutcher is no longer allowed to tweet his own tweets as a result.  Herman Cain maintains that he doesn't know the women accusing him of sexual harrassment, and Rick Perry stuck his foot in his mouth, but he'll survive to joke about it.

In the Atsma household, however, things have been looking up. After two weeks of training in Taiwan, my husband is home again. The irony there is that we got out of the Navy to find a job that would allow him to spend more time with the family, and now we find that his new job is going to send him away for the whole month of December. That means that once again we most likely won't put up a Christmas tree this year, but that doesn't disappoint me as much as I thought it would. I guess I'm getting used to it. I got a half an hour with my best friend and cleared up a few matters that needed clearing. I found curtain rods for the livingroom and got half of our kitchen table stripped. Boogaloo made overtures toward going #2 in the potty after a disastrous accident at the park Tuesday morning (oh ick). I found a good chiropractor, and I made the acquaintance of the dog-walking lady. Oh, and the Broncos won last Sunday. Overall, this week has been a week on the heartening side.

But I had a growing moment today that gave me pause, and after reflecting on it for a while, I just have to share it.

Boogaloo and I were at the park walking Max and playing on the climbing structure, and there was another mom there with a little boy about two years old. She had overheard my conversation with the aforementioned dog-walking lady, so we just pretended that we'd been introduced and started making conversation. Her little guy was named Merrit (which I think is a brilliant name for a boy), and he was living up to his name by trying to do everything on a playset designed for five- to ten-year-olds. We as moms deplored the lack of toddler friendly equipment and the presence of a slippery dew. Then as conversation lagged, I noticed that her sweats said Air Force down one leg, so I said, "I see you have Air Force connections."

"Yeah," she said. "My father was in the Air Force, and my wife's father was too, so it's something we like to commemorate. Do you know someone in the Air Force?"

My mouth made reply. "Yeah, my dad was in the Air National Guard, but my husband just got out of the Navy."  My smile did not falter, and my tone of voice did not change. However, my brain and gut both screeched to a halt as I tried to process, "Did she just say wife?"

Yes, she did. I'm embarrassed to say that I ran an internal diagnostic to make sure that I wasn't mistaken in what I was seeing or hearing. I mean sooner or later I should have expected to meet someone of the homosexual persuasion, but I guess I didn't expect to meet one at the playground. I was thinking in a group of theatre people or maybe among Seth's coworkers. I think my basic mental picture was yuppie intellectual male, not mom in sweatpants who refers to her partner as "mommy" in the hearing of her little boy. I guess I didn't expect something so foreign to my psyche to be so close to my world.

I related my little adventure to Seth over lunch. He laughed at me. He even grinned a little when I admitted that until she said wife, I had been thinking about proposing future playdates, and after she said it, the desire just died away completely.

"Love," he said. "You let her play with Wiccans."

He's right, as usual. One of my best friends in Bremerton was a Wiccan, and Boogaloo played with her kids all the time. People thought Boo and T's youngest were twins because they were so close to the same size. I was similarly startled when I found out that S. and T. had kids, but then I had the excuse of processing the appearance of two totally pierced-up, gothed-out, black bedecked people at night. Somehow, that image just didn't fit with my concept of "parent." There was nothing strange about this woman that I'll call M. (for mommy). I wouldn't have been surprised to see someone like her at my Bible study. Someone like her just doesn't fit my concept of "lesbian."

So what does it say about my mindframe that I get a gut-check at the idea of letting my kid play with the child of a lesbian but not at the idea of playing at the house of a witch? Wicca is a religion, a spiritual state, and it's contrary to Christianity. They don't acknowledge the rights of God, and they're inclined to defend the claims of the devil, literally. They open spiritual doors and converse with spirits that are by Christian definition hostile to humanity. I don't regret my friendship with T. It helped me grow a lot, and I hope it leads to her to Jesus eventually, but the fact remains: you can't be a witch and be a Christian.

You can be a lesbian and be a Christian. There's considerable controversy over whether or not you can indulge your feelings, but the two are not mutually exclusive. Homosexuality is not, in itself, a spiritual activity. So why did it cause such an instant change of emotion in me? Why did the urge to get to know her better just die?

I don't know. Part of my response probably comes from hanging out on the pro-family scene. Most pro-life organizations are also against homosexual normalization.  I've been telling myself that I'm not going to form any opinions about LGBTQs until I know one well enough to ask awkward questions, but I don't think I ever expected to meet someone of the persuasion. Maybe, and most likely, I just need time to process this. A part of me ponders the boundaries and requirements imposed by my faith. If we become friends (and we don't even know each other's names, so really, I'm fussing about nothing at this point), how far can I reciprocate friendship?  Can I invite them into my home if I decide that I can't validate their lifestyle? How do I explain to my daughter that good, friendly, responsible people that we like a lot can be live contrary to what we know is true? I needed 30 years to come to that conclusion. How do I teach her to stick to the Word without sticking it to her neighbor, a fence the Christian community walks all too often?

How do we do this to ourselves?

2011-11-05T21:18:00.000-07:00

I've been watching this whole Kim Kardashian/ Kris Humphries thing blow up. I know I shouldn't. I wish I knew what it was about these people that makes the rest of us people sit up and watch them make ruins out of their lives. I've never seen one of her shows. I just feel compelled to click on her headlines. Boy is she sure getting the headlines now. Magazines alleging that the whole marriage was a scam for headlines. Entertainment websites analyzing every mistake and facial expression. How does he feel? How does she feel? How did she tell her mother? Does she keep the ring?

The thing is, I really don't think this marriage was a ploy for media attention. She says she was looking for a fairy tale ending. I can see how someone who makes a career out of being the center of attention, being pretty, and telling other people how to be pretty would expect to marry and live happily ever after. Her life is something of a fairytale to the rest of us. I think a lot of people expect a fairy tale ending at the point of "I do," as if some serene happily-ever-after will coat our feelings, habits, and expectations with a glowing light of affability, and we'll never hurt or be hurt again. And when it doesn't happen, well, that's probably where a lot of divorces come from. I feel like I'm watching a little sister make a mess out of her life, which is funny because I'm 30 to her 31.

The simple fact of the matter is that we're none of us at the ending yet. Happily ever after in the fairytales means that the wicked witches aren't chasing you anymore, and you're free to get on with your life. But the heroes of fairytales earned that ending. They slew dragons and cut off giants' heads. They wandered through wildernesses for years and lovingly served wicked stepmothers who would keep them down at all costs. Their love was already tested and their virtue proved. That's why the marriage is the end of the fairytale. They achieved something in order to get there.

But for the rest of us, marriage is the beginning of the love story, and sweetheart, you didn't even get past the "And in that village lived a shoemaker" stage. Any decent love requires more than seventy-two days to put it to the test. You didn't give yourselves any chance to sacrifice, persevere, and overcome. The modern American fairytale should begin "There once was a lovely young woman who married a handsome young man, and they promised to stay together forever. However, the spirits of self, stress, and fear conspired together to take away their happiness and drive them apart forever." This is only the start of your story. This is where the witch catches the prince with Rapunzel and casts him out to wander blindly through the wilderness. This is where the trolls snatch Puss Cat Mew from her fireside and lock her in a hidden dungeon. You've got whole chapters of ups and downs to go before you get to the fairytale ending.

I know you said you have to follow your heart, but the heart isn't any more reliable than the rest of a person. It feels unreasonable passions. It responds to fears that are real and imaginary. It holds the hidden motives that we aren't fully aware of, and more often than not it responds to those instead of taking in the truth of the matter. If you want a husband, a marriage, and a family, then you have to learn to evaluate your heart in terms of your goals. You have to learn stick-to-itiveness, and you have to learn to weather doubts, frustrations, and seemingly "irreconcilable differences." Your marriage has to be a higher priority than your reputation and your career because your marriage is a committment to more than a dream. It's a committment to a real, living person.

Once, when I had been married for about a year, I had a moment when I thought I could have pitched everything. The year hadn't been unhappy, but it had been lonely. My husband and I had weathered the basic adjustments of marriage pretty well, but we had moved across the country twice, he had worked twelve hour days on rotating, seven day shifts, and for me there had been a lot of sitting at empty tables, sleeping in empty beds, and walking alone through empty housing developments at twilight, waiting for him to come home. I felt like all the loneliness had left a hole in my heart.

I had gone to spend a week with my parents and attend a friend's wedding, and to go from home and company back to an empty apartment was more than I could handle. As I crested the hill above the Tacoma Narrows Bridge (which is a beautiful sight in early August, by the way), I literally thought, "I have to turn around. I want to go home. I can't do this anymore. I want a divorce." My heart was ready to turn the car around, but my hands and feet knew better.

I got home, and Seth opened the door for me. He saw the look on my face and said, "What's wrong?" I said, "Don't ask me. Just hold me." And we sat on the floor in our narrow little entryway while I cried on his shoulder. I think I told him how miserable I was. It was years before I told him that I'd been on the brink of asking for a divorce. Even as I was driving that day, I knew he didn't deserve the pain that that would cause him, and that knowledge was what kept me going forward. He was and is a good guy who loves me, who has done everything he could under the circumstances (and we have had circumstances) to make me happy, and knowing how I would have hurt him kept me from doing what I felt like doing then.

If I had followed my heart that day, I would not have a husband. I would not have a daughter. I would not be as strong or as independent as I am today. I would not have learned the lessons of intimacy and patience that are making me a better wife. The last seven years of my life would not have happened, and whatever would have happened instead would not have gotten me any closer to my happily ever after. But instead of following my heart, I thought about my husband and what was right and fair to him and I kept going forward. And now, even though necessity takes my prince away on a regular basis, I can say that I have learned to be happy, and I can see my happily ever sitting far off on my horizon.

I'll probably come across as naive if I say go back to him, but I hate to see any marriage break up. You really haven't given yourselves a chance to grow into something good. Go back. Talk to him. Find a counselor (or better yet a pastor. A little post pre-marital counseling will do a world of good.) and together put some effort into this. Making this work will make you happier than leaving this behind.

Settling in.

2011-11-02T19:22:00.000-07:00

There's nothing like looking through the memory card of my camera to remind me how little I've been posting lately. I have homecoming pictures, camping pictures, painting pictures, packing pictures, and a few random Boogaloo pictures all begging to have something done with them. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) I'm a little to full of the present to revisit the past. I'm learning that moving is more than packing and unpacking. It's reestablishing ones' self, and that's just not easy.

The whirlwind is largely over. All of our deadlines have come and gone. Our furniture is all in place, and our garage is largely empty of boxes. Annika's toys are all assembled. We have even hung some pictures on the walls.

Still, there are so many things that are out of place: shelves that aren't up, lamps with no bulbs, lightswitches that pertain to that mystery outlet (you know the kind), boxes of books, and bags of screws and other hardware with no perceivable purpose. We now have more windows, so we need more curtains. We have more sinks, so we need more soap dispensers. We have more space, so we need more livingroom furniture. Now there's a broadening experience. We, who still have our posters from college decorating our walls, are now the proud owners of two recliner rockers and two more bookcases. We are looking for something that might pass as a couch.But the biggest adjustment, I think, is learning to live in an apartment complex again, and a complex with no binding ties. In college, we lived in apartments, but we all went to class together. In the military, we lived in apartments, but we had a common experience to keep us interested in each other. This is just a plain old apartment complex, and now I know the truth. An apartment complex is the only place where you can hear a person through the wall, but you don't talk to them in the street.

Maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration. I've been here two weeks, and I know the names of two people outside of the leasing office staff. These people are my neighbors on each side of me, and I only know the name of my right hand neighbor because I had to ask her permission to block her driveway for an afternoon. She helped me unload my trailer, and we shared lifestories in about five minutes, but I hadn't said ,"Hey, by the way, . . ." as she was leaving, I wouldn't have gotten her name. Seth got the name of the lefthand neighbor for me. He thinks I should pop over and arrange a playdate. They both have kids the same age as mine, but we never seem to run into each other.

That's what I don't get about this place. I know people get to know each other. I've heard them talking outside the window. But it seems like there's no crossdwelling intercourse on a daily basis. There was no welcome wagon, no neighborly curiousity, no "Hey, I see you have a toddler. Would you like to come over and play?" For all this is called a "community," it doesn't feel like one. I have actually introduced myself to people I've met in the park (after the second or third meeting), and they wouldn't tell me their names in return. They looked at me like I was odd for bringing the subject up. It seems to me that when people live this close together, they should know something about each other. Like the old Papiamento saying goes, get to know your neighbors. If you hurt yourself, they're the ones you're going to call first.

I'm back!

2011-10-20T10:08:00.000-07:00

Well, that was a nice little enforced hiatus. Let me catch my breath. Now I know what people mean when they say a whirlwind of activity! Over the last three weeks it feels like I've been picked up, whirled around, and bludgeoned by ceaseless activities, sensations, and emotions.

About four weeks ago, Seth got a job offer from a company that makes the machines that manufacture computer parts. Said company has an office in Hillsboro, Oregon, less than two hours from Seth's folks. Seth immediately accepted and offered to start work three weeks later. As he put it, employment is good. So in three weeks, we set out to pack up our old house, fix it up, list it as a rental, find a new place, take leave of our friends, and move so that Seth could start work this week.

We almost did it. Seth is at work. I am typing in a nice little three bedroom townhouse in Hillsboro, and most of our stuff is here with us, unpacked and in some semblance of put away. The house we left behind is not ready for rental yet, but three out of five ain't bad.

Now that I've had a few days to reflect on it, I think Hillsboro is going to be a pleasant place to live. Each time we move, I get to reflect again that each place is different. Saratoga Springs was older and more refined than Sunnyside. Bremerton was more compact and varied than Sioux Center. And now Hillsboro is going to be something else again. My first impressions is that it is very suburban, clean, and quiet. There are blocks upon blocks of apartment and townhouse complexes with ornamental trees, wrought iron lampposts, and names like Lion's Gate and Palladia. A quarter of a mile in any direction will take me to a shopping center, and fifty feet takes me to a tiny city park that manages to satisfy moms with kids, nature hikers, and evening basketballers all at once. It's a good place to be, but I think it's going to take a while for it to feel like home.

For one thing, I'm not used to quiet, and it's very quiet. There must be at least 500 people in our complex, and yet I have yet to encounter anyone but the dog-walker when I take Max and Boogaloo to the park or the dumpster or the mailbox. I don't even hear voices outside the windows until 5 pm. It's kind of unnerving, especially when I find myself making noise. I find myself imagining some kind of silence compact that I haven't been asked to sign yet. There doesn't seem to be any neighborly curiousity. Sometimes there doesn't seem to be any neighbors. Maybe they're all just used to seeing people come and go. Maybe they're all just thoroughly involved in their own lives, whereas I, in my disrupted state, am trying to reestablish mine.

I have to get used to the notion of being a tenant again too. It's too weird to think that I have to call someone to change my lightbulbs. I don't have to cut my grass or rake my leaves, but I do have to observe quiet hours and prevent mildew at any cost. I have to walk to the central mailbox to send and receive letters, carry my trash to the dumpster every two days, and walk my dog four times a day to keep the carpets clean. And a townhouse is a new experience too. Both bathrooms and the laundryroom are on the top of three floors. I anticipate having very toned legs by this time next year.

It's too early for that smell.

2011-09-17T18:12:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning to the smells of woodsmoke and pregnant rain, two of my favorite smells in the whole world and two of the perks of living in the great Pacific Northwest. Those two smells together are a sure sign that fall is here. Fall is my favorite season bar none, and it is here. The signs of it are everywhere. Leaves are beginning to turn. The clouds have rolled back in. I have my first subbing job next Friday. Halloween candy has been in the stores for a month and a half now. Fall is here with a vengence.

The thing is, this year it really does feel like a vengeance. We had five weeks of summer at most, and that includes the two days in June and two days in July when the temperature maybe almost crested 79 degrees. Our neighbors were burning that woodstove that woke me up this morning well into June this year. That's unusual even for us. We may have long, dreary winters, but we can usually boast about our springs and our summers. They're not hot, but they are beautiful.

Happy as I am to break out the soup pot and the sweaters again, I can't help but feel gypped. The turn of the seasons is supposed to be a relief. There's a certain satisfaction in being so tired of the heat that one relishes the chill, so sick of the rain that one welcomes the snow. We didn't really have that this year. Summer was so late that it really seemed like it was barely here. As far as our vitamin D absorption goes, we're all still in the middle of July. Everyone I talk to would welcome a few more weeks of sunshine. We boosted our spirits during the lagging spring by dreaming of a glorious Indian summer. Not so much.

I don't think I would mind as much if we had gotten to do more. I was pining for a camping trip on the Olympic Peninsula, and since we might be moving when Seth finds a new job, this might have been our last opportunity to go, at least conveniently. Ferry rides are always better in sunshine. Farmers markets are no fun in the rain. Rainy beaches are parr for the course around here, but a mid-September sunny day can make up for a lot gloom.

But the weather isn't something we can sway, and if we accept the fact that this is the second half of September instead of merely the sixth week of summer, then we're right on course. The rain was bad for the cherries, the strawberries, the peaches, and the apricots, but the blackberries were the biggest I've ever seen. That's something.

Postscript: Three days later, I guess that instead of grumbling about the weather, some noble person actually approached the throne of grace and said, "Lord, could we please have another couple weeks of summer?" Asking nicely goes a lot farther than whining, especially with our heavenly Father. Seth is actually grilling tonight. That's how nice our weather is.

Home again.

2011-08-22T19:25:00.000-07:00

The hardest part of having a husband home from a deployment is learning how to share space again. For four and a half months (by far the shortest deployment out there, ask any military family), my tiny little house has been my own. My floors have been clear every night, all the toys picked up, all the clothes in the hamper, and all of my minimal electronics confined to one tiny table in a corner of my room. The only thing I've had to trip over is my daughter's dolly stroller and an occasional block tower. The house felt almost spacious. Now that Seth's home, in the midst of my elation, I find myself tripping over his stuff, bumping into him at unexpected moments (not always unpleasant), and generally being aware that there is another full-sized body in my house. It's like being a newly-wed all over again.

But he's home! Our final foray with the Navy is over, and we are looking forward to new things. No more lonely nights or departure dates. No more pensive waiting for an email that might not come for another week. No more taking stock in the life around me and throwing my hands in the air because it's just more than one person can handle. From now on, I'll throw my hands in the air because I'm trying to handle life in tandem with another person, and I'll always be grateful that that other person is around (You can call me on that if I start complaining ten years from now).

Boogaloo is delighted to have Daddy home, but like me, she's a little jealous of her space. She seems to think it's a crime for Daddy and Mommy to talk to each other. She may talk to us, and we may talk to her, but when we talk to each other, all sorts of attention-getting techniques come out. But she knew her daddy when he got off the plane, and she ran right into his arms and climbed all over him.

Sharing her with him is a little weird too. Suddenly I have another person to keep discipline, wipe bottoms, clean up messes, and get snacks. I don't have to go running to her nearly as often. I'm immensely grateful for the freedom, but for the first few days, I kept twitching in her direction every time he went to her. I felt like he was doing my job, when in reality, I've been doing both of our jobs on the homefront, and he's been doing another job and a half altogether somewhere out in the middle of the Pacific.

In about a month we will be a civilian family. Seth has begun looking for work in earnest. We are fixing up our house in case we have to move and probing every corner of the job market so we can stay. Soon we'll be getting used to a set schedule, two weeks of vacation a year, consistent weekends, and years and years of time with Seth doing the things that brought us together in the first place. Lord willing, he'll be here for the birth of our other children, for birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, and glorious sunsets. We've mastered the art of living apart. Now we get to study living together.

Watching God work behind the scenes in spite of me.

2011-08-09T15:52:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had one of those moments where you've been worrying about something important, something beyond your capacity but very necessary, and then God shows you that he can take care of it as well without you as with you?

I was worrying about a fundraiser that I am helping to put on for our local Pregnancy Resource Center. I am the head of the underwriting committee, so it's my job to round up the funding for the fundraiser. I had put about two weeks into it -- making lists of churches to call, recruiting callers, writing scripts -- at the expense of some household things. I hadn't even talked to my church yet because I was focusing on the big picture, and quite frankly I didn't want to give the council anymore money woes.

Then I realized that my husband's homecoming date was closer than I had realized, and I had to switch focuses and take care of those household things. And I worried. I positively fretted. I had set deadlines, and I knew I wasn't going to meet them. I couldn't possibly fit anything more into my schedule. It was one thing or the other.

Then sitting at Bible study this morning, one of our deaconesses turns to me and says, "Oh, by the way, we're going to make your fundraiser the subject of our next special offering. I thought I'd do it even though you didn't ask (because I should have asked right away), and I'm going to need some information to make a powerpoint slide so people know what we're giving to."

So God is good. And I'm a goof.

Letter to my daughter, seven years in the future

2011-08-06T13:38:00.001-07:00

The Internet is abuzz over the 10-year-old model who is posing for French Vogue in very adult interpretations of beauty. I wonder what that line of work must be doing to her sense of self. If she's the epitome of beauty at age ten, how will she live with herself at age 20? She won't have this complexion, muscle tone, and figure once puberty comes. She might be equally beautiful, but she'll never be that again.

I suppose a wise mother would know how to keep it from going to her little one's head (though I question about the wisdom of putting a child in that situation at all) and so I started thinking: someday, my little one is going to be 10, and the world isn't going to spare her these pictures of beauty and sexuality. The influences point at a younger audience every day. She's going to want to dress like the girls in the magazines. However much I try to keep things around her age appropriate, the time is going to come when she wants something she shouldn't have in the name of being sexy or beautiful.

Dear Sweatpea,

You know that I love you and want what's best for you. You know I think a lot about things, and I've learned a lot of things. So it is with every ounce of motherly feeling, experience, and intuition that I say, I don't care what's on that magazine cover. You don't need to dress that way, and you may not.

I know that the picture on that cover is pretty, and that girl looks really sophisticated and grown-up. I know that some of the kids in your class are wearing make-up and trying to attract boys. They all want to be pretty and sexy and grown-up. A lot of people around you are talking about sexy, but that's not who you should be right now. You are ten years old. You may feel very grown up, but you are still a child, and your father and I have worked hard to maintain this wonderful innocence that you have.

Sexy is something that comes with time. As you get bigger, parts of you are going to change. You'll begin to feel like a different person in some ways. You'll feel powerful new feelings and have big new questions. You'll worry about them. I will help you understand them. You will even get excited about them and enjoy them, and that's good, but only in their proper time and place.

At your age, you should be thinking about friends and school and books and slumber parties. You should be begging me for riding lessons or drama classes or permission to go to the pool with your friends. There is a whole wide world to learn about. There are penpals and science camps and unicorn backpacks. You should not be thinking about sexy right now.

You don't have to think about sexy because you're beautiful. You've always been beautiful. Ever since you were born, people have been saying how beautiful you are. And you have a kind, friendly, helpful, curious, contented spirit that makes you a wonderful person to know. These are the gifts you should focus on. The others will come on their own.

And once you start thinking about sexuality, you can never really get it out of your mind. I know this from experience. Sex is a powerful idea, and you have to have other big ideas and hopes and dreams to make sure it doesn't take up more room than it should. You have to know who you are and who God is and what sort of life you want so you can channel all those feelings and questions in the directions that they should go. And those concepts take time to develop and understand.

I know you want to be pretty like the girl on the magazine. I know you want to fit in, and we'll do our best to make sure that you can dress like your friends. But there is a very special part of you that it's my job to protect, so sometimes I am going to say no. No, you may not go that party or that movie. No, you may not buy that shirt or listen to that song, and yes, I am going to read that book before I decide if you may read it. That's my job. I'm your mom, and I want to see you grow up as happy and as healthy as possible. I do what I do because I love you.

Mom

Reflections of the way my mind works in the little person sitting next to me.

2011-08-03T07:22:00.000-07:00

Conversation with my daughter at the dinner table:

Boogaloo: "Mommy, pease."

Mommy: "Please, what, sweetpea?"

Boogaloo: (holds out her slice of bread) "Honey." (thoughtful pause, face lights up) "Honeeeyy. Where's my supersuit?" (different voice) "What?" (original voice) "Where's my supersuit?" (second voice) "Why do you need to know?" etc.

Mommy: (in her head) You should not have made that jump so quickly, kiddo. That is way too much like mommy thinks. This does not bode well.

A thought-provoking quotation from a great man.

2011-07-22T14:14:00.000-07:00

I was reading before bed last night, and this passage jolted me back awake.

"It is not in our life that God's help and presence must still
be proved, but rather God's presence and help have been demonstrated for us in the life of Jesus Christ. It is in fact more important for us to know what God did to Israel, to His Son Jesus Christ, than to seek what God intends for us today. The fact that Jesus Christ died is more important than the fact that I shall die, and the fact that Jesus Christ rose from the dead is the sole ground of my hope that I, too, shall be raised on the Last Day. Our salvation is "external to ourselves." I find no salvation in my life history, but only in the history of Jesus Christ. Only he who allows himself to be found in Jesus Christ, in his incarnation, his Cross, and his resurrection, is with God and God with him." *

Thus wrote Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book Life Together. His purpose was to encourage Christians to read as much of the Word of God and be as familiar with it as possible. Bonhoeffer advocated that Christians in community, ie families, seminaries, schools, should read a full chapter of the Old Testament and half a chapter of the New Testament in the morning and at night, as well as praying the psalms. He complained that the modern Christian is too ignorant of the Word of God to appreciate its interwoven context and his own place in the context of salvation.

What we call our life, our troubles, our guilt, is by no means all of reality; there in the Scriptures is our life, our need, our guilt, and our salvation. . . . We must learn to know the Scriptures again, as the Reformers knew them. We must not grudge the time and work that it takes.

Bonhoeffer asserts that only people who are well-versed in the Scriptures, their context and their continuity and above all their relationship to the person of Jesus Christ, can correctly guide a church, effectively rebuke a sinner, or even be certain of his or her own salvation.

"It is not surprising that the person who attempts to cast discredit upon their wisdom whould be the one who does not seriously read, know, and study the Scriptures. But one who will not learn to handle the Bible for himself is not an evangelical Christian."*

It seemed pretty harsh to me last night, but I even then I could see his point. We can only know God as God reveals himself, and the only place that God has revealed himself directly is in Scripture. Yes, he also works in our lives, but as valuable as testimonies are, if they are not understood in the light of what God has already done and how God shows himself to operate, they won't answer any questions.

I think about all the times that my depression, my anxiety, my loneliness, and my mistakes have made me question my security. "If I were a Christian, I wouldn't feel this way. I must be doing something wrong." was my daily mantra a couple of years ago. Only after I understood that my feelings were not a proper indication of salvation but my salvation was settled by something that was done and established two thousand years ago did I begin to feel saved. From that point I could begin to knowingly practice obedience, and faith as a mature Christian.

*apologies for the structure. I'm still learning to make blogger work for me.

Picture overload

2011-07-16T14:37:00.000-07:00

Here we are, halfway through the summer, and I haven't posted any pictures of Boogaloo for a month and a half at least. I guess facebook has something to do with that, as well as Seth's rapidly approaching separation date. Plus, it's been a busy summer. Two weddings in my family and one reunion in Seth's. Plenty of photo opportunities, not so many posting opportunities.

Boogaloo has had a busy summer. She was the flower girl in her Auntie Abby's wedding. This is the picture before the wedding. By the time the wedding had commenced, we had discarded the pretty headband (which she picked out herself, incidentally).

Boogaloo practices dropping her petals.And then she practices picking them up again. The official picture of the Berkompas kids. From the left: Boogaloo, myself, Abby now Groenewold, Laura, and Abby's twin brother Ted. Boogaloo gets ready in the nursery bathroom. I guess you could call that her first make up, but I washed it off when she wasn't paying attention.

After we saw Abby and Jesse off on their honeymoon, we took a trip up to Leavenworth.

If you ever get the chance, it's well worth the visit. This is the hat shop where they cram every kind of hat imaginable into about 200 square feet. This is my brother Ted and his girlfriend Ally getting back to their roots.There's something a little fishy about that. And here's a picture that people who know my mother would never expect to see. Boogaloo tries on a pretty pink pony hat. She's beginning to have a thing for ponies, as will be seen when I post pictures of the other family reunion.

And going to Leavenworth always requires a stop at the specialty ice cream shop. Blackberry cheesecake marble wafflecone anyone?

Baby wears shades. Boogaloo dons her mom's shades just for the fun of it.

A friendly snail decides to investigate Boogaloo's shoe. This summer, we've learned that nothing stops a snail from moving forward when it wants to, not even the presence of another snail. It just goes right over top or lets the other snail go right over top of it. Now, is that greatness of focus and determination or is it just oblivious stupidity?
Boogaloo the fly ninja. Once the doors stay open during the summer, we have a fair share of flies. This year, Boogaloo decided that she was going to be in charge of driving them back out again. And when she got tired of that, she decided that Babydoll would take up the fly-swatters. Needless to say, nothing came of that, but what a cute idea. Oh, she makes me smile.

2011-07-13T21:39:00.000-07:00

Hilarious. For everyone who grew up singing the Hallelujah Chorus every other year in choir, here is a new way to sing it. The premise is that the "singers" are monks who have taken a vow of silence. The person who came up with this is very talented.

http://voxvocispublicus.homestead.com/Index.html

Well, that was embarrassing.

2011-07-06T15:11:00.000-07:00

Have you ever felt like events are conspiring to embarrass you? I had one of those moments this past Monday.

I was just bopping along, minding my own business, trying to get back in the swing of things after a week with the inlaws. It's the fourth. I'm the groove. Laundry is on the line. Milk is in the fridge. The grass is now an acceptable length, and the weeds blend in. And a neighbor comes to my gate.

She came up to tell me that my dog had been howling for several hours on end all weekend. She said that making an animal howl that long verged on animal cruelty. He would howl to the point of getting hoarse. There were several other neighbors who were getting annoyed, and she had walked over to my house while recovering from surgery to let me know how they all felt.

This was not just any neighbor. This was the neighbor that I like to think of as the dog advocate lady. She's extremely nice, but I've only spoken to her four times since we moved in five years ago, and three of those times have been related to my dog. She has two beautifully groomed pitbulls that she refers to as Staffordshire terriers (how many people even know that pitbulls are properly called Staffordshire terriers?), and she has that activist look about her that makes me think, "She will tell you what you're doing wrong."

I was mortified because, contrary to appearances, I really do love my dog, and I really do hate to antagonize my neighbors. I apologized up and down and promised to abort Operation Outdoor Dog immediately. She accepted my apology, and after reiterating that dogs shouldn't howl that long several times (I think she felt a little guilty for imposing), she wished me a happy 4th.

Only after she leaves, and I'm extremely grateful for this, do I realize that my t-shirt says, "PLIA 2002: Whatever You Do, Do It in Jesus' Name." Oh. Shoot. Please, Dog Advocate Lady, don't think that I feel entitled to abuse my dog because I'm a Christian. We don't do that. This is not some kind of steward and master of creation complex. I just didn't know he was howling. I was gone. That's why he was outside. Fervently wishing that my abject apology restored whatever esteem I might have destroyed, I remembered pastor's sermon from the day before. He had said, "Our neighbors don't need to see our 'perfection.' They need to see our reliance on God."

For the record, I was trying to acclimate Max to living outside during the summer. I left him outside while I was running errands, and I instructed my neighbor to leave him outside during the day while I was gone visiting family. He had water, food, shade, and a den of sorts, so I was not neglecting him. He did not have to howl, but howling is part of what he does. Obstreperous dog.

Answered prayers.

2011-07-03T14:40:00.000-07:00

God just got me my Internet back. My in-home network disappeared, I couldn't get it to work, and my computer expert is at sea. So I prayed, "Lord, please give me my Internet back," and inexplicably, the next time I logged in, the answer revealed itself.

I do a lot of praying for things, but it occurs to me that I don't often remember to thank God for answering my prayers. Sometimes I forget that I had to pray about a certain situation, and sometimes I just forge ahead through the door that he's opened. But I very often forget to say thank you to God or to tell someone else about my "deliverance." (I don't mean to use the idea of deliverance lightly, but if you knew how hopeless I am with computers . . . ).

I can think of two fervent prayers that I sent up yesterday while driving the I-5 home from the in-laws (Cars are kind of like computers for me. I can handle them as long as nothing unexpected comes along, and every now and again I do something stupid that should compromise my situation but doesn't.). The first prayer was of course "Lord, please get us home safely." The second is less distinct in my mind now, but it had something to do with the abysmal traffic south of Woodlawn Cougar and finding a bathroom in time. Or maybe it was the huge piece of siding that I ran over but didn't actually damage my car. Both were answered in the affirmative. After all, here I am, typing right now. But I had been home for about an hour and a half before I realized that I was sitting in my kitchen chair eating yogurt and Oatmeal Crisp because of the grace and providence of God, or in short because he loves me and wants me to be safe. He had answered my prayer.

Hudson Taylor, a famous missionary to Africa, kept a diary of his prayers. He wrote his prayers along with the date on one side of the page, and he wrote the answers with the date on the other side of the page. He always left room for the answers because he knew there would be answers -- concrete, specific answers to concrete, specific needs. I don't know if he told other people about the answers to prayers that he got, but isn't that the simplest form of praise?

Look at the psalms sometime. Often they are prayers or recitals of what God has done. "You heard my plea and you answered me. You put me in a safe place and put my enemies to shame. Please do it again next time." (general summary, not an actual psalm) If I spent time doing the same thing, would I be in a better state of mind? Would I expect answers more often? Would I have bigger hopes and expectations for the world, stronger surety as I prayed, bigger faith, more concrete love? Would I be more submissive as I waited for prayers to be answered if I had a litany of the prayers he has already answered on my behalf? Would I pray with more faith? I think so.

I remember listening to a lullaby on a cd when Boogaloo was just born. It's a very familiar lullaby. "Lullaby and good night. Go to sleep little baby. Lullaby and good night. Go to sleep my little child." Everyone can quote that part, but I had never learned the chorus, and it took me by surprise. "If God will, thou shalt wake when the morning does break. If God will, thou shalt wake when the morning does break." I was aghast. I thought that was an awful thing to plant in a small child's head. But then I watched my Boogaloo wake up every morning, and I realized that she was awake, and that meant that God had willed to give me another day with her. Life got so much happier when I realized that I should attribute the good things to God's will as well as the bad.

The same principle applies with answered prayers. To realize that God has answered our prayers and acted on our behalf is to realize that he will do so again. It's a building block in our estimation of his character to remember that God hears, sees, and does on a daily basis, and this doing is the foundation of our well being. He got me home safely. I won't quite call that a miracle because that would disparage my driving more than necessary, but considering all the things that can happen on the road, I don't mind being the object of a direct application of divine providence either. And I like the fact that I can call on God, and he has already heard.

Beautiful music

2011-05-30T16:02:00.000-07:00

You know, for all the technological advances that have infiltrated modern worship, there is really nothing to compare to the voices of the saints, especially if those saints know how to sing.

I go to a church where we try to be up-to-date in our worship style. We have one of those full-length keyboards that can play anything from classical piano to choirs of people laughing. We have speakers and wires and amps and monitors, a guitar, a drum set, and a powerpoint system. We sing all our songs from the screen. The only reason we have hymnals is to read the creeds and occasionally the forms of office.

Now, I'm not protesting that. I'm on the worship team, and I like the way we function. It suits us. There are a lot of wonderful songs that just aren't available in even the most modern hymnals. Our pianist writes her own songs, and the flexibility of the powerpoint lets us teach them to the congregation. The powerpoint slides are often beautiful or even evocative.

Plus, we're a small church, and not all of us were raised in singing backgrounds. So singing is easier for some people if they have the strong voice of someone musical leading them. But sometimes it feels like I, as a worship leader, am trying to create an experience for people instead of letting them reflect on their experiences with God's faithfulness, which after all is what worship is.

Last night, I attended my parents' church, which is a bit more old-fashioned than mine. In the evening service, they sing only from the hymnal and are accompanied only by the piano. Most of the people who attend the evening service have been singing from the hymnal for decades, and many of them know how to sing parts. The song leader chose familiar songs like "Fill Thou my Life, O Lord My God" and "Trust and Obey."

And I was practically lifted out of my skin by the sound of the voices. Strong, heartfelt voices singing beautiful melodies and harmonies and words they knew well (CRC churches are notorious for using only 20% of their hymnals). I felt like I could lean back on them and be supported. I was carried up and into an appreciation of what God does, not by the prowess of a music team, but by the voices of the saints, the consensus of those present that God is good. Singing took no effort; it was a natural experience.

I'm not sure where this reflection is going, but I'm going to keep my ears open.

Boogaloo makes a new friend.

2011-05-06T12:55:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was so gorgeous that we spent most of it outside. Boogaloo is fascinated by all kinds of creeping things. She loves snails especially. Our storage unit is full of them, and she likes to prop open the lid and count them.

All in all, I wasn't entirely surprised to look out the door and see her holding a snail, talking to it, even stroking its foot (no squeamish people here, right?). I was surprised that the snail wasn't scared of her. It just bided its time until she put it down, and then it tried to run away. Poor snail. It didn't realize that snails aren't built for hasty retreats, or maybe it hadn't realized the size of the creature carrying it.

Anyway, I ran back and got the camera in time to see Boogaloo trying to make the snail "comfortable" on a leaf. Here are the results.

My first argument with my daughter

2011-05-04T21:56:00.000-07:00

I had my first argument with my daughter today. Tantrums and wrestling matches don't count, obviously, and neither do one line replies like "I don' want it." No, she was actually trying to persuade me that naptime was done before it was done.

I put her down for a nap around 12:30 because she refused to eat lunch, but I didn't get a chance to rest until about 2, so about the time I closed my eyes, she had had enough.

"Shoes and socks. . . . Mommy, shoes and socks."

"No, Boogaloo. You're not going outside. It's still naptime."

"Shoes and socks, Mommy."

"Naptime, Boogaloo."

"I doh want naptime. Go ou'side."

"Mommy wants naptime. Mommy hasn't gotten a nap yet."

Thoughtful pause. "Mommy, enough naptime. I get out. . . . Mommy, naptime finished."

"No, Sweetpea, naptime just started."

I won, I think. She stopped trying to go outside, but I did have to make several trips to her room during the time I had hoped to be sleeping. It's our usual compromise, I guess. But look at that sentence structure. Look at the thought process. I'm so proud of her. It's ridiculous.

Another addition to the ranks of military wifedom -- advice for Princess Katherine

2011-04-29T15:32:00.001-07:00

I was reading an article on the royal wedding because I missed the showing on tv (What hour was it on on the west coast? I don't know, but everyone who admitted to watching it looked a little groggy this morning.), and it closed with "Next comes the honeymoon, and then they settled down to a military life," or something like that. The press has made it impossible to forget that their royal highnesses Prince William and Prince Harry are active duty military, but I still felt a certain thrill when I realized that Princess Katherine and I have something in common. She is now a military wife.

My first thought was "Oh my gosh, I have something in common with a princess!" and probably most princesses if you think about it. Don't all princes have some military affiliation? My second thought was "Just one more way she's really in for it." Being a military wife is not easy, and I imagine that the difficulties wouldn't be at all assuaged by the duties of being royal.

I know that she's been a military girlfriend and a military fiance for some time, but there's something different about joining yourself to a person and then having that person removed temporarily for purposes good and weighty through no fault of your own. It's not like death or divorce, after which one is supposed to move on. Military service is its own kind of separation, during which one is supposed to hold on without going crazy. Two souls that have become one are stretched over and over again, and it hurts in its own special way.

So with that in mind, I thought I would gather up my six years of military experience and offer some advice to Princess Kate.

1. Read the "emotional cycle of deployment" pamphlets. If the British pamphlets are like the American pamphlets, they're pretty much spot on. Deployment is a lot like a grieving process. You probably will go through uncertainty, separation, and disorientation as he leaves and do them all over again when he comes back. Anger and low periods are normal. It's all part of missing your soulmate. Don't assume that they are the result of doing something wrong. You're probably doing something right.

2. Recognize that the ache that you feel when he's gone is a good thing. Most aches are things we try to do away with. We take medicine or we go shopping. The ache that happens when one's spouse deploys is a little different. It's really a sign of the love that you have for each other, and it's not going to go away fully until he comes back. It's okay to indulge this ache. In fact, indulging the ache is probably the healthiest thing you can do, provided you have time and convenience and indulge in moderation. Read old letters. Stare at pictures. Remember sweet things he's done for you. Cry. This is not a bad pain. Don't try to avoid it.

3. If you're feeling blue or need some support from someone, don't be ashamed of asking. I'm still trying to perfect this one. Life has to go on after they leave, and I think the fact that it is life, and all of life, makes us think that we should be able to handle it as we would if they are here. The only problem is that they're not here, and the support, conversation, intimacy, and second set of hands that comes from having a husband around removes with them. People will naturally refrain from invading your privacy and offering support when you don't seem to need it, so if you need it, make sure you ask.

4. Have a list of people you know you can ask. It's easier that way.

5. Never lose your military id. Just don't.

6. Shop at the commissary. It's cheaper. :)

7. Don't require one hundred percent of yourself all the time. I don't know how someone in the spotlight of royalty can avoid putting the best foot forward constantly, but there have to be days when you say, "Today, we will be accomplishing the absolute minimum because I have done as much as I can." Lock all the doors. Take off the heals and the hats. Collapse in a big comfy chair, and don't do anything you don't feel motivated to do, or at least that isn't absolutely necessary.

8. Do keep busy. I don't think you'll have a problem with that.

9. Skype is a military wive's best friend.

10. Avoid complainers. Life is always lighter if no one is pulling you down, and military wives can be notorious complainers. We call it commiseration. We have some excuse, I think, but that doesn't make it healthy. In light of what we do have, it doesn't do to focus on what we don't have. And all these trials are only what is common to man.

11. Keep a journal or some sort of daily record so you can share all the things that he's missing when he gets back. I email my husband daily, and then I put all of our emails in a special folder as a record for our children.

12. Commit him to God every night, every morning, and with every worry. Rest in the fact that God is the God who Sees, Hears, and Cares. He can reach across continents, and they are much safer in His hands than in ours.

13. I think the hardest time of the day is when everything is finished, all children are in bed, and there's nothing left to do but miss him. There's something vast about a two person bed with only one person in it. Where there should be warmth, touch, comfort, and intimacy, there is only silence, and the blankets don't lie right. You may feel like you're continuously waiting for him to come to bed, and he never does. At times like those, I like to lie awake and imagine what it will be like when he comes back. This technique usually produces some tears, but those tears will make you feel better.

14. Don't be ashamed to go all out when he comes back. Meet him on the pier, or the tarmac in your case. Wave the little flags. Dress in patriotic colors. Throw a party. Go on a second honeymoon. This is not life as usual. He's back! Commemorate it!

15. Be proud of him, and always let him know it.

Best of luck, Your Royal Highnesses. Congratulations and God keep you.

Good Friday.

2011-04-22T20:56:00.000-07:00

At the end of a hectic week, it's hard to focus, but there is no moment more worthy of focus than this. Today we remember the day when death was infiltrated. On Sunday we will remember the day that it was shattered from the inside. Today the gate of death has closed on more than it can hold, and on Sunday Life will explode out of death and turn that gate into nothing more than an empty archway. Is anything too difficult for God?

No, and when he does something, he does it thoroughly. Look at our salvation, designed so that He would not only carry our sins but also carry our sorrows. Every possible humiliation and pain in the experience of mankind was heaped on Jesus:rejection by family, betrayal by friends, mockery from the establishment, unjust condemnation from the government, beating, torture, death, misunderstanding, grief, depravation, anything that we could possibly suffer, he bore. He took it into the grave with him and made it part of that archway of death that leads to eternal life. Some of his pain we inflicted, and some of his pain was inflicted on us, but the LORD laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Prayer Journal -- Check.

2011-04-20T19:54:00.000-07:00

Prayer Request: All day April 20th. Lord, please, I need a phone call from my husband. Lord, please, I really need a phone call.

6:40 p.m. Seth calls. I get the advice I need. Bonus: He might get off early so we can talk over skype.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is a literal answer to prayer.

Nearly there.

2011-04-15T19:26:00.000-07:00

It's Friday. In two more days, we'll have completed another successful 40 Days for Life campaign.

What makes a successful 40 Days for Life campaign? Well, it always helps to have enough people to cover the vigil for the full five and a half weeks. We didn't have as many people as we'd like, but we had more than last year. That's good. We also like to have people from new churches come out to join us, and this year the Nazarene's, the Church of God in Christ, and some Messianic Jews came out and prayed with the rest of us. That was neat. We like to see babies saved, and I can't speak to that yet. I haven't heard any stories of babies saved here, but I know that over 400 were saved nationwide.

Most of all, a campaign is successful when we all accomplish what we set out to do. We set out to fast and pray for 40 days, to rend the heavens and implore God that he would end abortion in our country and then the world. And each year, it seems like we get closer to this goal. More clinics shut down. More politicians are willing to listen. More laws that were meant to regulate the abortion industry are actually enforced (see http://www.operationrescue.org/. They cover all that kind of news.).

I set out to sit outside of an abortion clinic in my car for three hours a week and pray. I gave up processed sugar and sweets. I feel like I lived off tea and honey during the wettest time of the year. I got my daughter up even earlier than she wanted to rise, loaded my car with snacks, books, my computer and a movie, a potty chair, and a blanket, and parked in the right out way outside a place where I know, though I have never seen, people die. And for three hours I prayed, intermittent with cuddling the Boogaloo and mentally cussing out my reluctant computer. I learned how to pray while coaxing a three year old off the steering wheel and how to pee in a can. I learned to watch the sky and think of the clouds being rolled back and our Lord coming in glory to make everything right some day. I learned to be patient. I learned to do what I signed on to do and let everyone else do what they signed on to do. I learned to appreciate the work of people who have been doing this for years before I signed up. The last month and a half has been very educational.

The big question at this time of year is always, "Where do we go from here?" What needs have we addressed, and what more can we do? Our clinic is still open, so we'll be back next year and every abortion day in between. How can we see more accomplished? I hope the Lord reveals that to us. In the meantime our course is to keep going. There will be a day when all such injustices are wiped off the face of the earth and everything becomes known for what it is. I wonder how people will react on that day.

A diary of 3 -- explosion.

2011-04-13T09:04:00.000-07:00

Seth likes to complain that Boogaloo makes all her advancements while he's out to sea. The sad thing is that he has a point. When he's gone, Annika just seems to grow by leaps and bounds. For instance, I've been worrying about her speech development. Up until he left, she was saying plenty, but most of it was quotations from her favorite movies. It had no context, and it had very little articulation. Since he left, I've been hearing words and near sentences that relate to the world at hand: okay, I do it, box, ear, feet, hungry, thirsty. I'm thrilled. I can communicate with my child. But I poured out all my worries on Seth, and now he's not here to share in my congratulations.

Also, her interests are broadening. Up until he left, she was playing primarily with dolls and water toys. Her favorite activity was to "row" "around the house" in a laundry basket boat quoting The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything. Just in this past week (and today is Wednesday), she's developed an interest in puzzles, blocks, and Mr. Potato Head. She suddenly started pulling toys out of her long-neglected toy box and playing with them. Go figure.

These are gross over generalizations, of course. The week before he left she was astounding us by naming colors, a subject we thought she was ignoring for the past year. And many's the time he and I have stood and gaped together over whatever that was and wherever it came from. But I don't think I'm imagining it. Suddenly she knows where things go and understands why I do things. She puts her own hamper away and picks up the blocks at bedtime. We've been working on this for months, and it all comes out now. I have several explanations for this uncanny behavioral pattern. Some are probably. Some are not. Maybe I just have more attention to devote to observing her development when he's gone. She is the biggest focus of my time and energy right now. Maybe I have more attention to devote to her, period. Maybe the stress of separation brings out the best in her. She could be sensing the rise in the level of my anxieties and trying to soothe some of them by revealing her hitherto hidden accomplishments. (Don't laugh. She would do that.) Or maybe his Navy schedule just coincides that perfectly with her stages of development. In any case, I am once again in awe of my wunderkind. What a kiddo! What a blessing.

It was bound to happen.

2011-03-17T14:46:00.000-07:00

There are certain milestones that happen around the age of three. Potty training, learning to play with other children, passive aggressive response to anything mommy asks her to do, you know the drill. Well, this week Boogaloo fulfilled another one: she cut her hair irreparably. Sigh, good bye, golden curls. I think it happened like this: I knocked the haircutting scissors off the high shelf last Saturday morning as I was getting into the shower, but I didn't know the clatter I heard was scissors, (and I was kind of in a hurry), so I didn't investigate.

Ten minutes later, I pulled back the shower curtain, and I see Boogaloo standing on the toilet, and the bathroom floor covered in curls. She had taken about half of her hair off and had the beginnings of either a decent pixie cut or a stringy mullet going. So on Tuesday (because it was one of those weekends and we were already late), we went to Mastercuts and got the rest of the curls removed. I am willing to admit that it's a cute haircut. I am willing to admit that it suits her, that it's easier to deal with, and that she seems much happier without wisps of hair sliding into her eyes. I'm even willing to admit that after she got into the ziplock bag of of curls that I brought home from the hairdresser and scattered those curls all over her room, I didn't really regret throwing them away all that much. But I sure hope they grow back.

Quick bits.

2011-03-07T20:54:00.000-08:00

1. Boogaloo turned three this past weekend. She hasn't processed that she's three yet (we didn't make a big deal out of it), but she sure knew that the cake and presents were for her.

2. HB 1366 failed in committee! This bill was an attempt to hamper pregnancy resource centers sponsored by pro-abortion lobbyists, but it never came up for a vote. Praise the Lord, and pray that it dies in committee next year too.

3. 40 Days for Life starts on Wednesday, and as noted earlier, God has been doing great things for us.

4. Boogaloo's latest craze is playing in water. She takes her little teaset and trucks water all over the house. We've taken to making her play in the bathtub just to spare the floors (and the mommy who has to step in the puddles), and she will play there for hours.

5. We are counting down to Seth's last deployment. Six more months, and we move on to other things.

6. I've added a couple of blogs from my friend Alicia's extensive list of fellow bloggers. They seem to have like interests, and goodness knows I could use the perspective.

Geeking Out on God.

2011-03-07T20:02:00.000-08:00

Have you ever noticed that when God sets his mind to get something done, it gets done? Have you ever seen the guidance of God so clearly that it just takes your breath away?

This evening, just as I was getting ready to cook dinner, I got a phone call. After about fifteen minutes of conversation, I hung up my phone, came out of the kitchen, threw my hands into the air, and (my husband can testify to this) squealed like a twelve-year-old who has just won Justin Bieber tickets. Then I proceeded to giggle and titter all the way through dinner. I was that overcome.

The phone call was from a pastor who is interested in 40 Days for Life. Last week Thursday, while our planning committee was in the midst of our meeting, this man came into the diner to meet with some of his parishioners. He had never been to the diner before. The parishioners had suggested it. He just happened to show up while we were there. None of us knew who he was. He was just a man in a clerical collar. I don’t usually approach strangers, not even strange preachers, but I summoned the courage to interrupt their conversation and offer him one of our posters with a letter of explanation.

Tonight, he called me. He wanted to know what we are all about. He said that as a white pastor in a primarily black denomination, he has been facing an uphill struggle in convincing his congregation to go against the deeply ingrained position of abortion in their culture. He said that he had been receiving 40 Days emails from Shaun Carney for about a year, and he had been feeling God leading him to do something. "I'm definitely pro-life," he said, "and I'm non-violent too. I don't like the shouting that some people get up to. I prefer to tell people about adoption. I was adopted, and I am grateful to be alive."

I was so thrilled to hear from him. We are a great match to his situation, and he is a great match to our cause. It was a completely chance meeting (although, as he said to me, we don't believe in coincidences). I nearly didn't go up to him at all. Think what I would have missed out on.

When we began planning this year’s campaign, we were questioning whether or not we could do another 40 Days for Life. Last year was grueling and really left a mark on our souls. But this year, God seems determined to erase that mark. Our kickoff rally was standing room only. We have more leadership positions filled than any previous campaign. We have new people coming out of the woodwork. And everywhere we go, there is evidence that God is going in front of us. Praise the Lord.

Garbage soup, anyone?

2011-03-03T12:54:00.000-08:00

Has anyone else tried Garbage Soup? I was flipping through my More with Less cookbook about a month ago, and I came upon this recipe. Actually, it's more of a concept or activity than a recipe. Garbage soup. We love it. It's a way to save money and improve your improvisational cooking skills all in one.

To make Garbage Soup, set aside one pot as your weekly soup pot. Put about six cups of water in it. Put it in the fridge. When you start making dinner, take the pot out of the fridge, put it on the burner, turn the burner on low, and then start throwing in all the leftovers that aren't worth saving into the pot. That's right, everything. When you're making dinner, throw in the parings, the clippings, the bones, the stems, the flour from the cutting board, everything animal, vegetable, or mineral. Let it simmer during dinner. Then after the meal, throw in all the bones, the leavings from the plates, the tiny bits and juices from the pan that aren't worth refrigerating, and the milk the baby didn't drink. Let it simmer until the dishes are done (simmering kills the germs.). Turn the heat off and let it cool until bedtime. Put it back in the fridge.

Do this every night for about a week. Then strain the solids out of the broth. Throw the solids into your compost pile. The broth should be flavorful and colorful by this point. Put in whatever you like. Tada! Soup.

We started making Garbage Soup because we were trying to save money. Seth says it's like a free meal every week. I say not quite, but I'll concede the point. It's an excellent way to get your money's worth out of your groceries. It also prevents finding scary things in the back of the fridge a month later.

But we've also noticed that it's just good soup. It's a nice, thick soup stock with a lot of flavor. Granted, every week is a little different, and you have to match your soup to your broth. We had chicken soup one week and purple cabbage turkey vegetable the next. Last week was beef vegetable. There are no standard ingredients or spices. You just have to follow your nose and figure out what would go well with the broth in front of you. Add some fresh bread or grilled cheese sandwiches, and you a have a cheap, nourishing tasty meal. You just can't lose.

Snow bound.

2011-02-05T19:35:00.000-08:00

Okay, enough of the heavy stuff. I've been inspired by my friend Alicia's blog to post snow pictures, partly because it's been too long since I posted a picture montage of Boogaloo and partly because Boogaloo just enjoys snow so much. :) I have never seen her frown at snow. I have, however, seen her throw a fit about coming inside.

Unlike my snowbound friend, who lives in the "frozen tundra of the north" (her words) and can afford to hate snow with a passion, we live in the Drippy Taiga (that's a real word, it means fir trees) of the West. We get inches of snow, and that's only if we've been promised a particularly cold winter. This year was supposed to be a particularly cold winter, and we've gotten six inches total in three inch increments. Three inches of snow is a piddling amount when you want to play in it.

The west is the only part of the country that is not enjoying a major dump of snow right now. . The rest of the country is buried. We have nothing. When we want snow, and we frequently do, we have to go look for it.

Pretty awesome, isn't it. This is a view from Hurricane Ridge, our yearly snow destination. Last year the we couldn't get there because the road collapsed. This year, the roads were intact, and the mountain had eight feet of snow waiting for us. There were trees buried beneath our feet. Have you ever walked over a tree? It feels like you really are on top of the world, and there's a little less sky above you than there ought to be.

Boogaloo, of course, didn't notice. She also didn't notice the 30 to 45 mph winds that were buffeting us the whole time. She climbed right up onto that snow and got busy. I think she likes the power of having a snowball in her hand. But her favorite thing to do in the snow is make a snowman. She insists on it, emphatically. And Washington snow is ideal snowman snow. It packs like nowhere else. Tada! We tried to sled a little, but it's hard walking back up a slope with eight feet of snow prepared to give way beneath you. I guess that's why ski slopes have chair lifts.

Truth about Abortion

2011-01-15T11:18:00.000-08:00

Thursday morning a small representation of the pro-life community in Bremerton got together to begin planning our spring 40 Days for Life campaign. We were a little nervous because, to put it mildly, our last campaign was a little discouraging. In fact, in terms of community participation, it was down right dismal. We saw several lives saved, but we also filled our vigil times only because some volunteers stood by themselves for five or six hours a day. That's discouraging, especially when we read that 71% of the American populace considers itself pro-life. So we pondered, should we try to stage a new campaign, and our answer was, how can we not.

Abortion is one of the greatest evils ever visited on humanity. War, famine, tyranny, dictatorships, torture, religious discrimination, domestic abuse -- they are all awful desecrations of the sacred image of God in both the victim and the perpetrator, but abortion gives the victim no choice and no chance to fight back. Ancient armies, when they conquered a nation, would rip the babies out of mothers' wombs to desecrate their enemies. We do it to ourselves and call it choice.

Abortion is a betrayal of the most simple and one of the most sacred relationships entrusted to us (the other sacred relationship being marriage): the process of giving and nurturing life. There is nothing more precious than the relationship between parent and child and the responsibility of the life-giver to the receiver, but abortion encourages us to actively toss it aside in the name of preserving some small, piddling thing misnamed freedom and more rightly called status quo for ourselves. It's not a new thing; it's been around since before Christ. It's not a progressive development. It's a sign of social decay.

So this year, on March 9, vigils will kick off around the country. People will gather outside abortion clinics and pray for the women going in to the clinics; for the doctors, nurses, and receptionists who work in the clinics; and most of all for the babies who were denied any opportunity at life. They will pray everytime a woman walks into the clinic in her pajamas and weep everytime she limps out. And I'm asking everyone I know to be one of these people. Even if you can't go to a clinic, sign up for the prayer reminders at www.40daysforlife.com and pray for the rapid end of abortion.

The video below illustrates some abortion statistics (and their sources) that you might not have known before. It was made by a woman I know and trust. There are no violent or obscene images in it. It will help you remember what you're praying for.

God bless us all.

This is Awesome.

2011-01-10T19:17:00.000-08:00

I got this link in an email this weekend. It debuts an amazing symbolic mural of the resurrection of our Lord. Check it out.

http://downloads.cbn.com/cbnplayer/cbnPlayer.swf?s=/vod/MW131v2_WS

Getting in the spirit.

2010-12-05T18:22:00.000-08:00

The children's church leader has given Boogaloo a part in this year's Christmas program. I know, I know, she's not even three, but she and her nursery friends go to children's church with all the other kids and learn the songs and do the crafts. So for the past three days, I've been hearing Christmas songs around the house, and I'm not the one singing them.

This video is of the song she knows best, "Wasn't it a mighty day?" The lyrics are a little garbled, but she gets every word in there, and she loves to belt it out just about anywhere.

It's beginning to look a lot like . . .

2010-12-04T21:32:00.000-08:00

It's December, and we've broken out all the greenery. Boogaloo is just old enough to take interest in Christmas decorations, even though she's not really old enough to help me put them up. She says "Chirshmas Tee" wherever there is decorated greenery, and she is thoroughly fascinated by one tiny little carousel horse ornament from my childhood. But she leaves the lights alone. She's a smart girl.

The following pictures are mostly for Seth. I realize that most of the people who read my blog don't really care what my Christmas decorations look like, but I'd like Seth to have something to picture in his mind when he thinks of home. That book on the corner of the table is called Famous Friesians in America. For an ethnicity that no one's ever heard of, there have been a lot of famous Friesians.

In past years, we've hung the garlands from the walls, but this year I set myself the challenge of getting all the decorations up without putting any staples in our plaster, so the furniture got covered instead. I'm particularly proud of this little innovation -- neither staples nor tape. I felt vaguely Narnian while I was wrapping up the lamppost. I wonder if the Narnians decorated their lamppost in later years.

Due to the small size of our livingroom, we usually refrain from getting a Christmas tree, but this year we thought it was worth it. It's a tradition in my family to put white lights in the middle and colored lights on the outside to fully illuminate the tree. As you can see, it works pretty well. The tree lights up this whole half of the room.

I meant to post pictures of Annika playing in last month's snow, but Blogger says it can't right now, so rather that stay up till all hours, I'll leave that for another day.

Goodnight, all. God bless.

moment of weakness

2010-11-26T16:16:00.000-08:00

I got home from Christmas shopping this afternoon, and a feeling settled on me. It was a tense feeling, a feeling that had something to do with the weather and something to do with the time of day. I could feel my shoulders hitching upwards and my breath coming a little shallower. I felt like I had to go and do something, but at the same time I didn't think it was something that could be done, and I couldn't figure out what it was.

Then it hit me. I wanted to watch Twilight. I really, really wanted to watch a Twilight movie.

I don't usually like to admit to being a Twilight fan. I mean, I really should know better. Twilight is not edifying fantasy; it's blatant escapism, and I was taught to believe that there's no excuse for that.

I remember reading an article by C.S. Lewis (or maybe it was Tolkein; I don't remember) justifying the appreciation of fantasy. He said that there are two kinds of escaping in fantasy literature. The healthy kind enables you to get out of the world for a minute and see it as it ought to be so you can reorient yourself and go back in. This kind of fantasy has epic conflict and great sacrifice. The other kind of fantasy is wish fulfillment, a thrilling kind of pie-in-the-sky imago-emotional morphine that makes you think "why don't I have that?", and Twilight is definitely of this latter kind. Not healthy. Plus it's written for junior high kids, and I'm nearly 30.

But I can't help it.

I'm not a blatant Twi-hard. I don't have any t-shirts that say "I kissed a vampire, and I liked it" or facebook flare that says "Real men sparkle." I've never been to Forks. I didn't see movies one or two in the theater, and I'm not sure I'm looking forward to movie four with great anticipation.

Still, there are moments or even days when I feel an almost overwhelming pressure to see something Twilightish, when I log onto the Internet and go hunting for a Twilight headline just to get that "hit of my drug supply" (if you're a twi-hard, you'll get that reference), when I open my kindle and upload one of the novels before sending it back to the archives unread. I guess that makes me a guilty twi-hard. Why not just give in and indulge, you say. Haven't you ever noticed that indulging some cravings only makes them stronger?

It seems like I always get "twilight" cravings when Seth works a long, long, long day or when he's getting ready to leave, and it just so happens that he's leaving soon. It probably doesn't help that "Eclipse" will be coming out on DVD next week, and the ads and headlines have been everywhere.
I especially liked the ad for Eclipse gum. Those are two franchises I would not have put together.

Mom says I should purge my brain with some good, wholesome fantasy like Narnia or Lord Of The Rings. Boogaloo loves Narnia, but I'm convinced LOTR would be too much for her. In fact, I haven't watched LOTR or Indiana Jones or Star Wars since she started taking an interest in movies.

That might be part of the problem. We've watched VeggieTales, Mary Poppins, Cars, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe so many times that Boogaloo and I can recite their dialogues together. It's been so long since I've watched a grown-up movie that when I think about the movies I'd like to watch, I slide all the way down the spectrum into guilty pleasure, even though the only way the Twilight films heretodate can qualify as an grown-up movies is the fact that I'm a grown-up and I want to watch them.

Another part of the problem might be that Seth's departures always make me feel like a petulant teenager who needs to be protected and consoled, and hey, misery loves company. Bella Swan could really be up there with Scarlet O'Hara as far as self-centered naratives are concerned, and sometimes it feels good to listen to her complain and watch her manipulate the people she should be listening to. (She doesn't listen. Have you noticed that? She never intends to change her mind. It's with the greatest reluctance that she acknowledges that someone else might have a point. She never lets herself be influenced by anyone!)

But that's exactly why I don't indulge myself very often. There are some thoughts that don't need reinforcement, however realistic or common to man they might be. The kind of friends you keep and the kind of books you read will affect the way you think. I have learned part of the secret to contentment, and it is keeping the imago-emotional morphine to a minimum.

Pudding Painting.

2010-11-17T19:14:00.000-08:00

Well, the weather has sacked in. We had forty mile per hour winds these past two nights and buckets of rain all day. We're supposed to have rain for the next ten days with a couple possibilities of snow. I could almost believe that I saw snowflakes coming down outside once or twice, but the Yahoo! weatherman maintained that it was 43 degrees and merely cloudy. Maybe I need to find a new weatherman.

So what's a mom to do with an antsy child on a day like today? Pudding paint.

It's inexpensive, edible fingerpaint. Just take a box of vanilla or banana cream pudding, mix according to directions, divide into five bowls, and add the food coloring of your choice. Art time becomes snack time or vice versa. The funny thing about Boogaloo is that she paints with her spoon and eats with her fingers. Of course, pudding doesn't dry very quickly, especially if it's heaped on the paper, so the odds of getting to keep the resultant masterpiece are pretty small, but you can always do what we did and take pictures.

This is Boogaloo's masterpiece. I think it could fit in very well among the modern masters. It looks like one of those paintings that people stare at in museums and say, "Come on, a kid could do something like that." Well, that's exactly right, and here's the proof. After I took this picture, she proceeded to smear it all together and turn the whole thing green. Maybe the key to art is knowing when to stop. :)

Experts say that the child feels validated if mom and dad play along, so I played along too. Okay, okay, I have more fun than she does, and I take my painting very seriously. This is my dabbling in modern art. I used to be one of those people who looked at paintings like this and said, "There's no point to it." But put it in pudding, and . . . there's still no point to it. But it's fun! Maybe it's hard to take those artists seriously because we think they take their work too seriously. If they would just admit that they're just having fun . . . oh well, that's a discussion for another day.

This is an exercise in line and color. This is throwing my food at a paper. I like this one better.

I think I'm going to make it my facebook profile picture.

Whoops.

2010-11-08T19:02:00.000-08:00

I just realized that my last post was on November 2nd, and I didn't mention a word about the election. Not entirely surprising. The end of last Tuesday was like a breath of fresh air. I was so tired of the election season. It seemed like every other ad on the radio was a political ad, and five out of seven pieces of mail were political flyers. About half of the ads I encountered were positive and respectful, but the other half were more than enough to sour someone on the political process. I didn't even realize that I hadn't seen any results for our senatorial race until two days later. (My candidate lost, but my party made huge gains, so I guess it's going to be an interesting political season as well.)

So here is how our state fared in the election: we defeated the income tax and kept alcohol sales in the hands of the state. The right of the state to withold bail was extended from murder charges to other violent offenses, and the state has found a new way to calculate its bond debt. Certain taxes on groceries were rescinded, and other taxes and fees were increased. So everything sort of rounds itself out. Patti Murray beat Dino Rossi by barely 3% of the vote, and Kitsap County keeps all its same representatives on the federal and state levels. (Washington Secretary of State: Election Results. http://vote.wa.gov/Elections/WEI/?ElectionID=37) I had hoped for better things, especially on the pro-life front, but it seems to me that we're getting closer. We just need to keep praying and doing, and God will get our state on the bandwagon.

Love to you all.
Good night.

The Joy of Christmas Catalogues

2010-11-02T20:22:00.000-07:00

(Warning: some product placement may follow!)

It's that time of year again, the time of year when both companies that we love and companies we have never heard fill our mailboxes with glossy pictures of things we simply can't celebrate the holidays without. I love looking at holiday catalogues. I like looking at the pretty things, the novel things, the useful things, and the absurd things that nobody in their right mind really needs but that look neat anyway.

I especially love the way the products are set up in this semi-glorious light which implies that by buying this product, I'll be satisfying a deep psychological need, protecting the environment, feeding starving children, and reaching Nirvana all at once. I look at those pictures, and I get a "queer ache," as Anne Shirley called it, right in the middle of my chest. And all the while my brain is saying, "It's just a pillow sham. Granted, it's pretty and made of organic cotton, but you have absolutely no use for pillow shams. In fact, you hate pillow shams. Turn the page."

It's only the second of November, and we've already gotten three holiday catalogues, not counting the weekly circular from the Navy Exchange. The first two were from companies that we use regularly, but the one that came today was from a place I've never heard of -- Garnet Hill. Apparantly they sell decorating knick-knacks, linens, and specialty clothing.

It came just in time. Today is a duty day. I've been feeling blue, and there is no better way to kick a blue feeling than to pour a bubble bath, grab a novel for back up, and spend a half an hour flipping through a holiday catalogue. I mowed the lawn, washed the baking dishes, went to Bible study, got Boogaloo to eat both lunch and dinner, and dealt with two nasty messes (Today, Boogaloo learned about painting with poop. Tomorrow, she is going to learn that this makes Mommy unhappy.). I felt like I deserved a little indulgence. So I ran the bathtub full of hot water, poured in a little "Twilight Woods" from Bath & Body Works, grabbed an L.M. Montgomery novel, and "prepared myself to be happy," as Elizabeth Bennet would say.

Or not. Sakes alive! Have I been out of touch? When did cotton t-shirts (granted, organic cotton) become $40 items? I know some people can afford to pay that much for their clothes, but aren't there reasonable limits on the prices of basic items?$238 merino wool sweaters. $90 sneakers. $68 bedsheets -- flat or fitted. Granted, some of the stuff was cashmere (sigh, cashmere), but some of the stuff was flannel! And when I pay $50 dollars for a 250 thread ct. sheet, I expect to get both of them with pillow cases and the monogramming thrown in. I don't care how well it goes with the gorgeous octagon quilt. I'm sorry. I can do better at Walmart.

It was truly a wonderful catalogue. I found something to "ache" over on every page, and if you can afford to pay that much, do check them out at http://www.garnethill.com/. They have cocoa cup bedspread patterns and Christmas tree sheets and handmade afghans in cool natural colors (I could have made that last myself if I had the pattern). They have cable knit sweaters and cashmere tunics, ruffle-edged wool trench coats and Christmas longjohns for kids. But my gosh, who pays that kind of money for those kind of things?

Needless to say, I didn't find my bubblebath as relaxing as I thought I would. With seeds of regret, discontentment, and inferiority germinating in my soul, I put my catalogue down and picked up "Anne of Windy Poplars," and within about ten minutes all was right with the world again. But I still feel a little stung. The feeling harkens back to high school when I got caught wearing someone else's handmedowns. I didn't mind handmedowns in general, but they did seem to imply (at least to my adolescent mind) that I operated on a different tier than the people who could buy stylish things new. I envied them. Oh, how I envied them.

If only the styles now weren't so gorgeous! Belted sweaters. Pencil skirts. Long, elegant trousers. Sweater dresses. Flowy, cape-like cardigans. Capes! Actual capes! Exactly what I've always pictured sophisticated, practical fashion to be. Then that if only leads to other if onlies. If only I could afford this to go with that. If only eco-friendly were also budget-friendly. If only I could be professionally lit and standing dramatically outside a log cabin on the tundra while my perfectly highlighted hair blows in a soft but not too cold wind that doesn't make my nose red. (I wonder how much make up it takes to keep a red nose from showing. If they shot on location, those models must have been cold.)

Yeah. Okay. Then the fact that the life I'm living is mine and whatever I happen to be wearing, that life isn't going to be professionally lit, arranged, and retouched settles onto my brain, and I come back to reality. Life is good, and it's even picturesque at times, but those pictures are live and organic, unlike the picture of the woman wearing a knit-lace dress and holding a sled dog on a rope leash or the picture of the woman cross-country skiing in a silk-trimmed cashmere cardigan, fine-wale corduroy trousers, and cascading bauble necklace. I mean, don't we all don cashmere and baubles when we want to participate in rigorous outdoor aerobic activity? Sheesh.

So I've learned a lesson today. Coveting can be hazardous to my peace of mind. That's probably why God told us not to do it. And really, do not worry about what you will eat off of, what you will sleep on, and what you will wear. Is not food more important than platewear and sleep more important than sheets? And isn't Christmas about something totally other than reindeer flannel and snowman pajamas anyway? Plus the Exchange has sweater dresses for $15 next week, so I can have my cake and eat it too. But I think I'm going to throw that catalogue away. Why put myself in the way of more temptation?

Tada!

2010-10-30T22:11:00.000-07:00

Oh, by the way, I finished my first quilt! It is all stitched, stuffed, and quilted. I even did some of the quilting and all of the binding by hand because my sewing machine broke. So now I have two more to do, and unless I figure out what I did to my sewing machine this time, I'll have to do them by hand. Oh well, sometimes I think it's better that way.

The quilting is in the shape of a spiderweb, which I thought was rather clever given the material in the quilt. I'm sure it was much easier than actually quilting a pattern into it. I get to do that with the next one. Does anyone have a good idea for a quilting pattern to go with cartoon ducks that wear capes to fly?

Beginning to regret it.

2010-10-18T21:10:00.000-07:00

Seth has duty tonight, and I'm beginning to regret all the anxiety I cultivated over his impending separation from the Navy. I had forgotten how lonely one gets, how stressful it can be, when one's husband works 36 hours at a stretch, comes home to catch a good night's sleep, works another 12 hours, comes home to sleep, and then disappears for 36 hours again.

For those relatives who haven't heard the explanation yet, duty means standing the night watch on board Seth's submarine. Every position aboard the sub must be manned by at least one person at all times just in case something goes wrong. Seth watches over the nuclear reactor which is a very technical piece of equipment. Even when a reactor isn't on, it has the potential to go wrong. Nothing ever happens, but many things could (what, I don't know, and I don't want to know. Those are Navy secrets, and I'm sure being in on the loop wouldn't help my peace of mind.).

The number duty days that a person has in a week depends on the number of people in a division or department. Some stations have five-day watch rotations; others have ten-day rotations. On carriers, they might go as many as 13 days between duty days. We've done three days or four. Once every three nights, instead of coming home after a twelve hour day, my husband stays on the boat and works at least six hours in addition to the full day he has already put in. He packs some leftovers with him when he leaves in the morning and makes sure he has his Kindle(tm) and his laptop. He stashes a blanket and a pillow in his bunk. He stands at least six hours of watch between the time when the other guys go home and the time they come back again in the morning. And then he goes back to work. I see him again when he comes home the following night. I'm not used to this.

For the past three months, Seth has been on "off-crew." (To all Navy wives who do not have off-crew, I bow my head and beg that they would please put up with my whining.) All Trident class submarines have two crews: blue and gold. Having two crews keeps the boat in constant circulation. "Off-crew" means that Seth's crew (gold crew) has been engaged in training exercises while the other crew (blue crew) has been handling the boat. The guys generally regard training periods as a waste of time, but training has the advantage of normal work weeks. They leave home at a reasonable hour. They come home at a reasonable hour. Sometimes they come home before noon. There are no duty days while we are on off-crew. I guess I got spoiled.

This past weekend, Seth had duty on Friday. According to custom, he should then have Saturday and Sunday off as in any normal work week. That's one of the perks of Friday duty. Weekends are still weekends. But Seth's chief is anticipating the birth of a child soon, so he wants to get as much maintenance done before said baby comes as possible. I appreciate his motivation. Seth would feel the same way. However that means that instead of coming home on Saturday, Seth worked another twelve hour day. Just before dinner, he called me and confessed that he'd forgotten his keys on the boat and he did not want to go back. I put Boogaloo in the car and drove down and picked him up. He nearly fell asleep over dinner.

Then we dropped him off the next morning at 6 because the Chief wanted to get a few more hours of work done. Boogaloo thought we were dropping him off for a deployment, and she was hysterical the whole way home. He didn't make it to church like we'd hoped, but he did stop at the store and get lunch. We drifted in and out of football all afternoon, and this morning, after a few hours of extra sleep, he went back to work for Monday duty. Over the past four days (102 hours), I have seen, held, spoken to, and slept next to my husband perhaps 24 hours total. Over the past week, he has worked seven days and three nights. It's been a hard week. Schedules like that weigh on our health, our happiness, and our home maintenance, and they don't do much for our sex life either.

As the command would be quick to point out, even those 24 hours are more than I would have gotten if the boat was gone. However, as the command also acknowledges, sometimes these maintenance periods can be worse. There's no period of adjustment or time to build up emotional competence. There are just nights without my husband and the emotional whiplash of uncertain schedules. I know some women who look forward to duty days. They say they get more done in a duty day than in the rest of the week combined. I really can't identify. I also know women who look forward to deployments. They say they have "a good Navy marriage." As soon as they get sick of their husbands, the Navy takes them away for a few months. Nope, not me.

When we first moved to B-town and were assigned to the boat, an experienced Navy wife told me, "Oh, don't worry about duty days. You might actually want a night to yourself." That was nearly five years ago, and I can safely say that the night hasn't come yet. Maybe I'm not as independent as my friends, but I miss him even when he's only gone 36 hours. I start listening for him to drive in around four in the afternoon, and I don't stop listening until six when he would reasonably be home. That feeling that I get when I've made myself remember that he won't be home tonight is one of the lowest in the world, at least in my experience. It's not a feeling that I'm going to miss when Seth is out of the Navy.

Fall in the NW.

2010-10-18T20:57:00.000-07:00

A couple of you have commented that I seem sad and lonely in my last two posts. I'm not really that sad all the time. I just save my blog posting for nights when Seth is gone. After a day of chasing Boogaloo around, a dinner of leftovers, and an absence of husband to look forward to at night, the blog gets me at my lowest, and so do you.

I confess that for whatever reason, I've been awfully tired these past couple of weeks. I blame the receding sun, the activity level of my two-year-old, and the constant presence of political ads. Seth called from the boat tonight to tell me that he will have to work tomorrow morning, so instead of sitting in church together as a family, I'll come home to my exhausted husband at lunch time for the third Sunday in a row. After he hung up, I was so miffed that I just had to get out of the house, so Boogaloo and I went for a walk between rain showers to admire the puddles and jump in the leaves. Our perpetual canopy of cloud and rain have only just set in on us for the year. The last month has been absolutely gorgeous. We've had sunshine nearly every day and the fall colors have been spectacular. I've only just noticed the colors this fall. The last few years I've been disposed to complain because we really don't have enough red near our house, only dingy yellows with brown edges. This year, as the dark clouds rolled in, I noticed that a yellow tree can really light up a skyline. In fact it can positively eminate energy. On a cloudy day, surrounded by dark conifers, a red deciduous tree is a torch (this picture comes from the Catholic church parking lot), and a yellow one is a veritable sunbeam (this one is in our neighbor's yard). The tree in the background of this picture has been my saving grace these past few weeks. It really cheers me up when the rest of life gets me down. Every day, I pull into my driveway and drink in this radiant bundle of leaves. It acts like a sun on a stick. My eyes get wider, my pulse gets slower, and I take a deep breath every time I see it. As the weeks go by, it gets progressively brighter, bolder, and redder, even as the leaves get fewer. I wish I knew what kind of tree it is. When I get to a house I expect to stay in, I'm going to plant several.

I wonder if autumn foliage could really serve as sunshine during the fall. Does the eye respond to color like the eye responds to sunshine? Could autumn foliage lessen the effects of Seasonal Affect Disorder? Could the brain process the colors of leaves into more seratonin during these winter months? Light therapy, the most common treatment for S.A.D., involves sitting near an intense light and absorbing light through the eyes (don't look directly at the bulb). A tree in autumn foliage reflects more light than its greener counterparts or a cloudy sky.

Who knows? It would be interesting to find out whether places with brilliant autumn colors have fewer or briefer episodes of Seasonal Affect Disorder and depression, all other things being equal. Perhaps that's why we enjoy looking at autumn leaves so much. We get back some of the sunlight that has been stored in them.

Other kinds of trees I'd dearly like to plant include maple sycamores and poplars. They are the sources of our most brilliant colors around here. Near the highway, where the conifers have been cut back and let other trees in, is one of the most spectacular autumn sights I have ever seen. I would back my trees against Vermont or New Hampshire or any other place that is famous for its trees. We have maples, maple sycamores, birches and beeches, all breaking through the deep green branches of firs and lighting up an otherwise dismal charcoal-colored sky, and occasionally a vibrant golden poplar towers above them all. I love driving up the 3 to Poulsbo every week, but alas, I can't share the feeling with you because there's no place to pull over and take a picture, and I wouldn't expect to capture it if I could. Some things just have to be seen for themselves.

Facing Change.

2010-10-09T12:22:00.000-07:00

The other day, as we were driving to church, my husband turned to me and said, "As you might have figured out, I actually like change." The context for his statement was a loop the Navy had thrown at us. Seth is set to separate from the Navy toward the end of next summer. The Navy had decided, for various reasons and purposes, that it might possibly separate him at the end of this fall. The key words were "might possibly." The military doesn't deal in definites, at least not in advance.

Seth was excited. When the personnel people told him that he might no longer be 2nd class Petty Officer Atsma by Christmas time, he immediately began thinking about what his new job would be like. He began picturing himself tearing down nuclear reactors at the Hanford Nuclear Reserve or flying out to Hawaii to fix submarines and coming home within a week or writing software for the healthcare industry in Madison, Wisconsin. He saw only possibilities. Okay, that's not entirely fair. He saw difficulties too, but for him the possibilities easily overwhelmed the difficulties, questions, and confusions. He was confident that everything would work out. He always is.

I saw things differently. I could see his possibilities, and I like them, but the most present thought in my mind was "What do I do now, and what should I do first?". I could see a million obstacles between how things are for us now and how things will be when the Lord provides. We have a house which we just re-sided and refinanced. Said house is not ready for sale; it needs new paint in almost every room and cleaning of every carpet. Because of said residing, we have no savings to speak of either. We have no job at the present. We will have neither health nor life insurance once we separate, and we have no experience finding health or life insurance either. The Navy took care of that. This is what I saw in my mind when Seth came home and said, "Oh, by the way, Love, the Navy told me today that they might let me go at the end of November."

I think my panic disturbed him a little. In his mind, he takes care of the necessary, and God takes it where He wants to go. So he put his resume out on job engines and began applying to the few jobs in his field in our area. He was completely calm about the whole thing, but the whole time, my mind was racing, and in spite of a strong sense that God was going to work everything out smoothly, I couldn't help but say to myself "What if . . . . what if . . . . what if . . . ?" I wasn't questioning Seth's ability to get a job or his competence in taking care of our family, but let's face it, there are a lot of people like us out of work right now. These are frightening times, and I respond to those fears more than he does. I think he understood that that's all I was doing, but I could also see that he was hurt that I couldn't join in his excitement at the prospect of something new.

Remember premarital counseling, when you both sit down with the pastor who is going to marry you, and he goes through all the questions that help you figure you if your marriage is going to last. (My pre-marital counseling sessions were conference calls. That's what happens when one's fiance is in the Navy.) Our pastor asked us questions about spirituality, our relationships with God, marital headship, love languages, attraction, money, and expectations in life. No one thought to ask, "How do you approach change? Are you comfortable with the way your spouse approaches change?" I wish he had. It's an important question, a question that should be thought out ahead of time. A time of big change is a time of big stress and uncertainty. It is not the time that someone wants to be blindsided by systemic marital misunderstanding.

Seth and I were prepared for it for a disparity of feelings on this subject. If the Navy has taught us nothing else, it has taught us to be open with each other about our feelings in trying situations. They've pulled premature separation on us before, but never with this much probability that it would actually happen. I know that Seth has been looking forward to civilian life almost as long as he's worn a uniform, and he knows that I would rather put up with anything than face uncertainty. But I can face when I remember that Seth is by my side, and God has us both in a very strong grip. And Seth can put up with a few more months in the Navy for the sake of my sense of security.

As it turns out, the Navy has decided that it will keep Seth until the end of his enlistment. I could see that he was disappointed. He comforted himself by saying that at least he'll be able to go to Guam and eat at his favorite restaurant one last time. Poor comfort to a man who thought he'd be a civilian in a few weeks, but he hid his disappointment for me. As for me, I did my darndest to look less relieved than I felt, but I don't think I was very convincing. I know that sooner or later separation will come, and it will probably come smoothly, but I'd like time to meet it. We still expect to get out in August, and until then, life goes on. After that, well, life will go on too, and somewhere deep inside of me, I'm learning to be okay with that.

Peter Rabbit

2010-08-21T10:26:00.000-07:00

Annika's first encounter with a live rabbit happened while we were camping in the Olympic rainforest.

Late again.

2010-06-20T17:35:00.000-07:00

I meant to publish this post on Fathers' Day. Seth was supposed to get them before he left the Philippines in June. That' s how long these pictures have been sitting in blogger saying, "Post me, post me." But between personal projects, VBS, and homecomings, I just haven't had the time. So it follows that some of these are pictures only a father (or grandparent) could love. However, I flatter myself that they're all pretty darn cute.

It is summer, and so we spend a lot of time in the water up here. Annika prefers the bathtub because she doesn't have to wear clothes in it.

We have a swimming pool too, but everytime she gets in it, . . .she thinks she has to strip. Check out how nasty that water is, and she's willing to be naked in it. It never fails but that she gets in the pool and takes the clothes off. I suppose I should be thankful. It cuts down on laundry. And she evidently thinks that swimsuits have other purposes.

Laundry basket boat. We've all done this at some point or another.

First pigtails to stay in. They lasted fifteen whole minutes! But then she figured them out, and now she won't let me anywhere near her if I have a hairbrush in my hands. Our favorite sport: table climbing. The quilt I'm working on. There was a point when I thought quilting was the apex of domestic activity, way above the level of a part-time domestic diva like me. The truth is, it's not as hard as I thought it would be. I now have the top pieced, and I am beginning to quilt the whole thing together. I'm quilting by hand, which is a little tedious but also somewhat addictive, like crocheting.

Making Ernie ride the horsey. Boy, she got a kick out of that.

Annika singing along to Veggie Tales. You have to listen closely.

That's about all for now. Seth is home, and when I post next, I will include some pictures of our aborted camping trip.

Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob!

2010-06-05T18:44:00.000-07:00

Annika has discovered Veggie Tales. Or rather, I got her three Veggie Tale dvds, little dreaming how quickly she would take to them. I always promised myself that I wasn't going to be one of those moms who inculcate my children with imaginary role models (are there any moms out there who do it on purpose?) like Disney princesses or Dora the explorer. No fancy character bedspreads. No "Cinderella teaches the ABCs." My kids were going to develop their own personalities. Well, her personality likes Bob the tomato.

For those of you not familiar with Christian children's media ( I don't think there are many among my audience, but you never know), Bob the Tomato is a computer animated tomato who translates Bible stories into cartoons starring other computer animated vegetables like Larry the Cucumber, Jr. Asparagus, Dr. Archibald Asparagus, Jimmy and Jerry Gourd, and the Grapes of Wrath. I was in high school when VeggieTales first came out, and it was so quirky that they let us watch it in chapel even though it was aimed at a much younger age group (in some respects at least).

Every morning, after breakfast, while I'm getting the day ready, I put in a VeggieTale. She asks for them by name. "Mommy, Tales." And she sits on the chair in front of the computer until the video is done. She sings the theme song. "If you like to talk to tomatoes. . ." "Matoes." "If a squash can make you smile. . ." "Smile." I got her on tape. And when I turn it off, she gets really upset and yells "Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob,Bob." This morning, when I turned it off, she wouldn't be happy until I drew her her own Bob and Larry. And she named them. "Bob" and "Laiye." I think we might have to follow up on this trend. Just a cute picture.

Pinewood Derby results: pathetic.It went all of eight feet. It didn't even get off the curved part of the track where the cars build up gravity. Not that I competed. The adults didn't compete. We had our own races while the results were being tallied. Pastor Dave made a big announcement about how I'd always wanted to build a car and this was my big opportunity. And my car went eight feet.

We've had a lot of rain here lately, so much rain that our wading pool is full, and I never turned on the hose. Annika loves water and has no regard for temperature, so yesterday we went outside, and she played in the pool. Then she discovered that she was wet and took off her shorts and diaper. So I convinced her to put on a swimsuit. Doesn't she look like an aerobics instructor from the 80s?

That's about all for now. We haven't heard from Seth lately, but we assume all is well. God bless everybody.

A dream deferred.

2010-05-16T19:34:00.000-07:00

I really shouldn't abuse the record of serious experiences that give rise to good poetry by comparing them to trivial things like that which follows, but this month, I've gotten to do something that I've wanted to do since childhood, something that I'd almost given up on. I have the opportunity to build a pinewood derby car. Pinewood derby cars are blocks of wood that contestants carve and paint to resemble cars, usually race cars. Contestants compete by rolling them down a wooden track. The cars are powered solely by gravity, kind of like small soap box derby cars. Boy Scouts and other kids' clubs hold annual races, and some of the competition can get quite fierce.

When I was a kid, only the boys got to build pinewood derby cars. The kids at my churches went either to Cadets (Calvinist Cadet Corp) or G.E.M.S. (Girls Everywhere Meeting the Savior/ Calvinettes). The Cadets got to make pinewood derby cars. The Calvinettes got to decorate cakes and learn things like counted cross-stitch, an activity I abhor to this day. I never quite forgave the Cadets for learning to make derby cars and operate saws and tie cool knots.

It just didn't seem fair. But my current church takes a more liberated view. Both the boys and the girls get to participate in the pinewood derby event. And this year, so do the adults. My pastor overheard me griping (note to self: don't gripe around the pastor; he might take steps to rectify the situation, and then you have to do something. ) that I'd never been allowed to make a car, so he said, "Why don't you make a car?" So now I'm making a pinewood derby car. My car is modeled on my real car. I designed it and cut it out myself. It's big and boxy and painted gold. I don't really have a convertible, as shown above, but I had to make this car a convertible because it already had part of it removed. You can see the seat and the soft top and the inside of the windshield from this angle. I haven't put in the details yet. Those will come later when I have more colors of paint. Wheels and axels will be stuck in those little slots that you can barely see, and it will fly down the course. At least I hope it will. I'll post pictures of the completed car before the competition.

Lots of pictures.

2010-05-16T18:21:00.000-07:00

I want to get these out quickly so Seth can download them. We just went to my parents' house for a week, so we had lots of picture opportunities.

My dad loves tigers. He has two that are just Boogaloo's size. She took them everywhere. The activity of choice for the weekend was planting. Dad made Boogaloo a sandbox which thrilled her to no end. Boogaloo learns that marker can flavor tea (that's what's in the bottle). That's not jam. That's ink. Some of the gorgeous skies over my parents' house over the weekend. I love watching the storms roll through the Valley because the sky is so broad that you can really watch them roll through. Boogaloo running through the sprinkler. Boogaloo discovers hiding. She thinks that if she can't see us, we can't see her. Boogaloo and Auntie Abby coloring (and wedding planning). Boogaloo in her own sunhat in our backyard.

Boogaloo with her umbrella and her kitty in our backyard. She doesn't like umbrellas for rain, but she likes them for sun.

Hat and pjs.

What shall I call this post?

2010-04-29T18:54:00.000-07:00

My head isn't working especially smoothly this evening, but it's been a wonderful day, and it's also been a while since the grandparents got any new Boogaloo pictures. I haven't really had time to take pictures lately, but when I realized that we had gone two whole weeks without a single picture taken, I grabbed the camera and made some time. After all, Daddy is counting on a continuous stream of information about his little girl.

Today was so gorgeous that we actually went outside without coats. Boogaloo, being at an age where it doesn't matter what one wears, also went outside without pants. She was, however, careful to take her sun hat, and when she dropped it and I put it away, she took mine.
She really loves my hat and her Sunday shoes.

Boogaloo is at an age where she's very interested in nature. She's beginning to distinguish between birds and butterflies. She recognizes bees and their distant cousins. And she picks flowers, which she calls "wishes." A little friend got her started on that. They began with dandelions, which, as you know, will grant you a wish if you blow all their seeds off in one try. Soon Boogaloo was pulling the heads off all the dandelions in my yard, and I encouraged her. After all, if they have no heads, they can't reproduce. But now all flowers are becoming wishes. The California poppies by the mailbox are no longer safe, and today she picked part of my bleeding heart. I can see that I'm going to have to reinforce the arbitrary distinction between plant and weed.

And here is a special bit for Daddy who is away from us right now. Love you, Love.

Chin Up, People.

2010-04-11T18:31:00.000-07:00

We're happy again. After a deep breath and an excellent sermon at church, I can tell you that things are picking up since my last post. Annika is healing, and I haven't forgotten to do anything absolutely or even marginally essential. Actually, apart from the stress of sudden injuries and the frustration of figuring out how to organize my life without my husband in it, I'm doing pretty well. Fatigued, yes, but no tears. I might just be successfully hiding from his absence in my mind, but I'm more inclined to say that God is supporting me through the prayers of my friends and family, so thank you. Your prayers make a world of difference.

We have had gorgeous weather the last few days. The clouds seem to be coming back in now, so I guess I can expect more rain soon, but we had fun while it lasted. The air was so warm that I mowed the lawn and hung laundry on the line. Boogaloo got to play with the neighbors, and we went to the park today and played on the slide.

She is also learning to ride her "bike" (pictured below). She hasn't quite figured out where to put her feet, but she has the general idea of forward motion. We took it to the park today, and she got so jealous when friend Isi tried to ride it. I can see that we're going to have to arrange more opportunities for her to play with kids her own age so we can get this idea of sharing into her experience.

Today, Pastor Dave preached on the book of James, chapter 1 in light of 2 Corinthians 3: 3-6. The gist of what he said was that the goal of the Christian life is to become a mature Christian so in tune with the will and approval of God that the externals and internals that would tempt us no longer move us. The way we become mature is through perseverance. In other words, we come to a tempting circumstance, we ask God what we should do, we get an answer (because God gives wisdom freely and without reproach), and then we DO what He said. Perserverance lies in sticking to what God said until the tempting circumstance has passed instead of giving in halfway through.

I don't know about you, but that's where I have my difficulty. I can spot the temptation easily enough because I'm very familiar with it, and I'm usually pretty clear on how God wants me to respond to it because he always asks for the same thing. But there's this little glitch in my brain that says, "But these are special circumstances" or "It's just a test, so this isn't really sinning" or "You've been doing this so long that it's really more a part of your personality than an actual sin," and I give up on my good intentions or my personal disciplines before I can really get rolling. No perseverance, no maturity. I end up getting shaped by the world instead of the other way around.

Some of my friends will read this and say, "Really, Jenn, what's your greatest vice? Too much chocolate before you go to bed?" To which I say, small sins can be just as destructive as big ones, and internal sins like attitudes are the quickest road to hell. Does it really matter what the sin is if it keeps me from maturity?

My biggest vice is probably discontentment, which, contrary to what society would have you believe, is a sin on the level of rebellion. The circumstances in front of me are given to me by God who only gives GOOD gifts, so they must be for my benefit. That's not a platitude; that's a fact. I like to imagine myself away from my reality. Sometimes I'm reaching for a way to express truths that can't be fathomed in mundane life, but most of the time, I'm just discontent with myself, with my life, with my sphere of influence. I'm an escapist. How unReformed, how unDordtish, how unworthy of a student of true Christian fantasy is that? :) I could make excuse and say that my life is emotionally stressful, but really, whose isn't? I like to put unreasonable expectations on my circumstances, and by extrapolation God, and then zip off into my own little world when my expectations aren't met. Never mind how sinful. How childish.

Pastor Dave said that the trials that we are to consider pure joy are internal trials. The trial doesn't lie in the fact that we've lost a job or a foot or a husband (temporarily). The trial lies in how we respond to it. Our character is tested and revealed by the attitude and action in our response. We get to see all the little bumps and obstacles that our broken beings have put in the way of progress toward maturity. That's where perserverance comes in. We have to 1) continue to see the situation as God sees it, and 2) continue to do what God wants us to do. I respectfully submit that if you don't know how hard that is, then you haven't really tried or you haven't tackled your biggest vices yet.

I found the sermon bolstering in some of the struggles I've been facing, so I thought I would pass it on. It sort of slapped me in the face and said, "You've been compromising, kiddo. It's time to stop. You're going to need everything you have to be the wife and mother you need to be over these next few months. You can't afford to slip away into murky nether realms." Taming this inner tide isn't going to be easy. But God gives us competence that we wouldn't otherwise have (2 Cor. 3:5), and the safety net of grace when we have neither the wisdom nor the perseverance (1 John 1:9), and the road will eventually be clear in front of me. That's worthy of a big smile. I think I'll post one.

Love to you all. Good night.

well, he's gone. again.

2010-04-06T21:26:00.001-07:00

Yup, we have started another deployment. With the Lord's provision, this is the second-to-last time that I will have to drive my husband to the base and kiss him goodbye with tears in my eyes. This one's going to be a little longer than usual, but we're almost done. Nothing short of WWIII could convince my husband to stay in the Navy past his due, and I'm starting to agree with him.

For one thing, raising a toddler by oneself is not fun. Boogaloo didn't even wait a day to prove the old Navy maxim "It always happens when the guys are away." She fell off my lap and sprained her shoulder this evening. Now she's resting under the influence of Tylenol, and I'm winding down before I go to bed, anticipating being up at least twice to redrug her. And no one to relieve me tomorrow when I get tired.

And for another thing, I think Boogaloo is beginning to register his absences. She's been out of sorts all day, even before she fell. I let the dog out at naptime, and she thought the squeaky door was daddy coming home. She wanted daddy when mommy was mean enough to make her lie still for x-rays. Daddy could make the owie go away. But daddy's gone. That means she had to snuggle with me, and I don't get anyone to snuggle with.

The morning show I was listening to this morning asked people to describe the last time they had cried. I thought that was fitting then, and I think it more so now. I'd feel a lot better if I could just muster the tears.

Good night.

The Lord has helped my unbelief!

2010-04-03T16:03:00.000-07:00

This is so cool. About three days ago, I got an email request to pray for the young lady mentioned below. I was in one of those "I will believe that God answers prayer even though I don't feel like I believe it" modes, so I prayed every time I looked at my email inbox and saw her name. And God Answered. Check it out.

----- Original Message -----
From: Tom Pinkham
Sent: Saturday, April 03, 2010 6:23 AM
Subject: Miracle!
Dear Friends,

I have a wonderful story to tell you. On Saturday March 20, Lauren, who is about 20 and a friend of Missy our granddaughter, was skateboarding way too fast without a helmet. She crashed and suffered some internal organ damage, but mostly damaged her brain. She lives on the Peninsula so was airlifted to downtown Seattle where she underwent 2 brain surgeries to relieve the pressure from bleeding. Shannon, our daughter, stayed with Lauren’s mom that night and most of the next day. Lauren’s dad was on a sub in the Caribbean and just happened to call that evening. When I heard of this I was just leaving a church service, so I grabbed a couple pastors and we prayed. Then I called my healing room buddies to pray also. Lynda is of course calling every one she knows to pray too.

The brain surgeries where successful in removing the pressure, but she was on life support for a couple of days. Then she opened her eyes and was making some sign of contact but only with people she knew. Then, about Tuesday, the progress stopped. The MRI showed that she had brain sheer. That means your brain got shaken VERY hard and in her situation, the center of the brain was severely damaged, synapses broken everywhere. This is the section of the brain that controls all your vital functions. This much damage usually results in the brain actually dying. The Doctors said that if she did not show signs of recovery by Friday the 25th, yesterday, they were going to ship her to a nursing home. No point in even trying rehab! So needless to say we were all praying for a miracle, that the synapses would reconnect. Well this is the text that I got from Shannon last evening.

“Major breakthrough with Lauren!!! She was given a 25% chance of coming out of a vegetative state yesterday, they told her family that she was not a rehab candidate and to make plans for nursing home care. They said that if she does not make intentional movements by today (Friday), off to the nursing home.

Next Text: “Today she has: hugged her father, high-fived an RN and her Dad, grabbed her Dads guitar out of his hands and strummed it with cueing and assistance!!! She grabbed a flower out of her Moms hand, and she pulled off her glove (wears to protect her) and pulled her legs up to sit cross legged, scooted herself up in her bed!!!

Miracle…absolute miracle!!! Keep praying!!! It works….”

HAVE A GLORIOUS EASTER!

Tom Pinkham

In preparation for our separation

2010-03-31T15:52:00.000-07:00

Man, it's been a busy week. Not only did I manage to post yesterday, but we've also been running around getting ready for Good Friday and Easter at church and Seth's next deployment (dates to remain secret until after the fact). Our friend Michele is moving to a house with a fenced yard and a better landlord. And of course we have a two year old who continues to grow and require adjustments. We're recovering from colds, starting spring sprucing and a little bit of gardening, and doing massive home improvements. This is Boogaloo trying to fasten her own shoe while I pull weeds in our kitchen garden.
This is me having fun with my scant knowledge of the principles of photography.

By far our biggest news is that we have new siding on our house. Our house is no longer mint-chocolate chip. It is now Harbor Blue with Cape Cod Gray trim. We still have a few ends to patch up, like the porch cover, the shed, and the gutters, but I can do most of that on my own. All the browns will be covered over eventually, the cement patched back up, and the pictures rehung on the walls. We also got new lamps for the two porches which Seth is installing as I type. We are thrilled with the result. It cost a bit more than we were expecting, but at the same time, it cost a whole lot less than it could have. And it adds a bit more color to an otherwise white and gray neighborhood.

In smaller terms, Boogaloo moved from her crib to her big girl bed today. We ordered the bed weeks ago, and it finally arrived today. I was expecting a little trepidation, but she was excited from the moment we started pulling pieces out of the box. She's taking a nap on her new bed right now. She loves the sheets. She loves the drawers. She especially loves the fact that she can slide right out of it. However, we are going to have to get her a little step-stool because she can't climb back in.

Also in preparation for his leaving, Seth and I kinda went out on a limb and got tattooes. Nothing extravagant. They don't even match. I got a small bird on my back right between my hips, and Seth got a cursive J (for me :) )with a mermaid curled around it on his left shoulder. I designed it myself. At the moment, blogger won't let me upload the pictures. ("Internet Explorer cannot display this website."), and Seth won't let me post his anyway, but I will put mine up as soon as the Internet cooperates.

There it is. Isn't it pretty? I just love the color. I can't wait until I can take the bandage off for good. It keeps catching the waistband of my jeans, and it's driving me crazy. I chose the bird firstly because it was beautiful. Then there are connections with the Holy Spirit and birds flying home to nest (would that it were so). A bird can carry my heart to him and his heart to me when the long lengths of sea lay between us.

I've always worried that I would regret getting a tattoo, especially one that didn't have mega-mundo meaning, but it's not like I thought it was. This is private enough. Seth is the only one who's is going to see it on a regular basis. It has enough symbolism that I can appreciate it for a long time, it's tame enough that I won't be embarrassed by it in front of my kids in twenty years, and it's not something I'm going to regret later. In short, I kinda like it.

Boogaloo turns 2.

2010-03-19T10:00:00.000-07:00

Well, our favorite angel turned two this past month. Funny the difference a year can make. Whereas last year, she was awkward and astonished and didn't really know what was going on at her own birthday party, this year she really understood that it was all about her. She was a little shaky on the cake. Daddy had to blow out the candles, of course, but she knew that it was cake, and cake is good. And I think she enjoyed the process. The weekend after her birthday, my parents came over, and we all went to the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium. Boogaloo loved every minute of it. For starters, we had more cake. It was also a gorgeous day, one of the first nice days we've had all year. She got to pick out her own clothes, she got to ride in the car, and she got to see "manmals." Point Defiance Zoo and Acquarium isn't a big zoo. It's in Tacoma, which is a city of average size but isn't the population center, that being Seattle. The zoo and acquarium are part of a private park belonging to the city, and so they make up in uniqueness and beauty what they lack in size. This is the view from the entrance. The PDZA has been part of several reclamation projects like the red wolf and the Asian elephant. It has walruses, sharks, a tiger, sea otters and river otters, injured birds, Asian creatures, elephants, seals, native fish, exotic fish, ugly fish, and just about every variety of sea horses imaginable. This is our friend, the tiger.

This is Annika and myself in the kids' exhibit looking at the snakes. This is Annika refusing to pose for the camera. "Annika, look at the camera. Look at mommy."

This is Boogaloo finally consenting to look at something, in this case, meerkats. Sea ottersBoogaloo and daddy looking at the monkey. Boogaloo and mommy looking at the fish. "Sharfs and sishies"After we got home from the zoo, Boogaloo opened her presents from mommy and daddy and grandpa and grandma. Last year, we had to open her presents for her. This year, she knew those presents were hers. She jumped right into them. And much to mommy's delight, she liked them. Look at that expression. She promptly christened the dog "Max." Then we all went out for dinner and a happy end to the day. Boy, can't you tell she's in charge.

Tired of being at the mercy of the constitution of my drying rack.

2010-03-19T09:09:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was officially the first day of spring, because yesterday was the first day that we had enough sunshine to justify putting a load of laundry on the clothesline. It was only 40 degrees F at 10 am when I put the clothes out, but it was nearly 60 when they were dry by the end of the afternoon. That is the epitome of a bright spring day in Washington. (The epitome of a dark spring day is when I look out the window and see blurred images through a sheet of sideways water flowing down.)

So the Boo and I got some outdoor time, the crazy glue on my ricky-racky got some time to set, the dryer only had to dry two loads, the environment (and my gas bill) got a bit of a break, and my neighbors were treated to the nostalgic sight of sheets and baby clothes waving in the wind. It was a really pleasant day. Boogaloo is discovering that she likes being outside, especially if we bring the bubbles outside with us. We don't actually have to blow bubbles, but the bubble container must come outside with us. She has a new soccer ball, and she has rigged leashes around the necks of her two stuffed dogs so they can follow her wherever she goes. She even helps me pick up the dog-do. (Don't ask.)

Getting outside yesterday felt especially good because the Boo and I have both been trapped at home with monstrous head colds. Apart from the stuff coming out of her nose, she doesn't seem to feel it, but boy do I! Fatigue, sinus headache, sore throat, everything from the collar bone upward. Why do I have to be under the weather when the weather is so nice?

January Travels.

2010-02-11T10:53:00.000-08:00

Abby has chided me for neglecting to post the pictures that I mentioned in my Christmas post. (Sigh). I'm sorry. It's been a little crazy here. 40 Days for Life started with nary a planning meeting, Boo Boo turned 2 yesterday and gets more active every day, and I'm still trying to balance having a husband home with the needs of everything else. (Exactly how much time with him am I allowed to steal for myself, and does his helpful presence make up for it?)

So these are the pictures from our trips to Mt. Rainier and the Olympic Penninsula that we took during Seth's January stand down. They are not in order. They have no captions. The snowy pictures are from Mt. Rainier. The pictures with ocean in them are from the Olympic Peninsula. Once again, I assert that I live in the most beautiful place in the world. I hope you enjoy.

The horrible thing about having a husband in the Navy is that he's gone for at least six months out of every year, but the corresponding silver lining is that when he gets back, he often gets a lot of time off, like the whole month of January.

Pictures of Christmas.

2010-01-04T16:03:00.000-08:00

Okay, since I flatly refuse to publish pictures from January before I publish pictures from December, here is our Christmas vacation. The Boo and I went to my parents' house, and the whole family was there.

Is there a better time of year than Christmas for taking cute pictures? This Christmas the Boo and I headed to my parents' house, which is much bigger than our house and has steps, goggs, meows, and fishies. There were lots of newly accessible things for the Boo to explore, and she did so with gusto. My parents thought they had childproofed the house, but it wasn't really. Not to a two year old. Not when great-grandma's china is in the lower cupboard of a buffet behind the couch and china cabinet doors that have no locks. We didn't lose anything fragile, thank the Lord, but there were a couple of close shaves.

Luckily, there were also lots of new toys. Auntie Laura showed Boo Boo how to ride a stick horse, and Grandpa let her borrow his giant kitties. Dollie got a new set of clothes.

And so did Mommy and Annika. I think she was more happy with Dollie's new clothes.

She discovered the joys of Christmas decorations, and everyone else enjoyed the pleasure of a two year old discovering new things. They also got snow, for which I was grateful. We haven't gotten any. I know my readers in Iowa (and now the east coast) will say, "Are you crazy? Be grateful you don't have snow." I know snow can be a burden, but around here, a little snow is like a rainbow. It reminds us that the seasons do indeed change and that while the earth endures, springtime and harvest, summer and winter will never cease. Plus it makes cute pictures.

And tired babies. Good night.

videos -- because Daddy is a long way from home

2009-12-15T20:34:00.000-08:00

What would we do without the Intertnet? I promised these videos to my husband months ago, and now, Praise the Lord, he can see them.

Annika sings "This Little Light of Mine"

Annika meets more cows.

Sorry.

2009-12-11T21:03:00.000-08:00

I can't seem to keep up with my blog all of a sudden. I have a hundred cute things to post about Boo Boo, several deep thoughts, a little bit of light thought, and the beginnings of a book (to join the other twelve beginnings that have yet to turn into anything) running around in my head, but sitting down in front of the computer to actually put in the work just doesn't seem to happen very much anymore. I can remember a time when I posted every week or week and a half. I think that was a time before kids. It certainly wasn't during the Christmas season.

My little Boo is 21 months as of the first week of December, and she gets more interesting every day. For instance, today she learned to climb into the bathtub all by herself. If I had been on the ball, I would have pictures, but I was juggling laundry, dishes, and the garbage can, so I have no proof. All I have is the memory of hearing a pathetic little cry and following it into the bathroom to find my fully dressed daughter in the tub investigating the drain. "Up," she said, holding up her hands to me.

"Are you stuck?" I asked.

" 'tuck," she agreed. So I helped her out of the tub. She promptly turned around and climbed back in.

'tuck and up join her vocabulary list, which now includesdown, juice, shoes, socks, juice cup, no, no-no-no-no-no, please, mama, daddeeeeyyyy, pretty, moo, gogg, meow, cack (generic bird noise), baby, owie, ooohhhh, and num/mimi which means pacifier. She also says eat, more, please, and apple in sign language. Sometimes she gets them mixed up. "Eat" usually comes out as a "more" gesture directed up the nose because her pacifier is in her mouth. But she's learning.

We spend Thanksgiving at my in-laws dairy where Boo's greatest delight was to visit the calf barn. It's funny how cows get more skittish as they get older. These baby calves aren't even weaned yet, and they wanted to get right up close to Boo. But when we went to the next barn over, the weaned calves just watched warily. And in the barn after that, the young heifers spooked at her slightest noise.
Twilight fever was in full swing, and the friendly tension was runing high between Team Jacob and Team Edward. Note the t-shirts. Actually, I've never seen people obsess as coolly as my in-laws do. Sure, they know the books forward and backward, pick sides, establish crushes, make jewelry, and buy t-shirts, but at the end of the day, it's just fiction. I wish I could do that. As it is, I went to see New Moon with my mother- and sister-in-law and got all goose-pimply because when I have a guilty pleasure, I endure both the guilt and the pleasure. But I did enjoy the movie.
While we were at the movie, the Boo had to hang out with Pake Jaap, which was a first. She's not usually this comfortable on the laps of big, bald, bearded men. The only reason she stayed in his lap in this picture is because I refused to get up and rescue her. But my dad-in-law is great with kids, especially small ones, so they had a great time. I think he basically just let her do whatever she thought good as long as it was good. And they were good.

Annika and the cows

My little model?

2009-11-09T20:13:00.000-08:00

Goodness, what is this girl going to be? Just when I'm convinced that she's all tomboy, she reveals a girly side and insists on being dressed in dresses and hats. Today was the first day in a week that she's worn jeans, and that only happened because she was distracted from her clothes by I forget what. She's always loved posing for the camera (except for the first 6 months of her life when it scared her half to pieces), but these days, sometimes it seems like she's just showing off how cute she is.

I find her in the strangest places. This book nook is on the far side of my (and Seth's) bed. She seems to have discovered our comic book collection. Heavens, but she is her father's child.

And she's beginning to do all sorts of new things. In the last three days, I think she's added three new words and four new animal sounds: spoon, Max, and yeah; coo, bah, moo, and cac (quack). She's learned to nod and shake her head to communicate. She tells me when her diaper is wet. She begs for her Halloween candy by signing "more." She gets her own cup out of the fridge. I'm flabergasted.

She startled me last Sunday by sitting down and building a block tower. It's been at least a month since she showed interest in her blocks, but she just dumped out the blocks, sat down, and built a seven block tower. Check out this montage. One block on top of the other. That's the first time she's done that. I was worried because block building is on the 18 month checklist, but now I can see that she's not going to have any trouble with it.

Seth laments that Boo Boo always does the most growing when he's gone, and as much as I'd like to call that crazy, I really think it's true. Maybe the shift is personal attention does it. Or maybe there's just more space. Or maybe she has less distraction because Daddy isn't here to snuggle with. Whatever the reason, she seems to grow by leaps and bounds when he isn't around to see it. It's not fair, really. Here's hoping he'll be around to watch the next one grow.

Hey, I used to do that!

2009-10-31T15:18:00.000-07:00

Have you ever looked at your children and thought, "Hey, I used to do that." Well Boo Boo has been giving me those kind of moments lately. I know for a fact that I used to sit in the laundry basket with my stuffed animals, and I'm pretty sure I crawled into cupboards too. It's funny how generations seem to repeat themselves.

For instance, I've begun to notice that Boo Boo doesn't interact with other children immediately the way some children do. Instead, she waits on the sidelines with the adults, soaks up the emotions, and then gets all excited when she thinks she's figured it out and tells me all about it. That's a lot like me, all the way up through high school and beyond. And she likes to sit and draw and and be helpful and involved and explain things. And she likes to know what she's doing before she gets into anything. That's a lot like me too.So the question becomes, how do I nurture the strengths inherent in these common traits without perpetuating the common weaknesses?

I want Boo Boo to enjoy a sense of adventure in this life. I want her to do what she feels like doing, within reason, the limits of decency, and the will of God, instead of thinking, "Well, it looks like fun, but I can find reasons not to do it" like I have so often. I want her to know that fun isn't necessarily a bad thing and that it's okay to jump into things and look silly and have fun. Of course, she might not need the lesson. Just don't let me quash anything worth keeping, please Lord. Let me raise a child with constant access to joy.

Pictures for daddy.

2009-10-23T16:50:00.000-07:00

I'm quickly posting some pictures for Seth before he goes underway. The Internet is such a blessing when people have to maintain families long distance. I really marvel at how far communications have come. Just months before Seth joined the Ohio, families had to rely on things called "family grams" -- telegram like messages that only allowed fifty words including names and salutations -- and they only got eight of them per patrol. Pictures had to be sent by mail, and it was anyone's guess whether or not they would get to the sailor before he came home. Now sailors can receive emails on the boat and can download pictures and videos off the Internet when they stop at ports. Whatever ills may have come with the Internet, it is still a blessing.

These are some pictures from the last week which demonstrate how quickly Annika is growing up. Seth laments that she always seems to grow faster when he isn't around to see it, and sometimes I think he must be right. There were a whole host of things that she began doing right after he left that she'd never done before. Every time I turn around she's doing something new and grown up.

This is Annika learning about the parts of my sewing machine. She seemed to have more luck with it than I did.

Here she is trying to put her pants on all by herself. You'll notice that she's already wearing pants, and she's putting both feet in one leg. Here she is putting her dollies to bed side by side. Here she is drinking from a normal cup instead of her sippy cup (we still use the sippy cups for most things. After all, she still requires quite a bit of attention with a cup like this one). Here she is reading a book to me. And now she's illustrating something for clearer understanding (my little teacher). These are pictures from my church's Harvest (Halloween) party. My pastor's wife came as a musketeer. She's really the only picture I can post (besides myself) because only one other grown-up came dressed up (her husband Dave in matching costume), and I didn't get a good picture of him. Kudos to Nancy who outdid me in level of costuming. May the creative spirit never die. I went as a gypsy, and Boo Boo is a clown without make up. I actually bought the make up to make her a clown, but I don't think she'd have put up with that that night. It was hard enough keeping the hat on her. Seth wanted a fuller picture of my costume, but this is the best I could do. I guess I'll have to put it on again for his benefit when he gets home. :) I learned that elaborate costumes and small children just don't mix. By the end of the evening, half of the jewelry and all of the scarves were deposited in various places around the room I was working in. Saddening. I like elaborate costumes. Maybe I should go out for community theatre, like my sister. Wouldn't I fit right in with Fiddler on the Roof?

More quickly this time.

2009-10-20T15:12:00.000-07:00

More pictures, and this time I won't make you wait three months for them. I am forcing myself to sit still long enough to post some more pictures of Boo Boo and our activities over this summer and fall. Whenever Seth goes out, I get too restless for my own good, so I don't know how much explanation you'll get. Plus Boo Boo isn't feeling well. Have you ever tried to type with a grumpy baby on your lap?

If you can read Seth's hat, you know his current location. And when Daddy's away, I always like to post as many pictures as possible so he can put them on his computer. He was here for most of these pictures, but that doesn't mean he has these pictures, so have fun, Love.

About a month after we got done dodging raindrops at Ft. Flagler, we finally fulfilled one of Seth's persistent ambitions and got our whole family down to Mt. Angel's Oktoberfest. Of course, Boo Boo was happy just to be back on the farm again, but Seth and I were excited for the festival.

Mt. Angel, Oregon, the town where Seth grew up, was founded by immigrants from Angelburg, Germany, and the town has maintained close connections with its roots. Angelburg Cathedral fostered the Mt. Angel Abbey, one of the few active abbey's in the US. Most of the buildings and businesses have Bavarian architecture. And once a year, the town really goes Bavarian for Oktoberfest. So many people come in for Oktoberfest that this town of 3,000 swells to 10,000 for one weekend (or so they say). Every Knights of Columbus organization in western Oregon comes in to sell sausage. The police cadets are called out to direct traffic. Men don their leiderhosen; women their patterned skirts and peasant tops; even teenagers get into Bavarian costume. It's a big toodoo.

Of course, one of the main attractions at Oktoberfest (for us anyway) was Seth's uncle Arthur and his magic show. Arthur proudly boasts that he is the only Atsma boy who has never owned a cow. Instead he performs, both in magic and in music (http://www.atsmagic.com/). We love Uncle Arthur's shows, and he's always at Oktoberfest. They fly him in from Georgia. So we had to go see Uncle Arthur. This is one of Uncle Arthur's tricks. This is Boo Boo, enthralled with whatever trick Uncle Arthur is doing. Oktoberfest also has tons of booths where people can find the Bavarian spirit people never knew they had. I'm not Bavarian. I'm not even German. But I found that I just had to have a head wreath. I don't like to do a lot of shopping at carnivals because they tend to cost more money than stores, but there are some things you can only find at a streetfair. Boo Boo doesn't like to shop at carnivals period, especially not if she's expected to wear her cow leash. Such a sad face! Back into the stroller, I guess.

Being third generation in the dairy business, Lydia and Alice end up serving ice cream to Oktoberfesters every year. This year, Alice is the Marion County Dairy Princess (Last year, it was Lydia.), so we just had to stop and get our picture taken with the aunties.

All in all, I can highly recommend Oktoberfest. Come check it out sometime.

This past week, we took a trip to see my folks in eastern Washington. There were no town festivals waiting for us there (which I think is a pity. If you can't celebrate apple harvest, what can you celebrate?), but there were lots of apples. Sunnyside was expecting an early frost, so the orchardists were more than willing to have us come out and glean a few boxes of apples that otherwise would have gone to waste. For those who don't know, gleaning is going through a crop after it has been harvested to pick up whatever happens to be lying around. Most apple orchards get picked twice through by professional pickers to catch the apples that ripen early and the apples that ripen late. Because of the frost, they had only had a chance to get one picking in, so we found lots of apples.

These pictures are off my cell phone, so please pardon the focus. Here is Boo Boo with Grandpa eating apples in the orchard.

Here is Boo Boo picking her first apple. (I gave her the one in her hand.) She started out enjoying herself, but after about an hour of trying to walk on squishy, roly poly apples while wearing galoshes, she decided that she'd had enough. In that time, we managed to gather about twenty gallons of apples.

Boo Boo also discovered rocking chairs while she was at Grandpa and Grandma's. She sat in this chair for fifteen minutes at a time singing, "rock, rock, rock, rock." Ain't she cute?

Ooops. Sorry

2009-08-25T14:24:00.000-07:00

Well, I guess I can no longer complain about those friends of mine who never update their blogs. July! Yikes.

In my defense, it's been a crazy couple of months. Our local pro-life organization decided to sponsor another 40 Days for Life campaign with only a month of prep time. I started applying to school districts to get back into the subbing game. Annika is growing like a weed and requires all the attention that a growing child requires. And Seth has been getting ready to leave. He departed Wednesday morning, and we departed Thursday afternoon. I'm at my folks' place right now, and I must say I am enjoying the forced "inactivity."

There are all kinds of things that I love about my parents' house, but unfortunately, I forgot my camera on my kitchen table, so you don't get to see any of those beloved things. No pictures of the harvesters or the laden grape vines. No pictures of Boo Boo gleaning her first apple. No pictures of Boo Boo pulling a toy cat out of the toybox and saying "Kitty." Those are on my cell phone, and I don't know how to get them off yet.

These pictures are of the end of summer, and they've been on my blog since August. Most of them are of us at Fort Flagler, a small state park on a government preserve in the middle of Hood Canal. Our church goes there for our annual campout, and since Seth was home this year, we went too.

This is our campsite. It poured buckets the first day and a half that we were there, but the trees kept us dry. The rest of our church was down by the beach where there are no trees. They got really wet. We just had to dry out our sleeping bags a little after the trip up. This is our beach, where the rest of the church was camped. Notice that the sky is blue, proof that even here the sun has to shine once in a while. Further proof, if you needed it. Seth took a number of sunset pictures while we were there.

Boo Boo discovered that she likes slides and staircases. She actually went down this slide herself once.

But most of the time she wanted help.

As the name suggests, Fort Flagler was once a military installation, and what is a military installation without big guns. The Fort saw action during WWI & II, and still has a some active duty people stationed in part of it, though most of the old housing is rented out to vacationers or used by scientists studying wildlife and water flow.

This is Seth pretending to be a WWI gunner.

This is Boo Boo looking at the geese in the observation pond. She was quite taken with the geese.

And finally a random Boo Boo picture. She set up these animals on the couch, and the opportunity was just too much to pass up. My little living doll. :)

Maybe next time I'll have some current pictures for you. :)

Hot and sticky.

2009-07-27T08:39:00.000-07:00

If you've been reading the headlines beyond Obama's healthcare reforms, Michael Jackson's kids, and further protests in Iran, you might have noticed that it's hot here in the Pacific Northwest. Really, really hot. These are the two weeks that happen every year just to make the residents of Western Washington wish that buying an air conditioning unit was justified by the rest of the year. People go swimming and shopping in record numbers at this time in July every year, but this year has been exceptional! We posted the hottest temperature ever in Bremerton yesterday (102 farenheit, I believe), and there are no fans to be had on the Kitsap Peninsula, either for love or money. We know. We've looked.

Now there are still ways to beat the heat, even in places like Bremerton where heat comes only once a year. One way is to sit in one's house wearing as little as possible. Boo Boo loves this. She would go around in her diaper all day in the dead of winter if we let her. Note the Broncos hat. She did that herself. This past weekend, Silverdale, the little commercial town to the north of us, celebrated Whaling Days. We hadn't been to Whaling Days yet, even though we've been here for four years, so we decided to take a shot at it. We braved the heat to catch the last part of the parade and some of the street festival.

These people are our Parks and Rec department. Aren't those cars the coolest?

This is the Mustang Club. I got a lecture from Seth about why the 1980s Mustangs are inferior to any other decade, and I'm inclined to agree. This is a classic Mustang, and as Seth says, it could go through a brick wall and look good doing it.

Chico Towing. And a little something for all my caffeine addicts out there. If you can't read it, the side of the ambulance says "Mocha Medics and the Caffeine Emergency Response Unit." Pretty neat.

Sunday evening, Seth and I decided that we couldn't stand being in a hot house anymore, so we packed up the Boo Boo and ventured down to Guillemot Cove Wildlife Preserve, one of my favorite places in the world. The cove itself was still easily 90 degrees, but to get to the cove one has to walk under nearly a mile of densely wooded wildlife refuge which was easily 15 degrees cooler. Plus the cove is one of the most beautful places I've ever seen, and Boo Boo had never been there. She loved it almost as much as I do.

She discovered fir cones.

Quick, name that movie.

Seth taught Boo Boo to throw rocks in such a way that they would go forward into the water.

But until the heat goes down again, we're just going to hang out indoors. So Boo Boo and I say a cheerful farewell.

Here we go again!

2009-07-21T12:35:00.000-07:00

All right, folks. They're at it again. There may be more to our president's rush to push healthcare reform than just a subtle socialist agenda. Part of the bill as it presently stands includes a mandated package of basic services that every insurance provider would have to provide, and among those services, unless Congress should see fit to say explicitly otherwise, is abortion. These basic service packages would, for the most part, be funded by government subsidies. In other words, our tax dollars.

Now, even as we speak, the abortion industry is losing clientele. Seven clinics in El Paso, Texas, were closed last month because they didn't have enough income. If these clinics are closing, that would indicate that they don't have a market. America doesn't want abortion. So why is the government insisting on expanding it as a mandatory insurance service. Why is the government mandating insurance policy at all?

If you find this as concerning as I do, please go to this website: http://www.StopTheAbortionMandate.com and check out their options. Then learn about our current healthcare reform initiative, write to your congresspersons, and tell them exactly what you will and will not pay for.

God bless,

Jennifer

Busy, busy summer

2009-07-13T16:21:00.001-07:00

Earlier this summer, I joined a mommy's group because I thought that I would need help getting out and about. You know how many of those outings I've made? One in three months. We're just too busy. Who'd have thought that a mom of one could keep herself so busy with only church, family, and acquaintances, plus the usual elements of keeping up with life?

And we've been plenty busy. Boo Boo is growing by leaps and bounds. Her climbing skills have only improved, and she's getting faster every day. She figured out doorknobs this week. Fortunately for us, she's not tall enough to put any real pressure on them or open any doors. She gets into enough stuff without sneaking out of doors.

Seth is home for the summer, which means that we make the occasional day trip just for the fun of it. More often we just stay home. Boo Boo thinks home is more fun when Daddy is around. Our ladies' Bible study has decided it has had enough of the classroom and spends every Tuesday morning out and about in the parks of Kitsap County. This is Boo Boo with Pastor Dave, her new best friend, on the famous Clear Creek Trail. These are my little friends Keira and Shadyn looking for animals from the bridge at Clear Creek. Clear Creek is a salmon stream restoration project. The whole length of the creek as it passes through Silverdale is protected as a park and wetland. The park is about five miles long, and it runs directly through the town, right between businesses and parking lots. It's a great place to walk or have lunch.

And of course, summer is also travel time. Now that Seth is home, we're making the rounds to all the relatives again. We went down and saw his folks for the 4th, and Boo Boo is finally big enough to get out and meet the animals. She discovered the horse and the llamas by herself (though she wasn't overly keen to approach them alone), but we had to arrange a meeting with the calves one evening. They didn't know what to make of her, but she thought they were stupendous.

We took her to the St. Paul fair and rodeo, and she went on her first carousel ride with mommy and her first ferris wheel ride with Daddy and Aunty Lydia. Look at the expression of awe on her face. All in all, we've barely had time to draw breath, let alone seek out new contacts and friendships. The rest of the summer looks equally busy, so don't be surprised if my posts are long, few, and far between. See you later.

Boo Boo's first camping trip.

2009-06-14T14:25:00.000-07:00

All kids who grow up in the Pacific Northwest must grow up camping. It's a simple fact of life.The woods, the rivers, the mountains, the ocean are all too close to the population centers to ignore. There is simply no excuse for getting out into the great outdoors. And when I say getting out, I don't mean in an RV or something like it. You may not bring your portable television, dvd player, or Internet. That's not camping. The whole point of getting out into nature is to get out into nature. Get dirty. Go hiking. Share your food with the animals. Get pineneedles in the morning pancakes and ashes on the evening hotdogs. Finish your evenings around the campfire. Sit and talk to each other while you swat mosquitos. You know, go camping.

This past week, Seth had a few days off, so we decided to pack up the Boo Boo and go camping. We loaded all our gear and the dog into the Jeep and headed out to the Olympic Peninsula, which is quite possibly the most beautiful place on earth, especially when the sun is shining. Seth has been aching to spend more time on the Peninsula ever since the ferry failed this spring and he had to drive all the way around Hood Canal to meet his submarine at Indian Island. We had several parks that we wanted to try, but we settled on Old Fort Townsend, which is built on the site of an old army fort from the 1800s.

Seth and I are not hardcore campers. We don't load all our stuff into backpacks and head off into the great unknown. We sleep in a tent, but we also sleep on an airmattress. We bring changes of clothes. We hop in the car to go see the '50s diners in cute, little tourist towns and buy novelty t-shirts. We bring regular food in coolers, and we indulge in the occasional camping knicknack, like an egg holder, a butane lighter, or a campfire toaster. We buy our firewood at the grocery store. In light of this, Old Fort Townsend suited us perfectly. The campground is close to Port Townsend, a cute little seaside town in the Victorian style, and full of nature trails that even Boo Boo could manage.

The sites were big and open but still thick enough in the woods that the red squirrels and the wood peckers could be heard in the trees.

We had a great time. Boo Boo decided that she loves camping. It's like a great big backyard with really tall trees, pinecones, pebbles, and Max on a leash accessible at all times. She relished the opportunity to use her newly discovered ability to run. Every time we turned around, she was going for the road. She had a blast on the nature trails, inspite of the roots and rocks. We thought we would need the stroller, but she much preferred to walk or ride on Daddy's arm.

She sat at the table with Mommy and Daddy like a big girl and ate grown up food. All in all, she proved that she is a child of the Great Northwest. The great outdoors suits her to a T.

Time in Oregon.

2009-06-06T15:35:00.000-07:00

We spent this past weekend visiting Seth's folks in Oregon. They hadn't seen Boo Boo since February, and ever so many changes have taken place since then -- walking, talking, about three inches of height, climbing, pet chasing. All sorts of things she wasn't doing and didn't have four months ago. We had a great time seeing the folks and the aunties. I wish we could have stayed longer, but it's silage season and graduation season, and neither season translates to time for company.
We had simply spectacular weather. In fact, it was so hot in the car on teh way down that somewhere halfway down the I-5, I bought Boo Boo a push up popsicle to eat. She made a glorious mess of herself and her carseat, but she was content, and anyone who has ever taken a roadtrip with an uncomfortable toddler knows how important momentary contentment can be.

We spent most of the weekend just hanging around the house and letting Boo Boo demonstrate her new skills. She got into Nana's scrapbooking materials and had to show me the less breakable pieces. She had lots of fun with the scrapbook stuff. She also had fun running the length of Pake and Nana's house, especially when Sailor the daschund was running too. She just loved showing off her new skills of locomotion.

On Sunday, we bundled everybody into the minivan and headed up to Silver Falls. Boo Boo nearly fell asleep on the way up, . . . but she was lively enough when we got there. There's nothing she loves more than a big space to run.

More random pictures.

2009-05-28T21:05:00.000-07:00

Jesse be nimble, Jesse be quick.

Hi, Mom.

"Okay, Grandpa. I think I've had enough."

Over, under, around, and through.

"It's extreme strollering."

"Go ahead and pet the rock, Niki."
It tickles, part 1.

It tickles, part 2.

It tickles, part 3.

"Hey, it leaves my hands free. It's more efficient that way."

"Mommy, the kitty's almost looking at me."

"Tapioca with a spoon, and I did it all by myself."

"But I want to pick up the gnome with the pickax."

"Is this a popsicle. I'm not so sure."