Stingers, Stingers Everywhere

July 28, 2010 in Family, My People by Sara | No comments

There are many things that I love about being at my parent’s house.  There is one thing that I don’t really love so much.

There are wasps everywhere.

And they hate me.

Today I was just standing there minding my own business when one swooped down and stung me on the arm.  Luckily there was no one there to witness the words that may or may not have come pouring out of my mouth.  If you’ve ever been stung by a wasp, I’m sure you understand.

At least this time I was able to keep my pants on.

Let me explain.

Last summer I was helping my mom and dad move a camper.  There were some tall grasses grown up around it and I had kind of waded in to clear out some stuff when I stumbled into a wasp nest.  Before I could make a move, a wasp flew up my pants and stung me three times.  On the foot, on the ankle, and halfway up my calf.

Do you remember this scene from “A Christmas Story”?

I said “fudge” in front of my mother.

And since the wasp seemed determined to keep heading north and I couldn’t bear the thought of a wasp stinging me anywhere north of my upper thigh, I did the only thing I could think to do.

I took my pants off.

In front of my father.

Luckily for me, my father was totally understanding.  He’s had a few wasps sting him in his day.  He just shook his head and said,

“It was the only thing you could do.”

I may just stay inside from here on out.

Hot, Hot, and Hotter

July 26, 2010 in My People by Sara | 2 comments

What to do when the temperature climbs into the high 90s in Ohio?

Why, you travel south, of course.  Cause it’s only the low 100s here.  And the humidity?  Let’s just say it’s like breathing soup walking outside.

My husband is astounded, even after all these years that I can’t tolerate the heat.  He keeps saying, “But you are a southern girl!  Why don’t you like the heat?”

Ummm.  Maybe for the same reason that you grew up in Rochester, NY where it snows for 6 months every year and you don’t like the snow.

Just because you grew up with something doesn’t mean you like it.

The heat? No.

Fried bologna on white bread with mayo and tomato slices fresh from the garden?  Yes.

I’ll probably get plenty of both this week.

The One Where My Husband (Almost) Loses His Plumber’s License

July 19, 2010 in Family, Food, Friends, Home, Marriage by Sara | 4 comments

Our kitchen faucet had been broken for months.  At first it was just a little bit broken.  By that I mean that the little thingy on the top that tells you which direction to turn for cold and which to turn for hot kept falling off.  Not really a problem as I still have all my sensory capacities in my extremities and had memorized “left for cold, right for hot” a while back.  Then the pull down sprayer started acting wonky.  It would suddenly just stop working and would only begin again after you punched the little black buttons on the side about a million times and said a few cuss words (out of the children’s hearing, of course).  Then it wouldn’t turn off unless you shut it off and then pushed down on the middle of the turner offer thing.  Then there was the constant explaining to guests on the proper off and push antics required each time you used the crazy thing.

And yet we let this go on for MONTHS.

Mostly because the thought of buying a new faucet did not bring me great joy.  I’d frankly rather buy another pair of pajamas.

In the end, I took my friend Betty to Lowes and we picked out a new faucet.  (Not before I’m sure she was ready to kill me for agonizing over the decision for so long.)

JD replaced it last weekend.  Works beautifully.  Simple to turn off and on.  Delightful.

But you do remember this, right?

JD and the girls were at his folks for the weekend, leaving me alone in my house for about 4 days.  So I threw a little girl’s only party Friday night and we had a wonderful time.  We all brought cold or room temperature salads and they were yummy.  The last gal left abut 10:45, I quickly cleaned up the kitchen using my new faucet and trusty garbage disposal to get rid of some excess arugula from one of the salads.  I headed downstairs where I watched a couple of shows I’d DVR’d and then headed off to bed thinking of the wonderful Saturday I had ahead of me where I could do anything I wanted.  A long walk/run with Lucy.  A visit to the farmer’s market.  Perhaps even a movie in the afternoon.  The day was mine……..

Oh, what’s that?  The light in the laundry room was on.  So I opened the door, stepped inside and

SPLASH!

Right into 4 inches of arugula strewn water.

And so I did what all good southern women have done since Scarlett O’Hara set the example.  I decided to think about it tomorrow and after making sure it wasn’t getting any worse, I went to bed.

The morning found most of the water gone but bits and pieces of salad from last night’s dinner stuck firmly to the floor.

I then made a decision which shall haunt me the rest of my days and is sure to give my family ample opportunity for mocking me.

I put a load of sopping wet towels in the washing machine and turned it on.

Wait.  It gets better.

I then put Lucy’s leash on her and we went for a nice one hour walk around the neighborhood.

I KNOW!

What in the world?!

It will come as no surprise to you, gentle reader, that I arrived back home to 4 more inches of water in the laundry room.  Luckily, while on my walk I ran into my neighbor who gave me the number of the best sewer and drain people in town.

The very nice man on the other end seemed so pleased that I had interrupted his Saturday morning with my pesky drain problems.  And so to teach me a lesson he gave me a lecture on garbage disposals.  His speech went on for several minutes.  I’ll condense it for you.  Basically it boils down to this.

Garbage disposals are from the devil.  They should never actually be used.  If you do feel you just MUST use the devil’s machine, you must feed it carefully only one tablespoon of food at a time.  You must then follow this with copious amounts of water, ice cubes and perhaps a cup of bleach.

And then he says, “You know I’ll have to charge you time and a half to come out today and fix it.”

Exactly what was I supposed to say to this?  “Oh no thanks, then.  I’ll just leave water and rotting food in the basement til Monday.”

If he had attempted to  extract a promise of my firstborn, I probably would have agreed.

Two hours later a nice young man named Michael (who appeared to have crawled through many sewers and drains already that morning) made a lot of noise and cleared out the drain.

Turns out it was sludge, food and lint from the dryer causing all the problems.  Not a thing to do with JD’s recent plumbing job.

So he shall keep his plumbing license for now.  He’s going to need it.

Somebody’s got to get rid of that darn disposal.

New Favorites

July 16, 2010 in Fashion, Food by Sara | 1 comment

I am very picky about my pajamas.

Clearly, this is going to be one of my more serious posts.

But now really.  It’s hard to find just the right thing to sleep in.  I have friends who solve that problem by choosing to sleep in nothing.  I have a fear of the house catching on fire and me perishing because I’m too ashamed to run out of my house naked.

These are perfect.  Light and cool and loose but not too loose.

The perfect thing to wear should you ever have to vacate your house in a hurry.

I’m making this tomorrow night for a little girl’s get together I’m throwing.  Should be just the thing to cool us all down after the hateful hot and humid weather we’ve been having.  Come on over and I’ll pour you one.

Out of Control: Part 2

July 15, 2010 in Family, Home, Kids, Mothering by Sara | 1 comment

The first lesson?

Little boys are not like little girls.

Little boys have lots of energy and it needs to go somewhere.  And it needs to go there fast.  And furious.

Little boys have some sort of magic power that enables them to produce rocks and sticks and dirt and bits of everything else from what seems like right out of thin air.  And they stick all of it in their pockets.

I learned to check those pockets right quick before throwing them in the washing machine.

My bathrooms needed cleaning more often.  Little boys do not have good aim.  Nor do they always remember to put the seat up.

Or down.

I also learned that our house was a nice place with some of that little boy energy in it.  Even if we didn’t always know what to do with it or it sometimes needed to be redirected or harnesses in a little bit.

Yeah.  That harnessing bit?

The lessons were about to get harder.

Out of Control: Part 1

July 12, 2010 in Faith, Family, Kids, Mothering by Sara | 2 comments

I like being in control.

(That wild cackling you hear?  That would be my family laughing their heads off at that little bit of understatement.)

Now I’ve lived long enough and had enough things happen that I know that control is merely an illusion and that we all live right on the razor’s edge of chaos at any given moment.  But still, most of the time I still operate under the illusion that given the right tools and circumstances I can make most things turn out right.

So it appears that God is feeling the need to teach me some lessons in this area.

JD has been involved on and off before and in the early years of our marriage with a national mentoring program.  Once we were here and settled in and knew that we’d be sticking around for the long haul he felt nudged to get involved with this program again.  After a long application process he was matched up with a little 7 year old boy.

In the interest of protecting his privacy, I’m not going to go into all the details of his story.  But the short version is that he lost both parents in a very horrific way on his fourth day of kindergarten.  This left him in the care of his very loving but devastated grandmother who suddenly found herself not only grieving the loss of her only child and daughter but suddenly being the full time parent to a 5 year old.  Add to the picture that she also suffers from a physical ailment which keeps her from moving very quickly or easily.

And they have no one else.

No one.

No family.

For several months we have been having “Sam” at our house.  He’s been hanging out with us and we’ve been getting to know him.  The girls have been so good at welcoming him into our home and our family.

So when his grandmother needed some medical procedures performed we were happy to offer to have him for the time she would need help.  She thought it would be about 4-5 days.  I knew it would be longer and we were fine with that.

We had him for two weeks.  It was both two of the most rewarding and challenging weeks of our lives.

The lessons we learned?  Stay tuned.

Fourth of July: Tennessee Style

July 7, 2010 in Family, Holidays by Sara | 4 comments

In the fall of 1982 I walked into a physics class at the University of Tennessee.  The professor introduced himself and I’m pretty sure that was the last thing that came out of his mouth that I truly understood.

This may explain my eventual switch to a nursing major.

I remember little of what I learned in that class.  I do remember the prof using a slinky to illustrate many of his points.  Something about wave forms and blah, blah, blah………

I do remember a curly dark headed guy who sat on the upper left hand side.  He was part of a group of guys I had met the previous spring in a basic programming class in which I learned many things about computers.  And which I promptly forgot the minute the final exam was over.

28 years ago I met this guy....

Scott was (and continues to be) one of the smartest people I know.  He breezed through that physics class without even breaking a sweat and continued that stellar performance right on through both undergrad and graduate degrees.  We hung out a lot.  With our group of friends, we spent a lot of time on the lake perfecting our skiing technique and wearing no sunscreen.  We were good friends.  The kind of friends that you can sit outside in their yellow convertible listening to James Taylor and talk about everything under the sun.

The kind of friends that last a lifetime.

Especially if they end up marrying your sister.

My baby sister

Ann met Scott one weekend when she came to visit me at college.  She was 16 and we were all about to graduate.  She went home and told my mom she had met the man she was going to marry.

A few years later she did just that.

And now I not only get to spend holidays with my baby sister, but one of my oldest and dearest friends is always by her side.

Thanks to their hospitality and superior boat driving skills, we had a whale of a weekend.  As JD so aptly put it,

“That was the perfect 4th of July.”

Yes, indeed it was.  Take a look for yourself.

Fresh blueberries picked by our own little hands. Well, not mine. Someone had to make the pictures.

No one was having fun, can you tell?

Olivia meets her cousins (with big brother Clay supervising)

Ben catching some air.

The little peanut herself.

Most of the family. We missed our absent Morgan, Michael and Sara

Daddy and his Baby Girl

We Interrupt This Program

July 1, 2010 in Bloggable Moments, Faith, Family by Sara | No comments

Hello you faithful people who show up here faithfully day after day.  I don’t really get why you do, but it has become something that I kind of count on.

So don’t stop, okay?

There has been quite a bit of upheaval in this house for the past two weeks.  It’s a story I’m dying to tell you as soon as I figure out how to do it and still protect the privacy of some of the folks involved.  It’s a dandy.  Nothing bad, but still some of the most challenging days I’ve known in quite a while.  This little blog has become the way that I process lots of stuff, so you are just about to get an earful.

But for the next few days I’m taking a little break to get my house (both figuratively and literally) back in order.

I’ll be back next Wednesday ready to unload:)

In the meantime, please keep my niece Sara in your prayers.  She is going on a mission trip to London tomorrow and staying for 2 weeks.  She is so excited and I am thrilled for her.  I think it’s going to change her life.

I’m just hoping my sister doesn’t have a nervous breakdown watching the plane take off.  If you read about some crazy woman stowing away in the wheel well of a plane headed for Europe, don’t be surprised if it’s her.

Maybe you ought to say a quick prayer for her as well.

Thanks ya’ll.

An Offer You Can’t Refuse

June 30, 2010 in Friends by Sara | 5 comments

You should start planning your trip to Dayton right now.  I will show you such a good time that you might never want to leave.

Take for instance the good time that I’ve shown my friend Betty today.  I took her to lunch, then we went to Lowes where I agonized over a replacement kitchen faucet for way too long, then off we went to the shoe store and then wrapped up our exciting day with a quick stop at the grocery store.

We were so wiped out when we got home that I had to take a wee nap while Betty looked through some of my cookbooks.

I can only imagine the rest of Betty’s summer will pale in comparison.

Come on over.  It’ll be the time of your life.

I promise.

Gentle Reminder

June 28, 2010 in Faith, Family, Kids, Mothering by Sara | 3 comments

Oh my, I was so whiny last week

Going on about my plans getting changed and things not going my way.

Boo Hoo on me.

It’s a wonder I could stop feeling sorry for myself long enough to welcome our dear Olivia June to the family (by the way, Mike. You should get something in the mail on Tuesday or Wednesday that will totally make me your favorite sister. Don’t tell Ann, though.)

Several things have happened lately that let me know that God is determined to teach me about selflessness.  I’ll be right up front with all of you.  Dying so self is not my strong suit.  I may have mentioned that one or a thousand times.  I am so quick to forget that it’s just not all about me.

Really?  It’s not?

Dadgum.

Tonight our house church was privileged to serve a meal to some 100 folks who have little to call their own.  You want your heart to break?  Try looking at hungry children in the face.  Look at people who are probably 10 years younger than you but look 20 years older.

Here’s the shameful thing.  I tried several times to get out of doing this.  It just seemed like one more thing on the already rather large list of things to do this week.

And yet, it turns out that it was probably the most important thing of all.

A gentle reminder of what it’s really all about.

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