Sunday, November 23, 2008

The pickup.

I picked up a nice dude in the grocery store today. His name was Art. We met in soups, never to see each other again.

I was showing Art my fave new soup - Amy's Fire Roasted Southwestern Vegetable. I told him that I was qualified to recommend it because my name is Amy. He said, "I'm looking for Art soup." I thought, "That sounds interesting, he must be an artist." Then I realized oh, his name is Art. So we talked about soup.

"How much sodium is in that one?" he asked.
I read the label and made the appropriate response.
"But that's supposed to be 2 servings, so that makes 1200 mg of sodium," he said.
I replied, "Oh, man. I wish I'd never have met you."
That was about the extent of the convo.

I was telling Randy about this funny conversation and he felt a little strange that I was picking up guys in the grocery store, but one has to make the grocery store experience fun, right?

I'm quite the pickup artist.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Have you checked out your wenis lately?

Do you know what a wenis is? The first person to correctly answer this question without checking a dictionary gets applause. How's that for a reward!?

Friday, November 21, 2008

Purpose

What is your purpose?

I decided not to let Sarah shoulder my responsibility of explaining that question. At first I thought you might think I meant, "What's your point?" in a sarcastic tone. You know the way some old curmudgeons do..."And your point is..." (blink, blink, blink), "Your point being..." (one eyebrow raised).

Lately I have been struggling with God. Do I really want to live for Him and obey Him? When I say, "Your will be done, Lord," do I mean it? I don't like to say those things to God without really meaning them, so I find myself avoiding that decision. Do I want to drop everything I'm currently doing and let God examine those things and lead me in one direction or not in another?

Yesterday in my Bible study the author of the book we are doing (Priscilla Shirer) gave us three "red flags" we can look for to see if we are really living in God's will. The 3rd red flag was "Am I thankful?" When I looked at the ways I currently spend my time, I started to ask myself that question. I decided that yes, I was thankful for alone time and yes, I was thankful for chocolate. But am I thankful for America's Next Top Model? On Thursday afternoons I usually watch the ANTM episode I Tivo'd the night before (you know this verb, to tivo). Am I thankful to God for giving me this leisure time outlet? Ouch!

As a Christian my purpose, as Sarah said, is to glorify God with what He has blessed me. I can glorify Him by being patient with my kids or by offering to watch a friend's child. I can glorify Him by not nagging my husband when we disagree, and by praying for important people in my life. I'm not certain I glorify Him by watching America's Next Top Model on Thursday afternoons.

Then I get caught up asking myself, "Come on, I can't be expected to glorify God every minute of every day, can I? I can watch a silly TV show once a week," (like that's all the TV I watch - ha!). No, I can't be expected to. I'm not perfect. I'm a sinful human being (there's that word nobody likes, but let's be honest about our behavior. Does it live up to Jesus's behavior?) If my measuring stick is Jesus, I'm going to fall short. However, I may as well not set myself up for failure by not even striving to let the Holy Spirit rule my behavior rather than my yucky fleshly flesh.

So what is your purpose? No sarcasm, just an honest question. Do you live your purpose? I don't. Do you try? I do. Sometimes. God is working on this one with me right now as we "speak." Will I keep listening? I hope so. The holiday season is rough. It's busy and there are many schedule interruptions. I believe that Jesus is the reason for the season, to quote a singsong little phrase, but this is the time of year I'm most likely to get off track in terms of the time I spend in fellowship with God.

I'm looking for a clever little way to wrap up this post, but my immediate public awaits and I can glorify God by serving them right now.

Monday, November 17, 2008

Christmas on my mind.

I know many people scoff at early Christmas decorations. Decorating is not one of my best qualities, but I like to have some decorations up sometimes. The past 2 years have been newborn baby intensive so our Christmas decorating has been practically nil. In 2006 BB was 2 months old at Christmas time. We were so in up to our eyebrows with adjusting to parenting we hadn't even thought about getting a tree. Then my mom came to visit and bought us our first artificial tree. (By the way, my mom is not an artificial tree kind of woman, but she understood we were in survival mode.) So we had a tree that year and that's pretty much all.

In 2007 LB was 2 months old at Christmas time. We got out our trusty artificial tree, that I lamented smelled curiously of B.O. We got a really cute video of our two babies in front of the Christmas tree and looked at that a lot over the season. That was pretty much it for festivities at home that year.

So this is our first Christmas without a newborn, and I'm excited! The past two Christmases have been very special with our sweet angels. But I'm also looking forward to sleeping Christmas eve and looking forward to feeling relatively sane when the sun begins to go down. The past two years have been like, "Oh, right, it's Christmas, can you get me a diaper?" or "Tomorrow is Christmas. I wonder if LB will be able to nurse today or do we have to start supplementing with formula?"

I have not forgotten how it felt, the Christmases celebrated by just the two of us, longing for a child to raise. I remember how it felt like we were the only ones celebrating childless Christmases, and how heartbroken I felt to think we may never have a baby in our home during Christmas. That was our reality for 3 Christmases. Our reality is different now. I am grateful for our children. I am also grateful for sleep.

The heart of the holidays is not decorating or Christmas trees. It is the root of the word Christmas - Christ. Praise Him from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him for creating days and nights so some years we can even sleep.


Monday, November 10, 2008

Okay, God.

I know I'm in trouble when I start a prayer with "OK, God." It's like I'm saying. "OK, God, here's what we're going to do. You with me?" How vain that I think I'm going to tell God what to do. He's GOD. I cringe each time I say it, like this morning. I should start my prayer with "Yes, Lord" instead of "OK, God." There's a whole lot of difference between the two.

Friday, November 07, 2008

Just

Tuesday was a crr-azy day.

Have you ever heard the expression, "Just adopt and you'll get pregnant?" Ha! My friends Karen and Bob have been trying to adopt a boy from Russia for well over a year. First there were accreditation problems with Russia for many U.S. adoption agencies. Now their agency has been re-accredited and they are back in the process. They live in Houston and have had to drive to Austin several times just to get apostille seals from the Secretary of State office. They drive in on a Wednesday afternoon, get the documents to the Sec. of State on Thursday morning and make the 4 hours drive back to Houston. There are certain documents that they have had to send multiple times, sometimes just to change one or two words in the document. On Tuesday LB and I took the docs to the Sec. of State for them.

That part of our journey was not hard. The agency sent the papers to us overnight and God answered our prayer that they would arrive before we took BB to preschool. I was quite proud of myself for having everything together for BB's school day, having the papers in the car, and having two little boys loaded up in time to get to school almost at the time we are supposed to arrive. Notice though, I didn't say I had everything together and in the car for BB's school day. We were almost there when I realized I had forgotten his diapers, change of clothes, and lunch. So I added "trip to the grocery store" to my to-do list for the day.

LB and I went to the state building and signed in and got the apostille for the documents in no time. Forgetting to sign out, we trotted back to the minivan to go to the grocery store. I called Randy to let him know that if tragedy struck at the Secretary of State building and a list floated out that showed LB and I were still in the building, that we were not in the building. We then spent about 30 minutes in the grocery store, ending up with a gourmet meal for BB since Central Market was the closest place to the school and there are no lunchables there as far as I saw. Since LB was being such a trooper, I got him a balloon. It flew away.

The next stop was FedEx/Kinkos to copy the docs and send them overnight back to the agency. I forgot to take the staple out of the paperwork and the papers got jammed in the machine. I tried to stay cool. I was on a very important errand, and in my mind the machine ate a page of the document packet and it would be my fault that this young man would not be adopted by my friends. I called Bob and verified the pages, and it turns out I did not have a machine that ate paper. Hooray. Bye-bye documents, see you in Russia.

"Just adopt and get pregnant" doesn't work. Sorry. Sometimes the two events follow each other, but there is no causality there.

That afternoon after picking BB up from preschool and eating his lunch myself, I took the boys with me to vote. I did a straight ticket, which was super fast, and voted on some props that my friend Andee and I discussed while LB was sleeping in the car in a parking space near the Secretary of State building (which has moved, by the way). LB got a big taste of government that day. We then went to the park, I tried to keep BB and his cast off of the play equipment, I got bit by an ant three times, and we went home.

What a day!

Saturday, November 01, 2008