Satire

Wow, OK, I never thought I would have to do this. But here goes…

I recently wrote about the end of the world. Despite the obvious lack of scientific proof, the dripping sarcasm, and my belief that Jesus was the one who had it right and no one knows or can know when the world will end, there have been very many personal responses either trying to prove me wrong or link my site to one that “proves” the end of the world.

Just for the record: This was a satirical look the topic. Yes, it was full of my opinions and no actual facts. That happens often on this blog. It is done on purpose. I will not approve comments or ping backs that ridicule my belief in God or are extremely argumentative. I will not link you site to mine if the purpose is to mock my beliefs. I will not approve comments that can not be read by my younger readers. And I will not be interested in learning more about any group that can be classified as a cult, even for my own personal enlightenment. And because I have had an inbox full of all these things in the past two days, comments will be on an approval basis on this and the other post.

That being said, I have no idea how in the world these people have found me. Perhaps I have way more readers than the 5 or 6 I imagine…

The End of the World

I do not mean to alarm anyone, but I have come to believe that the world is going to end soon. I know, I know, people have been saying this for centuries.

There is all this news about the Mayan calendar. I have always assumed that the whole Mayan calendar things was no big deal. I mean,come on! I think that there was some poor Mayan student in middle school who got into trouble and in Mayan detention had to write out the calendar until he served his time. This is the record that remained because he carved it on the stone chalkboard, the one that did not deteriorate over time. I know from personal experience that these kinds of experiences can change your life. Perhaps all that writing made him interested in developing an accurate calendar to figure out the date his grounding would end, which is coming up next year, lucky fella. I will not be out from under all the grounding heaped upon me in middle school until about the fall of 3049. I also think that middle school detention is why I have such a large vocabulary. I had to copy from the dictionary. Quite a bit. I made it almost through the letter C before I wised up.

There is always someone, some where, who claims to know that exact location, day and time of Jesus’ return. All I can say to that is I am impressed. Not only did Jesus himself say He did not know the hour of His return, but I hope those people who gather at the spot have a much more accurate GPS than I used on my way home from the Science Center. The arrival time said 45 minutes for about an hour. If they do not have it right they could miss the whole thing and have to wait for the next guy that knows these incredible details to come along, and who knows how long that will be.

Neither of these are the reasons that I believe the world is coming to an end soon. You see, it all started a while ago when Andy realized that he really does like science fiction. I assumed at first that it was due to prolonged exposure. Then last night something incredible happened. I still am amazed. I went to put on my jammies to get comfy for watching sci-fi shows with Andy when I found my favorite jammies had a hole in them. And I can not believe what happened next. I decided to sew them. I know! I will say it again, please read it slowly: I decided to s-e-w t-h-e-m.

You see, under these circumstances I usually do one of three things. One, I notice the hole and wear them anyway. Come on, they are jammies. Who cares, right? Two, I put them back. Three, I say I am going to sew them and put them in a bag. Six months later I throw them out. I have to admit I had completed steps one and two at least three times with these jammies. And they are my favorites, so I was not quite ready to move on to step three. So to add to the miraculous event, I actually found a needle and thread. In my house. (Did I make you a believer yet??) Then, after Andy laughed at my feeble attempts to use that threading thingie incorrectly for about ten minutes he showed me how to thread the needle. And then I went to work as we watched our show. I actually finished after only messing up 978 times, poking about 123,598 holes in my fingers and two episodes of Stargate. Good thing it was a small hole.

As if all this was not enough proof that the world is coming to an end, or at least the world as we know it is coming to an end, I have even more proof. Tonight after supper I washed the dishes. But wait, there is more! I found it relaxing.

Change-R-Us

We are in the middle of a remodeling project. I say middle with much optimism. Very much optimism. We are pulling up carpeting, ripping off wall paper, sanding wood work and installing a light in the living room. For the first time in my married life I will have a living room light. Now, of course, when I say we I really mean Andy is doing the “work” kind of work. I am doing the “picking paint colors kind of work”, and let me tell you, that is hard!
By the completion of the project we will have refinished the hardwood floors in the dining room, both living rooms and the hallway. There will be fresh paint in the same rooms. And the furniture will be in the room it belongs in. Unlike our current random couch placement. Or book towers in every room. Or chairs in odd corners.

More than the work work, the picking colors work, the moving furniture work (also not me), the hardest part has been with Faith. She has a very hard time with change, which we know is a part of her Asperger’s Syndrome. Knowing where it comes from only helps us to understand. It does not make it easier for her or for us. She has a fit over each layer of wall paper. Each section of carpeting. Each knocked out section of drywall. Each ceiling block that is removed. Every strip of carpet tacks, which she calls carpet attacks and is waiting for them to, well, to attack.

We are also working on switching bedrooms to spilt up the girls. Which starts with getting rid of toys to move the toy room to a smaller room. My bedroom to the attic. The boys to my room. Faith to the boys room. And Angel gets to stay put and spread out a bit. And that way no one is in Faith’s space. But until then our entire house is in upheaval. Except for the bathrooms. They get to stay the same and are too small to store things in. The kitchen is not getting changed. Yet. But it has a nice corner for storing books in boxes. Or furniture. Or ladders.

Our whole house is like that Bert and Ernie book about how the fish ended up in Bert’s favorite cowboy hat. And yes, I do have a book for everything. I think that one is under the china cupboard.

Creationary or Bust! Mostly Bust...

Andy bought the game Lego Creationary. Or what I lovingly call the game that makes me look like an idiot. It is just like Pictionary. But with Legos instead of the pen and paper I already have an epic fail using. I played for about an hour today with Faith and Isaac. Isaac went first and built a gas pump that looked like a gas pump. It even had buttons and a hose. Faith went next and built a church with a steeple and a guy holding a square Bible walking in the door. I took my turn and built a banana that looked like a yellow rectangle with some brown on top. Isaac built a canoe with a man riding in it. Faith built a red T Rex with moving jaws. I built a car that looked like a red rectangle with wheels on bottom. Isaac built a light house. On a rocky beach. He even put on a white speck for a seashell. Faith built a wavy snake with a forked tongue and working jaws. I built a lawn mower that looked suspiciously like my car with smaller wheels and a handle on top.

As the next round was about to begin I excused myself before I could be further humiliated myself, er, to go make supper. As I left the room Faith called me back. She said “Mommy, don’t feel bad. You did real good for a beginner. And there are lots of things you can do that other people can’t. Umm, like, laundry. Those times you do laundry you do it real good.” And that is supposed to make me feel better?

That’s it. Next game night I am going to play with David. I can’t beat Faith and Isaac at Legos. I can not beat Angel at Yahtzee. Or Wii bowling. Or Uno. But David can beat me at Candy Land without me looking like a loser. It may even look like I let him win.

Animal Spirits

Sometimes at our house it seems like the school is open 24/7. We have school with the kids, my schooling and Andy’s. Andy and I try to keep it separate, but there are times that he is in one room, I am in the other and the kids are watching a movie. It is that or never sleep. And I still feel as if I never sleep. When I am overworked and overtired, my dreams become quite, well, quite strange really. I am sure no one can even imagine that!

Last night, for example, after the kids were settled in bed I wrote a paper, read a chapter and did my text problems for that chapter. I am not really a huge math fan, so that was hard. And yet I am a perfectionist, so it was really hard. I finally got to sleep around 1AM after studying square roots. No matter what I dreamt, there were square roots. We were all at the beach swimming, and I had square roots leeches. We were hiking at camp, square root leeches.

This brings me to the totally unscientific conclusion that if mathematics had an animal spirit, it would be none other than a blood sucking leech. Language arts would be a wise old owl. Wearing reading glasses, of course. History would be a Galapagos turtle. One of the elders. Science would be a platypus; part theory, part belief, part science, part myth. And those parts are always fighting.
And now, time for school. we are going to have a little leech, a little owl, and one big platypus over today. Don’t want to keep the natives waiting!

The Contents of a Lady's Purse

I have heard it said you can tell a lot about a woman by the contents of her purse. If that is true, I am in big trouble. It is not the odd little things that have been planted there by my children for me to hold “just for a sec”. I had odd stuff before that.

Regardless of how many children I have had, including the while I had no children of my own, I always had a few little toys,crayons and paper, and a weenie whistle. The whistle was for sentimental reasons. I have even had a rock in there, prechildren. It was a prayer rock for me to remember to pray for a good friend’s salvation. I still have it and am still praying for her. And always a broken pair of sunglasses. And a card with two penguins, one of whom has a fish eating his head. It says “Relax, God is in charge.”

Then come children. And now I have four card games, a seashell magnet shaped like a fish, two salt packets, broken pencils, a piece of bark that was chewed off a tree by a beaver, a pen that leaked, darts for a gun, an etch-a-sketch key chain with a key to nothing, a pile of receipts, shot record books, coins from a foreign county I have never been to, a few Legos, and a stick. That is in addition to my wallet, a hairbrush, lipstick, a lipstick tube form lipstick Isaac melted by placing it on the heater, nail polish, hair clips, a nail kit, tiny scissors, a tiny flashlight, a tiny screwdriver, reading glasses, broken sun glasses, non-broken sunglasses, a granola bar, two packs of crackers, baby wipes, a diaper, lotion, hand sanitizer, a bottle of water and a Ziploc baggie of pennies that says Isaac.

And I still have to say those are not the things that get me. Not at all. Because most of those can be expected from the bag I carry when I have the children I have. No, the part that bothers me is even worse. Since having my first child I have had the most disgusting things land in, drop in, flop in, drip in, and magically appear in my purse. I expect a certain amount of crumbs, especially with the crackers. But I have had an ice cream cone, milk, Pepsi, a sandwich, chewed up gum, and a dirty diaper. ( I had no where else to put that! Mall change rooms should always have a trash can. Always.) Live bugs, dead bugs, fake bugs, something slimy I never even asked what it was. Fish bait that got loose. A mushy brown banana. I hope it was a banana.

All I can think of is the episode of Mad About you when the flighty sister, Lisa, got her purse mixed up with Jamie. Lisa was all pulled together for the day because of the contents of Jamie’s purse. She was on time, functional and got a job. And Jamie’s life spiraled out of control because of the junk in her sister’s purse. She was late everywhere, lost everything, and was a wreck by the end of the day. It was like each woman’s personality was tied to the contents of her purse.

So if the contents of my purse tell you something about me, I am mushy, gushy, slimy, crumby, broken, odd, and smell slightly like bad milk. And there may also be a sign popping out that says “Stay Away!!”