Non-brilliant Thoughts

I've noticed that my friend Shannon's sister Shelley on her very interesting Xanga sometimes links to posts that have brilliant quotes or inspired lines or just make her think deeply. Sometimes I think that 25 years ago, back when I still thought deep and sometimes even brilliant thoughts, if I would have had a blog, and Shelley had been born, she would have linked me too.

Not now. I haven't thought a deep thought in quite a while. I just try to stay afloat rather then plumb the depths.

This is some of what's happening in my life:

At times I feel like I have three adolescent boys around here: Ben, Steven, and Hansie the enormous dog. I baked a huge beef roast in the crock pot one day not long ago. We ate less than half of it for supper and I had visions of beef stew the next day and barbecued beef sandwiches the next. Paul and I went to prayer meeting that evening and Ben did not, so I told him to just set the crock pot/meat in the furnace room, my "third fridge," since he was cleaning the kitchen.

The next morning Ben got some beef for sandwiches and allegedly left the lid off.
And Steven took a mousetrap out the back door to empty it and allegedly left the back door unlatched.
Sometime between 8:00 and 9:30 a.m. Hansie allegedly snuck in the unlatched back door and wound his way through the pantries to the furnace room and ate that whole huge lovely roast.
I found him lying regally out in the yard with two little bones in front of him.
I was very tempted to commit aggravated dogicide but how do you strangle a dog that weighs 20 lbs more than you do and has sharper teeth?

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Bob and Myrea Miller from NYC are at our church this week to preach about missions and evangelism. They had met Amy when the seniors were in New York in '05. Myrea told me after church that she saw Jenny sitting in front of her and Bob, and she poked Bob and said, "That has to be Amy's sister!" And Jenny wasn't even sitting with our family. I thought that was cool. It is almost uncanny how alike those two are.

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Emily was feeling better on Friday night, enough so that she was marching around the kitchen with a rolled-up newspaper, doing battle with crane flies, which she describes as "a little bit like an overgrown mosquito and a little bit like a daddy long legs with wings." Watching her, I had visions of both my mom (at 87) and my grandma before her marching around the kitchen with a flyswatter in hand and a murderous look in their eyes. And after Grandma smacked a fly she often said, "Alli-mol us muh un mook shwat komma sivva may zu de leicht." (Every time you swat a fly, seven more come to the funeral.)

So I was watching Emily as she swung and smacked, and I thought, Ok, if she leaps on a kitchen stool to reach a crane fly I will know that she is officially carrying the torch of her grandma and great-grandma. Sure enough, with a primal grunt she leaped up on the green stool in the corner and gave a satisfying smack, just like Mom and Mommie.

Read her version here.
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Emily was worse again on Saturday. This evening a few of us got together and "anointed (her) with oil in the name of the Lord," a beautiful meaningful ritual.

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I had a signing at Barnes and Noble yesterday and also a reading and Q&A session. Amazingly, no one asked me if my children mind being written about, and no one told me I was too small. Not sure what's happening. But one thing didn't change: Andrew the organizer gave me another box of Godiva chocolates.

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We went to the Gospel Echoes Northwest prison ministry banquet last evening and Steven helped serve, his first time. He did very well, calmly holding a tray of pie slices while looking stately and aristocratic in a white shirt and black pants. And he didn't fuss about serving with a girl who wasn't a sister or cousin.

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Matt was home for dinner today and ate lots of steak and asked me how to hardboil eggs. He also said:

Quote of the Day:
"I finally did laundry and all my socks and underwear have a greenish tinge to them, but otherwise I'm all right."