slow.w..w...w....w.....w......w.......w........w.........w..........w

characteristics of a good weekend...

...climbing a quilted rock...

...trampolining...

...riding an Amish buggy through farmland...

...hearing three-year-old Wilma speak only German to her Amish mother...

...making bunny rabbits and wicked old ladies out of harmless clouds...

...petting three dogs, two miniature horses, and an attack kitty...

...driving to Ohio and back in a living room full of your best friends...

and I'm back from the dead

... hopefully.

I keep coming to my blog, hoping to think of some ingenious remarks to share with the general public, but then I read everyone else's blogs and am saddened that I really don't have much to say.

Those who read my blog are quite few, and don't really need my blog to keep up with me. So I figure, why write? Oh well. I'll come up with something. For example, this hilarious dream I had Thursday night.

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A big movie producer honcho man, who was apparently quite unpopular, was currently living in a hotel. One movie star he had rejected was now bent on assassinating him. This person (who was first a girl in my dream, and then a guy) was hanging out with me and telling me of her woes. She had tried to assassinate him many times by impersonating room service and bringing up poisoned food. But he hadn't died yet.

So then I got in on it. S/he and I and several other people were hanging out in the movie honcho's hotel room, and he and his wife were sitting in bed, chatting it up with us. Our first move was to saw off a part of the bedpost and replace it with a poisoned peanut. But that didn't work.

So then we wrote up about ten letters, giving him directions to places that were going to be blown up. We must have thought this guy was really stupid.

But he wasn't stupid. He caught our drift, and started blowing things up! Oh, and we were in the woods now. And it was a battle. So, the leader of our forces said that if we had burning books it would ward off the evil forces.

So we dipped the books into oil and they burst into flame and we waited for the enemy to spring out of the forest. When they did, we waved our flaming books at them. Except I almost killed Jessica Heil with mine.

"Sorry!" I said.

"What are you trying to do??" asked Jessica.

"Well, it's your fault anyway."

"Whatever. No it's not." This statement was really quite thought-provoking in my dream.

Then the flames off of our books turned into melted cheese and everyone's legs and arms were covered in oil. So we got in the car and drove into a valley, surrounded on all sides by mountains. And in the middle was LeTourneau University.

It was snowing and it was either prospectives weekend or homecoming, so the admissions/alumni department had given everyone brightly colored winter jackets. I found James and said, "LeTourneau, is this ... I mean, James, is this LeTourneau?" Because all the signs were really small and just said, "The School in Fort Wayne."

And he said it was, and then I said, "Oh, YES! That means I can find James and Josh! I haven't seen them in forever." Then I realized I was talking to James, so I said, "Oh wow, so this means you're back from Korea?" And he said yes, and I woke up.

i laughed today,

and thought you should too. Here are the sources of my laughter.

One: Thanks to the sarcasm of Charles Dickens in Bleak House, Chapter 14 - "Deportment". It's especially wonderful if you read it out loud.

Just then, there appeared from a side door, old Mr. Turveydrop, in the full lustre of his Deportment. He was a fat old gentleman with a false complexion, false teeth, false whiskers, and a wig. He had a fur collar, and he had a padded breast to his coat, which only wanted a star or a broad blue ribbon to be complete. He was pinched in, and swelled out, and got up, and stepped down, as much as he could possibly bear. He had such a neckcloth on (puffing his very eyes out of their natural shape), and his chin and even his ears so sunk into it, that it seemed as though he must inevitably double up, if it were cast loose. He had, under his arm, a hat of great size and weight, shelving downward from the crown to the brim; and in his hand a pair of white gloves, with which he flapped it, as he stood poised on one leg in a high-shouldered, round-elbowed state of elegance not to be surpassed. He had a cane, he had an eye-glass, he had a snuff-box, he had wristbands, he had everything but any touch of nature; he was not like youth, he was not like age, he was not like anything in the world but a model of Deportment.

Two: I had heard about this sketch pretty much all my life, but finally saw it just today. And was glad of it.

Three: I was cleaning my room (finally) and found another cunningly penned passage from a book, this time Every Day Deserves a Chance by Max Lucado (quite a good book, actually).

The book you are reading came back from my editors with a hemorrhage of red ink. A tattoo parlor gives fewer mark-ups than they did.

Four: Still cleaning my room, I found a page of limericks I had written. Yes, I am quite the nerd. This one is the best.

A man was known for his daring
And yet to his wife seemed uncaring
His real true identity
Was concealed in dementity
And for the worse the guillotine's been faring

Anyone know the literary/movie reference made there? It's a classic.

"No More Poo Poo Anywhere" and Other Tales of Motherhood

My aunt has three kids, Benjamin, Grace, and Micah. Currently they are 5 1/2, 4 1/2, and 3 1/2. So when my aunt and uncle went to Austin for a couple days last week, I was called upon to stay overnight with the kids. I was excited, and rightly so - it was a lot of fun. But also a lot of work. (I think I'm still tired.)

My greatest fear going into it was related to Micah's allergies and the possibility of having to use an EpiPen (click and go to page 2 to see why I was so scared). The biggest thing I did have to deal with was about Micah, but not to that extreme.

(Let those plagued with ladylike sensibilities cease reading here)

I had been there for about an hour when Grace comes running to me. "Micah's got poo poo in his pants!" Micah's working on the whole potty-training thing, but isn't quite there yet. As I found out.

So I found Micah, and indeed, there was poo poo in his pants. So I went and sat him on the toilet and started peeling off his shorts and underwear. Bad idea. Poo poo all over the toilet seat, Micah's legs, and then propelled by the underwear onto the bathroom rug. Micah's going, "Eww ... yucky."

To make the whole smelly experience a little bit better, while getting Micah clean I unfortunately introduced a new song into the Smith family (seriously, the kids were singing it the next day). "No more poo poo anywhere..." This is repeated as many times as necessary, and when that is exhausted, new verses are added, like Benjamin's contribution - "No more poo poo on the ceiling fan!" (We all agreed that would be quite gross.)

Once Micah was clean and re-clothed, I proceeded to clean off his clothes and the bathroom rug. Hmm. I was at a loss for what to do. So, I did what any sensible person should do - I called my mom. "Um ... I have a question. How would you go about getting a large amount of poo poo off an article of clothing?" Thank God for moms. They are the best. (She told me to rinse the offending articles in the toilet. It worked. I would have never thought of that. Like I said, moms are awesome.)

This incident didn't put a stain (ha. ha. ha. great pun, eh?) on the rest of my time there. It was great. Really. I did learn a couple of things though (it's always good to do that though, right?)

• It's easier to enforce your own rules than other people's. Random rules, especially. Like, I can guess brushing teeth before bed, no hitting your sister, stuff like that. But dessert after specific meals? How much TV? "Mom doesn't make us do that!" Or, "Oh sure, Mom lets us do that." Mmmhmm ... sure.
• Also, I have an ever increasing respect for moms. It's a lot of work. Not sure I want to have those five kids, after all ... haha.

I love my cousins.