This really well-written book was sent to me by one of its authors, Rebecca Price, along with a hand-written note (always impressive). I know you shouldn’t just a book by its cover, but this one really is a pretty cover. Just look over here at the Amazon link and you’ll see.

Anyway, I didn’t get through the whole book, but I really loved what I did read. The press materials say it well: “This new book and Bible study is really about the answers to the questions [the authors] found [them]selves asking: Why are we, as women, always restless? Always hungering for more? And what do those women who seem truly satisfied have that we don’t?”

The book covers twelve different areas that surveys told them women crave, everything from love in your life to financial health. Each chapter ends with an interview with a well-known Christian woman who has expertise in that particular field. The second part of the book is a interactive Bible study, with a guide for reflection and an area for discussion. This would be an excellent resource for a women’s group looking for study materials and conversation starters, but it would also be an effective study for anyone to use at home, alone.

You might want to check out their website and read some excerpts. They have a blog right here.

And, did I mention that this book is really well-written? It is. And that means a lot to me. I think I’ll even finish it!

Every time I go into my bathroom, I see the WORLD magazine in the basket by the toilet and I think about people in Haiti eating dirt cookies. Did you know that? People in Haiti eat dirt cookies because they have no food. I find this so distressing that I Googled “Haiti” to find out how many people live there and if I could possibly solve this problem with a few dozen bags of rice from Costco.

But, alas. Haiti is the second poorest country in (the world? the hemisphere?) and has 8 million people. EIGHT MILLION PEOPLE. Eighty percent of them are unbelievably poor. The unemployment rate is . . . did it say 90%? All I know is that Haiti is an impossible problem and the people there are eating dirt cookies.

This hurts my heart.

I can’t stop thinking about it.

Tucked next to that obsession in my head is this thought: I love that Oprah is kind of chubby again. It makes me feel marginally better about my ten pounds weight gain. I intend to write a letter to myself on my other blog one of these days soon. I need to straighten myself up, remind myself that I am more than my waistline.
Oh, get this. A book publisher sent me $300.00 worth of books as a gift. Just for fun. Honestly, could anything be better? (Chocolate? Did someone say “chocolate”?)

Also, please, Neighborhood Boys, I am begging you to stop knocking over my flimsy white wire fence onto my pathetic flower bed. I only have one flowerbed, things are growing and YOU ARE RUINING MY LIFE.

My computer went into a coma this morning–absolutely refused to load. That freaked me out. I ran a diagnostic scan (I have no idea how I did that) and the computer roared back to life. I am Annie Sullivan. Yes, a Miracle Worker.

I recently read my first two Dean Koontz books, two of the “Odd Thomas” books. I adored those books and read them practically non-stop. I also read an Elizabeth Berg novel . . . and a few other things. Tomorrow I will post about a book I reviewed for a blog tour. I’m going to update my Librarything.com account–I like to keep track of what I’ve read using that website. Do you know about it? You should. It is such a great website.

Oh! And last weekend I saw “Iron Man” with Robert Downey Junior. (Robert Downey, Jr.?) He is exactly my age, by the way. So is Brooke Shields and Melissa Gilbert. Just in case you were wondering. Anyway, the movie was really good, very entertaining, funny and worthy of its success. The only thing is that I wouldn’t take a three year old, as some of the people in the theater did. I have to say that if your three year old is NOT sensitive to violence that appears in movies rated PG that perhaps that is a problem. I would hope that small children would be too sensitive to see action movies like Iron Man. (See: Melodee’s Biggest Pet Peeve.) Small children should be protected from inappropriate visual images.

Last night I stayed up until 1:20 a.m. because I had washed a million loads of laundry this week that sat in baskets all week, unfolded. Usually I fold each load as it comes out, but I have been swamped by the tidal wave that is my life. I also did a load of dishes and cleaned up the kitchen. What a delight it was to stumble downstairs this morning, blind without my glasses, to a cleanish kitchen and folded baskets of clothes.

Well. I guess that’s all.

But what are we going to do about Haitians eating dirt cookies?

Oh, don’t forget to put out food for the mail carrier to pick up tomorrow. It’s the Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive.

I woke up Saturday morning full of vague dread. Why would I dread the ocean? I probed inside my head and quickly found the source of my angst. I loathed the idea of spending the day at an indoor waterpark and that was exactly what I was about to do.

When my husband explained this weekend jaunt to me, I embraced the idea with enthusiasm. He’d go down Friday night, speak at the opening session, then I would bring the children on Saturday morning. As the retreat speaker, he’d be provided with two rooms for his family and meals. Did someone say “free”? I am all about free stuff.

We thought there’s be a pool at the hotel. Four days prior to the adventure, my daughter packed her suitcase and three backpacks. She couldn’t wait to swim at the pool.

And then he called me on Friday afternoon from the hotel. No pool. But, great news, he said, there’s an attached indoor waterpark!

Oh. Good. Right? The kids would love that, I thought. I decided on the spot that I would not wear a swimsuit, though, because floating in a pool is a far cry from walking around at an indoor waterpark. But the kids would have fun. And my husband would be there, thus getting swimsuit duty.

That Saturday morning dread surprised me a little. Then I realized that when I think ocean, I think walking on the shore, searching for shells, gazing up at the ocean on the horizon, listening to the crashing, foaming waves. I don’t think indoor waterpark. Nevertheless, I’d be spending my afternoon at one.

I am a kill-joy. I admit it freely. I try, I really do, but I am becoming an old fuddy-duddy.

When we left our house Saturday morning, we drove through foggy rain. By the time we arrived at Ocean Shores two hours later, the sun was brightening the clouds and in some spots, blue sky promised a pleasant afternoon. We had lunch, then the children switched into their swimsuits. With much joy and anticipation, my daughter hurried me down the hallway toward the waterpark.

She and her brothers walked up the stairs which pulsed with burbling water fountains, dodged the waterfalls, ducked the spraying jets and arrived at the top of the blue slide, which was one of three water slides. From where I sat, her body language communicated her fear to me, though the noise in the waterpark was deafening. My husband and I had to lean close and shout into the other’s ear to chat. I didn’t need to hear what Grace said, though. She rubbed her fist on her eye, tipped her face down and I knew that she’d return to me the long way, back down the treacherous stairs.

The boys had a great time. Slipping, sliding, yelling, laughing, rushing by sopping wet. Grace watched from the plastic chair next to mine. She asked, “Is the orange slide fast?” She traced the slide with a finger in the air, trying to calculate the speed and distance of each slide. She made several attempts, but couldn’t overcome her fear at the mouth of the blue slide. She’d go up, clutching someone’s hand and then return back down the stairs, informing me, “I am too scared.”

I sighed a lot, but tried to be encouraging and patient. I knew that if she rode the slide once, she’d love it and her fear would be forgotten. Then again, I knew that it took a whole summer at the pool before she finally got up the nerve to dip her face in the water.

At one point, my husband put on his swimsuit to accompany her down the slide. Even his presence did not give her enough courage to slide.

So he went back to the room to take a nap.

Then she decided to walk up the rope ladder, a gently sloping, impossible-to-fall-through rope walk-way, up to the slide. She took one step and hopped back off. She took two steps, a child came up behind her and she scurried back down. She wanted to take her time and she wanted to be alone on that walk-way, but other children kept appearing behind her, so she’d turn and make her way back down. Over and over this happened, maybe twenty times, until she was within three feet of the top. And she turned and scampered back down.

Her 10-year old brother noticed this and offered to hold her hand, to take her up to the orange slide. (We determined it was the “slowest” slide.) I thought if anyone could, he would be the one to convince her that she wouldn’t die sliding down the slide. I thought this would be the triumphant moment.

I walked around to watch, getting the hems of my jeans soaking wet. I studied them, deafened by the pounding water and echoing sounds of people at play, as she stood, then sat the top of the orange slide. Then I saw her polka-dotted swimsuit reappear. Zachary came down, told me Grace promised she’d follow him, but I could see her still standing at the top.

Three times he came down. Three times she chickened out. After a good twenty minutes of this, I told him to retrieve her.

All told, we were at the waterpark for two hours. Her swimsuit wasn’t even wet. Fear kept her from sliding down like all the other kids. She said, “I really want to, but I am too afraid.” Fear loomed, blocking her from the promise of great joy, thrills and chills.

And I understood because sometimes fear intimidates me, too, and I sit watching, too afraid to join in.

What I adore about my fraidy-cat daughter, though, is that she tries over and over again. She admits her feelings, unashamed. She takes her time and when the time is right, she’ll slide. Not a moment sooner, though, and you can’t make her do anything she doesn’t want to do.

I can respect that.

We drove to the ocean, stayed overnight, and drove back. That about sums up my weekend.

And although I promised the children a prize if they found me an unbroken sand dollar, I found it myself.
[A picture will be inserted here if my computer and photo program decide at some point to make up and be friends.]

If my life were a sit-com, it would be the kind that doesn’t really make you laugh. Instead, you pity the main character and wonder why they didn’t hire a prettier actress. (It would seem a lot funnier with a laugh track. I demand a laugh track!)

At 11 a.m., I decided to take the five-year-olds to the grocery store. I figured we had ninety minutes before school-drop-off time (I am the Queen of the Dash today). It would be kind of fun, taking two five-year-olds to the store, right? We could grab a quick lunch and arrive at school right on time without breaking the speed limit.

We got out to the van and I said, “Do you have your backpack?” to the kindergartener. He did not. I said, “Let me get it,” and headed to the front door. At that moment, I understood for the first time from whence came the house-key on the kitchen windowsill. For whatever reason, my husband took it off the key-ring we use for the Big Green Van (remember, the one he locked the keys in last week at the mall). I suppose this was to prevent someone from breaking into the van, intuiting where we lived and rushing over to steal our second-hand furniture and surplus socks.

Anyway, so I couldn’t get back into the house. I called my husband and he announced he was at the grocery store, picking up a few things. “Well,” I said, “That’s where I’m going.” So, we met in the parking lot, switched keys and cars. He’d already purchased bread, milk and other necessities (vinegar salt potato chips, for instance), but I still went in and rounded out our groceries with the addition of Oreo cookies, ricotta cheese, salad greens and other stuff. Good-bye, ninety-six dollars.

Tonight, my daughter was so upset because her melted McDonald’s sundae spilled on her bedroom floor. I know. That just made half of you gasp in horror. I cleaned it up and only scolded her a little because she had already cried about it. Then, not ten minutes later, she spilled a glass of milk in the same exact spot.

And, I did not cry over that.

I did not speak to a police officer today!

I did not steer my car into another car!

We are, however, out of milk, bread and everything good to eat because although my husband’s back home after five (six?) days away, between his busy schedule and my evening work-shifts, driving to the grocery store is just the stuff of dreams.  Alas.

But I didn’t get pulled over by the police!

I didn’t crash into a stranger’s car.

Gotta focus on the positive.

Let’s review.

Yesterday I wrote a weeping post about saying a premature good-bye to my childhood a full 31 year ago.

The day before, I recounted backing into a car at my child’s school.

So what do you think I can say today to match the drama and pathos of the prior days? Anyone?

***I’ll give you five seconds to think***

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I had to pick up my teenagers from the YMCA at noon. The problem was that this task fell during my work-shift. And my husband was still out of town. I signed on to the computer at 11:15 a.m., forty-five minutes before my shift began, instant-messaged my supervisor to tell her I’d be putting in time earlier so I could leave for a bit to pick up my kids. She pointed out how nice it might have been if only I had given her warning so she could have someone covering my shift and I apologized for the collapse of my brain and blamed it on the absence of my husband.

And then, as we chatted, I realized that my shift actually started at 11 a.m., not noon, and that I was actually fifteen minutes late, not forty-five minutes early. I’ve had this shift for months, but for some reason today I was convinced that my shift was from noon until 5 p.m.

At noon, off I drove with two 5-year olds in the back, safely buckled into booster seats. I was in a huge rush–I needed to pick up the boys and get the little guy delivered to kindergarten by 12:30 p.m. I thought I’d stop at McDonald’s on the way to feed everyone a quick, on-the-run lunch. This plan depended on speed and cunning.

A mile from my house, I heard that blood-curdling sound of a police siren. A glance in my rear-view mirror confirmed my fear. He was directly behind me and I knew that I was the criminal. He strolled to my window and said, “The speed limit along Rigney is 25. I clocked you going 37.”

I handed over my license, registration and proof of insurance. He warned me to stay in the car and returned to his vehicle to check to see if I had warrants out for my arrest and if I were a habitual offender. Thank God he didn’t know about my near hit-and-run two days earlier. After a few minutes, he returned, handed over my paperwork and with a wink said, “Mrs. ____, you need to slow it down.”

No ticket!

The weird thing is that on my two prior speeding tickets (over 15 years ago), both were the result of my going 37 mph in a 25 mph zone.

At least I’m consistent.

My childhood ended on September 25, 1977, the day my dad married his second wife. I wore a long polyester dress with giant peach polka-dots and a ruffle along the bottom. Someone shuttled us to the wedding which took place on a bluff overlooking the Puget Sound. Instead of wedding cake, they had cheesecake, which I’d never had before, nor did I understand. (I know. What’s to understand, but at the time I was like, hey, where’s the buttercream?)

True, my dad had endured more than his share of calamity by the time he exchanged his second set of vows on that blue-skied September day. He’d survived a childhood with an alcoholic, his own parents’ divorce, a battle with Hodgkin’s disease while still in his twenties. He had a long scar down the length of his torso and a failed thirteen year marriage behind him. He wanted this second chance at happily-ever-after. I see this with clarity now that I am 43 years old, a decade older than he was on his second wedding day. But then I felt only the flip-flop of the world as I had known it, the shaking of everything as if we lived in a snow globe.

Sometimes, I think that when I grieve over the loss of my dad who died just after turning 47 I am really mourning the loss of my childhood. Even before their divorce, my parents were preoccupied. I caused no trouble and caught no one’s attention. I happened to be a self-sufficient child, the one my parents looked to for help around the house and assistance with the other children. I began babysitting when I was ten years old. Once, between my parents divorce and my dad’s remarriage, I woke up in the morning to find that my mother never returned from a date.

The terror of being abandoned has never fully left me. And yet isn’t that a fundamental truth about life? People leave, sometimes willingly, sometimes without choice. My dad left us the first time because he wasn’t happy married to my mother, living in our little tract-house in Whispering Firs. He left me the second time when cancer killed him.

I lived with my dad and stepmother when my mother remarried six months after my dad’s wedding. My 29-year old stepmother proclaimed that she never wanted children, and yet, there we were. My mother’s new husband didn’t want us all–only me and my baby sister–my dad said, no, they all stay together. I remember him asking me: who do you want to live with? I was eleven. Who asks an eleven year old to choose?

After we moved in with my dad, I hardly saw my mother. She had a new husband, a new full-time job, a new apartment. I navigated middle school alone. No one asked what I ate for lunch (an apple every day or a bag of corn-nuts bought from the snack bar). I bought my own clothes. I rode my bike to school and then home again. No one reminded me to do homework. Despite a couple of good friends in high school, I always felt alone. Loneliness was my dependable companion from the moment my childhood ended until the day I left for college. I was close to my baby sister, seven years my junior, but not with my brother and sister who were close to my age.

I lived down the hallway in the last bedroom on the right. It was painted lavender and had a lock on the door which I always locked behind me. I came home from school on days I had no extracurricular activities and went straight to my room where I’d play the piano or read. I could tell from the sound of the gears that my dad or stepmom approached our house on the dead-end street. The only difference between me and a renter living with strangers was that I didn’t pay rent. I did, however, buy all my own shampoo and clothes which I washed, dried and put away myself. I was a roommate who cleaned up after herself.

My parents didn’t mean to abbreviate my childhood. They didn’t purposely treat me like an adult when I was a mere child. My self-sufficiency disguised my longing to have someone sit by my bed and stroke my hair while I fell asleep. Being self-contained saved me even as it closed the door on softness and childhood.

I’m grown now, but I grieve the passing away of my childhood as if it happened only ten minutes ago. Why didn’t any of the adults in my life treat me like a child when I was just a little girl? I was never abused and I am grateful to have been spared what too many children have to endure. But still, I wish I could remember even one time when someone scooped me up and twirled me around just to hear me giggle with glee. I wish I had a memory of snuggling on my dad’s lap, of having a storybook read to me while we rocked. I wish I could recall a day of laughter, a time when someone took me out to eat pie other than that time my dad took me to a restaurant to break the news that he was divorcing my mother.

“But I will always love you,” he said. He never said those words again.

He loved me; I know that. But in my family, we were all broken. Jagged edges preventing us from embracing. Like the shrub in my backyard, I am covered with sharp quills, the better to keep you away.

And then I cry because I’m alone.

My husband drives carpool. Every afternoon, he picks up four boys from the local elementary school. However, today he is in Michigan enjoying some guy-time with his college buddies.

My neighbor, the morning carpool driver, drove afternoon pick-up yesterday and will pick up tomorrow. Today, though, I had no choice. I was the designated Carpool Driver.

I was also scheduled to work from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m., then had a phone conference from 11:45 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., drove a kindergartener to school at 12:30 p.m., and was scheduled to work again from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. to midnight. Having no choice, at 2:55 p.m., school dismissal time, I instant-messaged a co-worker and told her I’d be back in ten minutes.

An optimistic estimate, sure, but I’ve done it before. I time my departure so that my boys will be the last ones to be picked up so I don’t have to sit in line and inch my car forward while wondering why everyone in the world is so inefficient and slow-moving.

I did not count on road construction and a detour. Drat.

I did not plan on waiting for the departing buses to pass by on the road which was narrowed to one-lane by yet more construction.

When I pulled up, though, no children were in sight. A moment of panic struck, but then the boys emerged from the school and crowded into the van. When the last boy sat, I backed my van up slightly, looked to make sure no vehicles were approaching and caught sight of a furious woman leaning out of the car window behind me.

A car behind me? Where did that car come from?

I rolled my eyes, rolled down the window, waved exuberantly and said, “Sorry! Didn’t see you!” Then I pulled around the van in front of me and intended to go home.

Irresponsible, you might conclude . . . leaving the scene of an accident, you might say . . . hit and run, call the police, you might accuse.

But I didn’t even feel my van tap her little silver car. I knew that if I’d actually hit her, I would have felt a jolt, a bounce or at least a bump. I felt nothing.

Still, she pulled her car faster than necessary past me into a parking spot. With a sigh, I pulled mine into a spot, too, and got out. She was standing with an outraged look on her face, studying the front of her car and said (with some disappointment, I thought), “Well, it’s just a ding.” She ran her fingers over the bumper and I saw absolutely nothing. Not even a smudge of blue paint from my van. HELLO? That’s why God gave us bumpers, for those occasional little bumps, even imperceptible ones.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I didn’t see you there at all.”

She didn’t acknowledge me. I returned to my car.

Then back to the detour, where I found myself in a line of ten cars. I swerved onto a side street, went a block down and raced through town. I was like Jason Bourne, on the run through an Italian city.

I pulled into my driveway and saw the neighbor’s dog loose, the dog that bit a kid last summer. I turned to warn the kids and one of the boys said, “Uh . . . ” and I said, “OH! I was supposed to drop you off! But I don’t have time . . . can you stay for awhile?” and I’m thinking that if I were a fifth grade boy I might have said something to the driver if she appeared to forget to drop me off at my house several blocks away . . . but he said nothing until I had pulled my keys from the ignition.

I warned the boys, “Do not stay in the front yard. Do not run. That dog bit a kid.”

We got in the house, I looked at another boy and said, “Was I supposed to drop you off?” And he called his house and his dad was home, so he walked a few houses over to his house. (And luckily, he was not eaten by the dog.)

I was away from my computer for a good twenty minutes. And in that time I’d managed to:

1) Get stuck in construction.

2) Hit a car. (Barely, invisibly, hardly at all.)

3) Get stuck in traffic (in a tiny little town with no stop-lights!).

4) Forget to drop a kid off at his house.

5) Scare all the kids spitless of the wandering dog.

Good times were had by all.

At 5 p.m., my mom arrived to accompany me to the mall parking lot where I waited for AAA to come and open my van with its keys locked inside. He arrived after only twenty minutes and wasted no time in breaking into my van. Awesome.

I can’t believe I backed right up into someone’s car and then immediately thought of half a dozen reasons why it was her fault. I am very good at deflecting blame, at least in my own mind. Also? I should not be allowed to drive carpool. I do not have the patience nor the driving skills.

Okay, well, I’m not a watch.  Today I am just a harried housewife with an absent husband.  He went to Michigan to an unofficial college reunion, which I think is fantastic for him.  How lucky is he that he still has twenty friends from college who take time out to get together for a (very) long weekend?  So, three cheers for him and now he owes me one.  Or maybe we’re even.  Something like that.

In an attempt to be helpful, he drove himself to the mall and took the shuttle to the airport.  He left at 5 a.m. or some ungodly hour, so that was kind of him, right?  He arranged for a friend of ours to pick up the van from the mall and drive it to our driveway . . . leaving me out of the loop entirely.  Fantastic, right?  Except that he locked the keys in the van.  Do we have a spare key?  Why, of course!  It’s on the key-ring that is locked in the van because doesn’t everyone just put all their keys on one ring?  Anyone?

Well, so, now I have to go hang out at the mall parking lot long enough for AAA to come and unlock the door for us.  How long can that take?  An hour?  Two?  Fifteen minutes?  I don’t know, but I do know that tomorrow is a long day for me (I work three shifts, 8 a.m. to 11 a.m., phone conference from 11:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m., 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., 9 p.m. to midnight–guess what I’ll be doing between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m.?).

By the way, has anyone seen the forks?  What forks?  The forks that belong in my kitchen drawer.  Try as I might, I can only find two forks in the house.  We are all reduced to eating with the small forks, which I think are meant to be dessert forks, if we were hoity-toity.  However, I always consider those “kid forks,” and make the kids eat with them except now I eat with them, too, because where are all the forks?  Did the dish run away with the fork?  Are the forks hiding somewhere with the unmated socks?  Are my forks participating in a practical joke on someone’s lush lawn?