Month: November 2006

My Talking Phone

My phone woke me last night at midnight.  Only it wasn’t ringing.  It talked in a bossy woman’s voice, something about resetting the time.  Earlier in the evening, we’d had a momentary power outage and that provoked the phone.  Sure, I noticed the blinking “CL”–whatever that means–but I didn’t think it would wake me up by speaking in a woman’s voice.  But it did.

I woke with a start and flapped around, slapping all the buttons, poking around at the handset and finally settling back to sleep.  Then it happened again at 3:00 a.m. . . . and I repeated my stellar performance, blindly swinging at the base before flopping back on my pillow.  I spent the rest of the night in anxious suspense, waiting for the phone to demand to be reset.

I read a book (Derailed) the last couple of days.  The story was fast-paced and sleazy, really, but what really bothered me was the author’s frequent use of sentence fragments.  For instance, he’d end a paragraph with something like this:  “Waiting for the train to pull into the station.” 

I find that sort of writing so distracting.  (Because I am such a famous published novelist, I can judge these things.  Ha.)

Anyway, it was a quick read.  I thought I’d improve my mind by reading Henry James’ “Portrait of a Lady,” but now I’m worried a little because the introductory notes are complicated and I feel like I’m a high school sophomore facing required reading.

All the same, I’m going to read on.  But not tonight. 

Tonight, I have muffled the phone–well, pushed a button that made the “CL” stop blinking–and hopefully, we’ll have a silent night.

November 1! Candy wrappers everywhere!

I woke up at 6:30 a.m., annoyed to be awake.  I don’t have to be awake until 7:30 a.m. and yet I opened my eyes and was awake.  So, I did what any self-respecting sloth would do.  I got up, peed, and went back to bed where I fell into a confusing dream and woke up exhausted forty-five minutes later.

I have not adjusted to the time change.

Empty candy wrappers appear on the floor, like magic.  I tend to think it’s better to let the children gorge themselves and then we can be done with it.  I’m going to sort and purge the candy stash tonight when everyone’s gone to bed . . . I can get rid of the sticky, hard candies no one likes and hide some of the chocolates away for Christmas stockings.  (I just read that tip in Rocks in My Dryer.)

I’m minus one extra kid today which makes today seem like a holiday.  No negotiating truces between four-year olds, no insisting that they be nice and stop screaming.  It’s funny how the addition or subtraction of one child can change the dynamic of a group–and it hardly even matters which kid it is.

November 1.  Happy birthday to my long-time friend Lisa, who doesn’t have a blog even though she is one of the most insightful and hilarious women I know.  (I ought to collect her emails into an anthology, publish it and get rich, rich, rich!)  I met Lisa when I was nineteen and in college, though we didn’t become friends right away as we were busy pining over the same boy who ended up being a waste of our time.  (But was so cute.  And tall.  And did I mention he was a drummer?)

Lisa and I were roommates the summer of 1985 when we both worked for Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s Heritage USA in Charlotte, North Carolina.  Lisa did her best to transform our dorm room (a converted Motel 6, complete with aqua shag carpet) into a cozy place.  Her secret?  Lots of low-wattage lamps.  She has a flair for decorating. 

She has far better hair than I ever will and is willing to devote enough time to making it look perfect.  (I am lazy when it comes to my hair.)  She was the Queen of Hot Rollers back in college.  Such springy, bouncy hair she had!

Lisa is vivacious, energetic, passionate and hard-working.  She has three boys, roughly the age of my own boys, and meets the challenge of parenting with humor and persistence.  She juggles working and parenting and ministering with grace and skill.

One spring night in 1986, we borrowed a car from our friend, Diane, and went out for pizza.  While chatting and picking at the cheese, one of us suggested that we ought to drive to Tulsa from Springfield.  This was a three-hour drive and we had a curfew, yet we proclaimed it a brilliant plan!  We’d surprise the college men we knew who lived in Tulsa once we got there!  What fun, right?  (We didn’t even ask Diane if we could take her car three hours away.)

We arrived late, ten, I suppose, maybe later.  I called my now-husband and announced my arrival.  He told me later that he’d just returned home from a date (with another girl!).  He agreed to meet me at Denny’s.  Then I called Lisa’s now-husband, but not-yet-boyfriend, John, and asked him to meet me at Denny’s to discuss Lisa.  I told him I was very worried about her.  (A bold-faced lie!)

He met us there, too.  Surprise!  Surprise!  Lisa and I found our spontaneous appearance in Tulsa hilarious.  The boys?  Not quite so much.  But I did wrangle an agreement out of my now-husband that we’d date that upcoming summer.  (Oh, boy, long story there that I probably never told you and it’s probably too long to go into . . . . but let’s just skip to the summer of 1987 and say we lived happily ever after.  And Lisa and John were married the summer of 1988.)

(And yes, we totally missed our curfew–I think we simply stayed out all night and sneaked back in when the dorm opened at 6:00 a.m.)

Anyway, it’s Lisa’s birthday and I’m thinking about her today.  Her husband took her away to a spa until tomorrow so she can turn forty-five in peace and luxury.

Meanwhile, I’m also thinking about a nap.  These jaunts down memory lane are exhausting.