It’s almost 2 a.m. and I’m heading to bed because I have to take my kids to VBS by 8:45 a.m.

But I just wanted to tell you that our cat, Smokey, attacked our cat, Chestnut, again tonight.  Normally we keep the cats separated through an elaborate system of opening and closing doors in sequence and sequestering cats in rooms away from one another . . . but somehow, our system failed tonight.

And the cats discovered they were in the same room and began to shriek and claw and roll around in a ball of murderous fur-flying rage.  So, naturally, I sprang into action, grabbing a broom and screaming NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO.

The cats separated for an instant, then ran and resumed the vicious fighting.  Chestnut broke free and fled under a chair.  Smokey chased and so did I, waving my broom and yelling.

I prodded Smokey with the broom, fully expecting her to rip my face off.

She retreated a few feet away.  Chestnut ran to semi-safety under the kitchen table.  I tried to pick her up and she hissed at me, then gave me that scary cat yowl that made me think about every Stephen King movie I’ve ever seen.

Despite all the noise, no one woke up!

Chestnut finally sneaked across the family room into the boys’ room.

And I put the broom down.

I cannot take this drama.

Want a slightly used, extremely fluffy and possibly deranged cat?

I feel a little bit sorry for my kids because I am a boring mother this week.  And I believe in the power of boredom.  Eventually, they’ll entertain themselves.  I hope.

It’s impossible, really, to entertain kids when you are working full-time.  Besides that, I used up all my creative powers of entertainment during my first ten years of motherhood.  I used to do all sorts of arts and crafts with my absolutely disinterested and impatient boys . . . my poor daughter is quite crafty and it doesn’t even occur to me to try!

Maybe tomorrow I’ll unveil some modeling clay or paints or something.  The poor kid only has a kid-sized pool, a gigantic play-system (swings, slide, playhouse), ten thousand stuffed animals, a Wii, eight million books, miscellaneous plastic toys and a partridge in a pear tree.

Next week, my two youngest will head to VBS.  The 12-year old will be helping and the 7-year old will be participating and it will be awesome except for the part where I have to deliver them by 9 a.m.  (I am Sleepy Beauty and this will really cramp my summer style.)

Anyway, so, they are a little bored this week.

Next week we’ll all be tired and then the following week they can go back to being bored.

I used to think I’d grow up and be a stay-at-home mom.

I imagined sewing dresses and kneading fresh bread dough and growing dahlias in my lush back yard.

I never anticipated how distracted I would be as a mother.  I had no idea how many of my hours would be devoted to earning money and tending to dull but necessary tasks.  How was I so delusional?  I’m going to have to blame too many episodes of “Little House on the Prairie.”

Or “The Brady Bunch.”

Or someone or something that picked me up and dumped me right into this family where I am nothing like I thought I would be.  Where are my dahlias?  What happened to baking bread with yeast?  And let’s not even contemplate how long my sewing machine has been broken and neglected.

So, while I would like to just complain about how hard it is to be a work-at-home mother, I can’t.  I am grateful for my job that allows me to be at home with my kids, even though I joke that I ought to get hazard pay for working in my family room in the midst of the occasional chaos.  The Noise!  The Noise!

I want to complain about all the years I did childcare in my own home for other families, but I can’t.  I am grateful that I could care of other little ones while caring for my own.  Those days were long but how short the years turned out to be.

But I have to say that it’s hard, way harder than I ever expected to tend to my house and my kids and my self and my marriage and my brain.

How do people do this?

How do I do this?

I wish I were doing a better job.  I wish I could be in more places at the same time.  I wish I weren’t so distracted and fractured and impatient.

(Tonight, I am watching infomercials as usual since it’s so late . . . and tonight’s temptation is P90X.  I’m just about convinced to order it so I can have rock hard abs.  Because I TOTALLY have an hour a day to work out to a DVD and I wouldn’t AT ALL feel like an idiot doing the work-out while my teenagers and their friends wandered in and out watching me.  Then I could enter a body-building competition and get a spray tan and hey, why not?)

Good night.

We had the most glorious weather while we were at Long Beach last week.  I’d tell you more except that we enjoyed such a peaceful, boring time there’s not much to report.

I managed to read a novel and a half (out of five that I optimistically brought with me).  The kids had fun . . . the sun actually shone and on Wednesday, our Beach Day, the sand felt hot on our bare feet, which is a remarkable event here in Washington State.

Now, we’re back at work.

The kids are back at video games.

The cats can’t stop meowing.

And it’s so late that I am once again contemplating buying Sheer Cover makeup from this informercial!

We just returned from five days on the Washington coast . . . I’ll be blogging again soon.

Just so you know . . . I’m here, alive, just busy.

Can’t wait for sunset and fireworks on Sunday!  Have a great weekend, everyone!

I’m a whiner.  I have a tendency to complain about discomforts big and small.  Really.  You have no idea.

I’m too hot.
My Achilles tendon hurts.
I’m bored.
My jeans don’t fit.
The carpet’s dirty again.
I have to cook dinner again.
I’m tired.

And, believe me, I’ve also complained about the bigger things in life.  The terrain of my life has been shaped by divorce, death, infertility, financial strains, cancer, adoption, and other stuff so crazy you might not believe me if I told you.  How is that fair?

But now, I’m forty-five.  I’m old enough to (almost!) need reading glasses, yet I see more clearly than I have ever before.  I’ve climbed the rocky terrain of my life and find I can see farther than I could before I needed contact lenses to see the television screen.

No matter what trial or tragedy I have faced, someone has experienced something worse.

It’s hard to quantify sorrow and loss.  Is the death of my 47-year old dad worse than the loss of your elderly grandpa?  Is the heartbreak of miscarriage worse than the despair of infertility?  Is is really better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?  Is my pain worse than yours?

All I have to do is listen and look to see that no one is exempt from pain.  We all suffer.

I’m ashamed of my petty complaints when I consider the widowed young mom, the battered wife, the parents who bury their children, the displaced families in Third World countries, the mothers who have no clean water for their children, the men who cannot provide for their children, people who struggle with physical ills, kids who grow up with black eyes instead of love . . . the list is endless.

And I have a family who is safe in our suburban home.  I share my life with a husband who works hard and considers our family first.  My car will not break down tomorrow and if I want to, I can go to the grocery store and buy whatever strikes my fancy. Our roof doesn’t leak.  I can wash endless loads of laundry in my fancy high-efficiency machines.  My kids are all safe and healthy under our roof.

I am aware of unmerited blessings and I am grateful.

I’m not afraid of a lot of things.   (Except for those things I fear:  spiders, snakes, running into someone I know at the grocery store, and automated car washes.)  I’m okay with heights, public speaking and upside-down roller coasters.

When I was 18, I boxed up my belongings, mailed the boxes to a college in Missouri and rode a Greyhound bus for three days and nights to start my college career.  I had never seen the college before.  I didn’t know anyone there but one woman who worked in the administration office.

No big deal.

Back then, if you gave me a giant, life-altering decision, I didn’t really flinch.  I considered myself a rather timid person–I really hated to ride the city bus because inevitably some scary looking person would want to befriend me–but I was braver than I knew.

I think this is the bravery that accompanies limited life experience, when you can touch the edges of your life without leaving your bedroom.  Everything is so contained, so controllable.  You hardly even need a telescope to see the border between you and the unknowable future.

You don’t know what you ought to fear.  You haven’t shaken hands with the sorrow life will hand you, the losses you’ll endure, the battles you’ll fight, the impossible situations you’ll navigate.  You just don’t know.

You have so little to lose when you’re young.  You think your problems are compelling and worthy of the notebooks you fill with the angst you cannot contain.  Your life is a miniature; it only feels enormous to you.

When I was very young, I remember riding through the automated car wash with my dad.  I may have dramatized the actual events in my memory, but I recall sitting on the floor of the car, terrified that the water would swoosh through the windows, that those flapping strips would somehow slap water into the car.

I still hate the car wash. I avoid it, even though I’m grown and I know that the car will emerge all shiny and clean.  I wince at the very idea of steering my car into those metal grooves at the car wash entrance.  I’m afraid of it.

Fear is sometimes irrational.  Logic informs you that you’re out of my mind to be afraid.  But what difference does that make?  You can’t slow your racing pulse.

Rational fear is worse.  You know exactly how things can go wrong.  You know what each person might lose.  You can pinpoint where disaster will occur.  You know.

At the same time, the older I get, the less I fear.  I planned my wedding.  I was even so foolhardy that I sewed my own wedding dress.  I watched cancer kill my father.  I planned his funeral.  I moved across the country with my husband more than once.  I gave birth twice at home with the assistance of midwives.  I sat in the waiting room while my husband had surgery to remove cancer from his larynx.

And through each situation, I discovered a strength I didn’t know I had.  I survived. My partnership with my husband thrived.  I felt the arms of God surround me as I cried.  I found out I can handle even the weirdest situation.

Not that I want to.  I don’t want to fling myself into crazy circumstances.  I don’t want the earth to shift beneath me, for the foundation to crack and the windows to shatter.  I don’t want things to change.  I am afraid of change.

But does anything ever stay the same?  My kids insist on growing older, day by day.  The seasons refuse to stay and linger.  People die.  Babies are born.  Nothing ever stays the same.

That scares me in a way that a 2,000 mile bus journey never did.  I’m older.  I’m wiser.  I’m terrified by my age and wisdom and by the unknown.

I’m not sure that I would ever do again what I did when I was 18.

If it were up to me, I’d stop the clock.

It’s not up to me.

But don’t expect me to kill a spider or get the car washed.  That’s where I draw the line.

Last night, I had so much to do that I didn’t turn off my computer until 2 a.m.  I was sound asleep by 2:30 a.m.

At 8:30 a.m., the telephone rang.  I picked it up, noticed the lack of caller-identification and said hello.

The man on the other end of the line launched into an angry tirade that went something like this:  “Stop stealing my newspaper!  Every morning my newspaper is gone and I know you are stealing it and I want you to stop taking my newspaper!”

I interrupted, “Excuse me?” and he continued on, ranting about his stolen newspaper.

I thought he probably had the wrong number, so I said, “Excuse me?  What house number are you talking about?  Because we have not taken your newspaper . . . ” and he grew angrier and louder and said, “Do you want me to come over because you do NOT want me to come over to your house and I AM COMING TO YOUR PORCH RIGHT NOW SO YOU BETTER WATCH OUT!”

And he hung up on me.

My heart pounded.  Now wide awake, I cast about for the suitable attire to possibly call the police and fend off a raging lunatic with a thirst for newspapers.  Also, I put on my glasses so I could see.

I feared my kids would open the door if someone knocked, so I hurried downstairs to find my house completely quiet.  Every one of my children were still soundly sleeping.  I checked the locks on every door, deadbolted the front door and peered out the front window to see if a crazed man was approaching my house.

Nothing.  No one.  Only sweet, peaceful morning silence.

I decided the nutcase on the phone dialed my number by mistake.

I returned to bed.

But it took me a good hour before I was settled down enough to sleep.

In other news . . . well, there is no other news because someone is stealing newspapers.  But it’s not me.

Have you seen the website called Stuff Christians Like?

(The following description is directly from the site.)

Does the stuff we like, ever get in the way of the God we love?

That’s the question Stuff Christians Like is all about.

It’s also about booty, God, booty.

And surviving church as a single adult.

And knowing how metrosexual your worship leader is.

And how serious, a serious Wednesday can be.

And hilarious/insightful comments from readers around the world.

And how laughter is a gift from God and when we refuse to accept it, it makes Him want to take it back. Like the unicorns.

Started on March 21, 2008 as a reaction to the wildly popular blog Stuff White People Like which was created by Christian Lander, Stuff Christians Like is a blog about the funny things we Christians do. And what they just might reveal about our faith.

The site is written by Jonathan Acuff, a preacher’s kid/copywriter who lives in Atlanta with his wife and two kids.

The most popular post on the site is “Pastor’s Kids Gone Wild.”  Just in case you wondered.

Anyway, the author of the site, Jonathan Acuff, wrote this book called . . . wait for it . . . Stuff Christians Like.  And I received a free copy to review . . . so I was all prepared to skim through it quickly so I could get the gist of it . . . and then before I knew it, I was trying to explain it to my husband.  I flipped through some pages and came upon a section that made me laugh so hard I couldn’t speak.  No exaggeration.  I didn’t even get to read the whole book before I wrote this post because my husband TOOK MY BOOK.  (I got it back, though.)

So, based on that moment of hilarity, I heartily recommend this book.  Only, if you didn’t grow up in church or if you aren’t involved in church now, you might not “get” it.  I’m not sure.  If you check out the site and find it amusing or thought-provoking you’ll like this book.

You can buy it here.  (Less than ten bucks!)
You can “Like” Jonathan on Facebook here.
You can follow him on Twitter here.
You can read what others bloggers said about this book here.

I like this book.  And I’m not just saying that because I got a free review copy.