Tonight, I cradled my daughter in my right arm while we both stretched out on the bed. She was crying because her morning kindergarten class is canceled tomorrow because of the inclement weather (i.e. ice on the side roads). I tried to distract her by telling her that we’d do something tomorrow, only I couldn’t really come up with something fantastic. She turned her face to mine and asked if we could go shopping and it was then that I noticed her right eyebrow.

It looked weird. Her tooth looks really weird, too, since it’s beginning to come loose, but that eyebrow . . . I began to stroke it with one finger. I brushed it back and forth as she continued to chatter.

Then: “Did you cut your eyebrow?” Surely not. The idea was outlandish.

“No” she said, without conviction.

“Really? Because it looks like . . . well, it looks like you cut it. Did you?”

“No.”

“Grace, you cut your eyebrow, didn’t you?”

And she admitted that she had, indeed, cut her eyebrow. I don’t think she realized that scissoring her eyebrow would actually CUT her eyebrow.

She used the Fiskars scissors for kids and I pictured her stabbing herself in her eyeball and so I said, “Grace, do not cut your eyebrows! You might poke yourself in the eye! Don’t do that!”

She said she wouldn’t.

At least it wasn’t her hair (which she tells me she wishes were “smooth”–we curly-haired types just want straight hair). She cut her hair a couple of years ago (I couldn’t find the post I did about it) and it’s only just now grown out. Her hair grows very slowly and then boings into curly ringlets.

She’s still bummed about not going to school tomorrow. I hope her boredom doesn’t tempt her to pierce her own ears or remove her own spleen. What ever happened to just cutting the hair off of a Barbie?

A half an inch of snow fell overnight and my two youngest children could not wait to get their snow gear on at the crack of 8:30 this morning. I was not so enthusiastic.

But since I don’t want to totally rain on their parade, I wrapped myself in my old purple bathrobe and helped my 6-year old find mittens and a hat. She and her brother ran outside to make snowballs with the powdery snow. I curled into a recliner and watched a rerun of “Inside the Actors Studio” about Jay Leno and dozed.

An hour later, I was bitterly cleaning up the kitchen and feeling excessively annoyed by the jumble of lids in the glasses cupboard. My husband buys mugs with lids from coffee places–though neither one of us drinks coffee–and my lid solution stopped working some time ago and now I can’t put away all the glasses because of the stupid lids littering the cupboard. It’s time to clean out my kitchen cupboards because I am tempted to cuss every time I open a cupboard door and try to retrieve something. (We have a half dozen boxes of herbal tea–and we don’t drink herbal tea. It’s ridiculous and it’s making me twitchy just thinking about it now.)

I knew then that I needed to get out of this house for the afternoon. My husband had to leave for a work-related appointment at 3 p.m., so I ended up with almost three hours. I went to Taco Time and Value Village and when I returned, I was much less likely to commit homicide.

As I was putting gas in the car on the way home (only $1.69 a gallon), the snow began to flutter again.

By the time I pulled into the driveway, the flakes were thick and fit for a made-for-television movie. The youngest kids were already outside, cavorting and rejoicing.

Then they went to the neighbor’s house and my house was quiet, but for the teenagers in their room. Eventually, more kids came over and soon, several boys were standing near the front door, hunting for gloves in the front closet. (I keep them in a clear plastic pocket organizer, the kind made for shoes that fits over the door.)

Which leads me to wonder why I am the source of all the gloves and mittens for the neighborhood? Earlier today, my daughter’s friend arrived with bare hands so we outfitted him with mittens. I stock up on mittens and gloves throughout the year because they mysteriously disappear. Right now, there is not a single pair of gloves or mittens to be found–but if you have two left hands, you’d be all set. Clearly, I need to buy more gloves. (I buy them at thrift stores in the off-season, usually.) (All my kids and two or three neighbor kids are gloved now.)

Darkness is falling now and all the kids are outdoors. I’d estimate that two inches of snow fell, maybe a little less, but they will be out until their noses fall off or until the moms all make them come inside.

Now, if school is canceled, we will all rejoice. . . until the third week of June, when we will all grumble.

I know my blog looks weird. I just don’t know why. I hope it will be fixed soon.

* * *

I have a couple of silver frames which have lost their luster. A meticulous housewife might have a schedule for polishing silver, but I do not. I am a half-baked housewife, one who often has no idea at 5 p.m. what she’s cooking for dinner, one who rearranges the ironing pile instead of ironing, one who leaves dishes in the sink overnight. I don’t do “spring cleaning” and dust only when company might be coming over (or at Christmas-time, whichever comes first).

I feel a lot like that tarnished frame these days. I do not shine, I do not reflect the light. I need a good polishing–I ought to be sent away to a shop or something for re-plating. (Do they re-plate silver?)

I’m just worn out, frayed, boring. How do other people do this?

Don’t you hate whiners? I hate whiners. I have so much to be thankful for, so many blessings, blah blah blah. But it just feels like the road goes uphill all the way, in the snow, and I am barefoot. I went from having twins, to babysitting a houseful, to giving birth–oh, and had a brief respite when it was just me and him when his brothers were in school–and then another baby and more babysitting (years of babysitting) and then, wonder of wonders, this full-time job.

It’s so much more fun to be a student with an academic schedule. Summer! Remember summer? And a two-week break at Christmas. . . and those random holidays students get all the time. Adulthood means NO MORE HOLIDAYS, just a carefully hoarded accumulation of ten days to get through the whole entire year.

I tend toward the blues. I know that. I know that’s what this is all about. I just feel down for no particular reason which means that my whole life is cast in this shadow. I’m tarnished.

But! Tomorrow morning my hair colorist is coming over and by noon, I will at least have lustrous hair once again. And that is something. Better than a sharp stick in the eye, anyhow.

Do not be alarmed by my previous post. I’m totally okay and that post was a delayed reaction to an event from some time ago. And not even an event, really, but a moment which led me to think about the nature of my life, and maybe your life, too. Did you ever consider that you enter life naked, helpless, and if you live long enough, you’ll end up naked and helpless again? And I think that while so many of us think that the point of life is to accumulate things (and even people), the real point is to become bare, unveiled, to see that even with empty hands, we are okay.

I believe that my life is in the hands of God, so even when I’m shaken like a snowglobe, I’m still safe.

A few weeks ago, I realized that I’ve had it backwards all this time.  I thought that life would add layers to me, accessorize me, clothe me with new experiences.  I thought that I’d eventually be dressed up, decorated, impressive and elegant.

Instead, I find out that life is more about stripping me one layer at a time.  I thought that I was naked when I was born, but in some ways, I feel more naked now than ever before.  I’m not exactly thrilled with the process of having relationships and ideas and beliefs yanked out of my grip and off my shoulders.  I yelp, “HEY, THAT IS MINE!” but apparently it wasn’t at all.

In the beginning, as a child, my entire world was the loopy neighborhood of Whispering Firs.  The boundaries were so certain, life was so predictable–we always had boiled potatoes, never baked, never mashed.  I knew my parents, I knew my siblings, I knew I would get good grades in school and that I was good at drawing puppies.

To be enrobed in that simple, suburban childhood world was to be safe.

Except–as I see now–to be swathed in simplicity is to be a child.  And it’s not real.  When you grow up, when you become more of yourself, you end up shivering without the cloak you expected.  Nothing you touch is as it seems–it’s not cashmere but rags–and letting it go makes more sense than wrapping yourself up like a mummy.

And so, I find myself with less protection and fewer absolutes.  Some convictions are sharper, some disintegrated; some ideas turned out to be wrong, some expectations impossible.

I am shaken, but not broken.

And I still believe two things:

God is good.

The truth sets us free.

Did you see this article about Barbara Curtis’s family?  She’s a blogger and a writer who has been a good friend to me.  (I even spent some time with her in real life at a writer’s conference.)  She has twelve children, three of them who are adopted (and the subject of the article.)  Very cool article!

I am deeply alarmed.  Did you know that Christmas will be here in three weeks?  That’s what I heard one of my sons say today and again I thought, WHAT?

But, good news!  My new Christmas tree was delivered but still sits in my driveway.  I hope someone will drag it into the house at some point and by “someone,” of course I mean “me.”

I cooked the most labor intensive dinner I have cooked in a long time.  Someone gave us some crabs–the meat nestled in their crabby little legs and cracked open bodies–and I spent maybe an hour (!) pulling the meat from the shell.  I couldn’t help but think of the women I saw working in a fish company room–they were “crab shakers” and their job was to remove the crab from the shell.  I don’t know how they did it–there was shaking involved, I guess–but I would have to just DIE if that were my full-time job.  I tried to impress upon my children the importance of their educations while they watched me painstakingly retrieve the meat from the shells.

Then, after all that, I made crab cakes.

You are wondering if there is a point to this post.  And, um, no, there is not.

Have you noticed that my posts have become very generic?  That’s because everyone I know (and their dog) now reads my blog.  Ou-yay ight-may ow-knay at-whay I ean-may?  (That’s fancy ig-pay atin-lay, you know.)

Hey, but guess what?  The carpet cleaner came today and my family room no longer looks like a traveling circus camped on it.  Or like a family of boys with really muddy shoes lives here.

So, Christmas is coming.  Three weeks, they tell me.  Guess I’d better haul the Christmas tree to the living room and get rid of the pumpkins that are still lurking about.  Ho ho ho.

December 1. Where did August go? That’s what I want to know. Twelve minutes ago, the sun was shining, the pool was open, school hadn’t started. Now, only twenty-something days until Christmas. If there is a theme to this blog it is my recurring incredulity about the swiftness of passing time. In other words, “where did the time go?” and “wait a minute, are the seasons changing again?”

My 6-year old says to me all the time, “You’re forty-three, right?” I don’t know why she constantly asks. She also ys, “So, you’re going to die before me, right?” which is sometimes followed up with “I will miss you when you’re dead.”

My husband remarked yesterday, “So, my life is half over, you know.” Unless he doesn’t reach 94. In that case, he’s more than half-way through.

But that’s the least of my concerns. Because Christmas will be here soon. Very soon. Too soon. But then, hey, it’ll practically be time for daffodils and that is one of my favorite times of the year. I need to plant the other bulbs that are sitting in a plastic bag on my bedroom floor. They will not bloom until I put the in the ground. (I ordered them from my son’s school fundraiser.) I have to plant the bulbs because TIME IS RACING.

No wonder I’m in such a hurry all the time. (I’ll tell you what slows me down: a little cold. All I wanted to do today after my work-shift was sprawl on my bed. Which is exactly what I did. I read, then when I finished my book, I tried to nap before my next shift began. . . . and the attempted nap guaranteed that my daughter would return, right on cue, to make sure I did not sleep.)

[Please insert concluding sentence here.]

The end.

I never did answer all those questions from a few posts back. I answered the easy ones and then put off answering the rest. I will take a look at them this week, though, and give it a shot.

Thanksgiving dinner is a fuzzy memory and Christmas approaches with alarming speed. I joined the throngs of shoppers Friday (and Saturday, though there were no throngs on Saturday) and have managed to buy each of my children his or her requested item. Now, all I have to do is “fill in the blanks” with gifts I know they want, even though they don’t realize they want them. (Like the year I presented my preschool-aged twins with solid wooden blocks, which the children in our family still play with. At the time, they boys responded, “We already have blocks.” True, but they didn’t have awesome, cool, expensive blocks.)

We have Christmas lights on the house, two inflatable snowmen in the yard and nettings of lights on the boxwood hedge. The interior of my house still looks like Thanksgiving, though. The Christmas tree I ordered from Amazon.com hasn’t yet arrived and I haven’t had the gumption to haul out the Christmas decorations, even though I know it will be fun to see them. I always forget what I have from year to year.

I’m reading a book that I’m going to review here. It’s called Two Weeks Under and has a unique premise. Last week, I read Mark Driscoll’s book, Confessions of a Reformission Rev
I read a bunch of it out loud to my husband because it made me laugh. It was written by my pastor–it’s so weird that my husband is no longer my pastor–and I liked the insight I gained about our church.

Oh, and I want to tell you about Phil Done’s book, 32 Third Graders and One Class Bunny. I absolutely loved this book and I’m not just saying that because Phil himself sent me a book to review on this blog. I LOVED THIS BOOK! If you have a third-grader, if you were a third-grader, if you are a teacher or if you’ve ever had a teacher you will also LOVE this book. It would also make an awesome “teacher gift” for your child’s teacher, as a matter of fact. Tuck a gift card into the front cover and it would be a Perfect Gift, if you ask me. I laughed. I cried. I thought a lot about third grade and my favorite teacher, Miss Brittingham.

You can order Phil Done’s book from his website as well as from Amazon.com.

The Mr. Clean Magic Eraser quickly and easily removed the Sharpie-marker marks from my laptop computer screen.

Between work shifts tonight, I made three pies, peeled a bunch of potatoes and sweet potatoes, chopped onions, celery and green olives. I have made enough Thanksgiving dinners that I regard the preparation without any alarm. I even manage gravy with great nonchalance.

Sometimes I remember myself as a newish bride asking a friend, “So, how do you mash potatoes anyway?” that long ago Thanksgiving in my kitchen in Marysville. It seems impossible that I haven’t always been mashing potatoes without a second thought.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all! (Someday, I will find and scan the picture of myself as a fourth grader performing in the starring role of the turkey in the Thanksgiving play. I am trying to figure out why I was so desperate to BE the turkey in the Thanksgiving play. Maybe I should find a therapist to unlock this mystery.)

Now, go eat pie!