Did He Really Just Say Hot-Cute?

I have determined that it's no use pretending. You can take the girl out of the small town, but you can never take the small town out of the girl. Consider the events of this afternoon.

The oldest and I headed downtown for his senior portraits. First of all, I hate downtown, at least on that side of the river. I get turned around easily (even with a GPS) and let's be honest, bums standing on every corner make me nervous. I know they're hungry and willing to work and want God to bless me and every one of them is a veteran, but they still make me nervous. That will most likely never change.

Secondly, I hate red lights and railroad crossings and road construction that makes me have to turn around. I just want to get in my car, go where I need to go, and get back home without horns honking. Now most of the time I manage to stay calm, at least outwardly, but it just goes without saying that I prefer to be home. I'm not a phobic or anything like that, I just like home. Peace. Quiet. Cats.

Yeah. I'm not crazy or anything.

So I take the boy because that's what a good mom-of-a-senior does, and we are ushered upstairs where he is shown the fitting room and I have a seat. The guy makes some small talk. Nick, introduce me to your sister. Whatever. Chuckle, chuckle. He asks where I went to high school which brings up a place far away from here. That immediately sparked his interest. I was asked a few pointed questions and it is quickly determined that I am something of a redneck girl.

It's okay. I can take it. I do hear myself talk, afterall.

He invites me in to watch the photography session to which I politely decline. I don't think my seventeen-year old boy needs his mom sitting in the corner while he poses this way and that. Besides, the acoustics in that place were great and I could hear every word that was said anyway... mental note for when it becomes our girl's turn. I pulled out my crochet bag (good Lord, have I really become that woman?) and passed the next twenty minutes or so in relative peace.

Of course, my mind was racing. Is that really my kid in there taking his final pictures of his high school career? I thought back to my own... I kinda remember it. Does it all really matter? Where will these pictures end up anyway? In the back of a picture frame behind other pictures? At the bottom of a cedar chest? Where are my senior pictures? At some point in the utterly pointless mental monologue, I heard the photographer asking my boy if he had a girlfriend.

Yes.
What's her name?
He tells him.
How long have you been dating?
He tells him.
Is she cute?
Yes.
Like hot-cute?

Now at this juncture in the conversation, I really do chuckle to myself. I know the guy is just being friendly and keeping the atmosphere casual and all that, but I am thinking, You obviously don't know who you're talking to. I know I'm the mother and some of you might be thinking I'm just being naive, but if I know anything about my oldest, it's that he would never refer to his girlfriend- especially to a stranger, as being hot-cute.

And that, my virtual friends, is called a father teaching his sons about respect.

The session quickly ended after a few more shots with his guitar and the mom-mandatory picture of him in his suit. I was given a brochure that featured the packages and prices arranged on the love scale (another chuckle, chuckle)... $150, we love him a little ~ $949, we love him a lot (another whatever). We made our next appointment to check out the proofs, gathered up our stuff (crochet bag included), and made our way through the stoplights, over the train tracks, and past the bums.

Home at last.
Sitting outside.
And for the record, not a cat in sight.

*And in case you're wondering, he never did answer the hot-cute question. The guy took the hint and moved on. While driving back home, we talked about that particular phrase.

I just don't get it, my oldest said.
I don't think of her that way. There's more to a girl than that.

Good grief, we are blessed.

The Celebration Continues

1. I've had the windows open ALL day.
2. I bought my first pumpkin spice latte of the season.
3. I'm sitting outside in the screened-in porch watching two cats play.
4. I took a new profile pic for facebook that didn't scare me to death.
5. And an encouraging thought hit me while I was folding laundry:

My husband's eighty-four year old grandma. She's my biggest fan on his side of the family and the only one who has ever truly liked me regardless of which side of the Mississippi I grew up on. We had her over for dinner last week for my husband's birthday and she always makes it a point to compliment the many quilts in our house. She knows my grandma made them and she spares no praise in admiring each one. She spent some time talking about her days in high school and how she has outlived most of her eighteen senior classmates (the girls are outliving the boys, she said with a smile). If we had never moved here, I would have never had the chance to know her.

Yeah, grandmas are a very big deal to me.

I need all the help I can get. =)

Celebrating Hope

Do you ever get consumed by sad thoughts to the point where you have to make a conscious decision to call a cease and desist! to that part of your brain?

I knew it was just me.

Well, hang with me cause I promise this will take a positive spin. I was in bed last night waiting for my husband to complete his next virtual level in some world that does not exist when I began thinking about the date. Now, I've already been here, done this, so I'm not going to repeat what you've already read (it may have been painful enough the first time). Suffice it to say, four years ago on this very date, I hugged my grandma on her front porch (it would be the last time I would be at her house while she was alive), hugged my mom and dad (and I won't even allow myself to dwell on that), and loaded two kids into a car to be followed by another kid riding with his dad in a moving truck.

We called it The Great Adventure.
Now I just refer to it as The Great Move of 2007.
Eight hundred and eighty-two miles in the wrong direction.

Okay. That's enough with that side of it.

I opened up my bible this morning looking for something in particular I knew I had marked. Referring to the great heroes and heroines of faith that lived in Old Testament times- and let me interrupt this thought for a shout-out to my 3rd/4th grade class of 2005-2006 (?) that memorized the entire chapter and brought the house down at our Spring Presentation. Anyway, Hebrews 11 recalls the big faith moments of people like Abraham and Enoch and Noah and Moses and Rahab... you get the idea. Verses 14-16 are circled in my bible with squiggly lines and arrows pointing to it with particular emphasis on verse 15:

Now those people who talk as they did show plainly that they are in search of a fatherland (their own country). If they had been thinking with [homesick] remembrance of that country from which they were emigrants, they would have found constant opportunity to return to it. But the truth is that they were yearning for and aspiring to a better and more desirable country, that is, a heavenly [one]. For that reason God is not ashamed to be called their God [even to be surnamed their God--the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob], for He has prepared a city for them.
 
Now don't get me wrong. As far as I was concerned, we were in our own country, but you get the point. The date inscribed by these verses would put us about one month into The Great Move. Believe me, I found constant opportunity to return home. And again, it's as tempting as ever to have a seat, kick my feet up, and keep these thoughts company for a long time; but for the sake of my day, I'm not gonna do it.
 
Yes. Our mortgage doubled.
Yes. Our income dropped.
 
But we are still here. Our family is still under one roof, new friends have been made, and we are probably closer to the Lord than we would have been had we stayed. There is something to be said about getting too comfortable. Complacency is a dangerous thing. I know for a fact that I was losing my identity in the work I was doing. I forgot who I was in Him. Hey, I'll never pretend to know the real reason for all this, but He brings good out of all things. Sometimes a hard look in the mirror is the hardest thing to do.
 
So tonight I think I am going to plan a little celebration dinner. I may be the only one in this family who takes note of the date, but I happen to think survival is a good thing to celebrate. Not just survival of a move and all that went with it, but survival of life. Loss. Heartbreak. Despair. Homesickness. Depression.
 
Hope.
 
And not the hope our current administration gives.
Thank God for that. My hope is real.
 
 
 

And now, Lord, what do I wait for and expect?

My hope and expectation are in You.

Psalm 39:7

Labor Day Blues

On this rainy Labor Day, at least in our neck of the woods, I've been reading a little bit about the origin of a day that Americans take to the interstates and lakes and backyards. There's a little confusion as to who actually came up with the idea of Labor Day, but one thing is for certain... it was originally celebrated on a Tuesday until the government decided it would make a nice three-day weekend. Now it's viewed less as a celebration of America's labor unions and more as the official end to summer.

Unemployment is at 9.1%.
Fourteen million Americans are out of work.
And the US Postal Service is going under.

Nothing like a few headlines to brighten your day.

Is There A Doctor In The House?

In the morning hours before church, my girl torments two cats with a red laser beam. Okay, so torment might be too strong of a word. They love it. How a cat can endlessly chase a tiny red dot around the living room having learned long ago that he (or she) doesn't stand a chance of ever catching it... well, I'm here to tell you it's solid family entertainment.

I am experiencing the woes of the un-insured. Health care, that is. About two weeks before the husband lost his job and our health insurance went out the window, I had went for to the doctor for an infection that you really don't want to hear about. Short of the story? It's back and I am up a creek. The husband has his VA, the kids are covered by the state (yes, we had to go that route), and I have been hung out to dry. I'm hoping to get my own veteran benefits rolling sometime in the future, but for now my hope remains first in Jesus (we had a talk just the other day) and second in an appointment I've got at a free clinic for Friday.

Well, technically it's not free, more of a based-on-your-income type thing. I had called around this past Friday when I was next to miserable. Take any clinic and try to walk in the door without insurance. The cheapest I found was $108 and that was literally just walking in the door. Put into the equation lab work and all that... $200 is a good guess and that's before a prescription. Lord have mercy. I am by no means an Obama fan, but I have had great fun telling my husband that if he would only leave Obama alone, all my health problems would be solved.

And that is a joke.
A really big joke.
But it drives my husband crazy.

I'll just wait till Friday and continue to consume large amounts of water and cranberry juice (figured it out yet?). In the meantime, I am working on schoolwork, watching some football, and anticipating the cooler temps headed our way this week. Labor Day is going to be a wash-out, but I don't know that anyone really cares around here. We are so ready for rain. The forecast last night showed a number I don't think we've seen since March. 80s. Hallelujah. Even my husband did a little jig last night when he saw that. I am ready to throw the windows open and turn off the air. Our screened-in porch needs a good cleaning and a lot of use. I'm ready for pumpkins on the porch, pumpkin bars in the oven, and a pumpkin latte in my hand.

Anything but cranberry.

So Technically Nobody Told Us Our Kid Was Great

Of course, that could be because we didn't hang around to actually meet any of the teachers (and FYI, this is part two to an earlier post). After sitting in an auditorium for an hour enduring the onslaught of college information, we were all a little more than fried. Don't get me wrong, it was great information... just too much at one time. Our oldest has his sights set on a tech school anyway, so that will all be pretty straight forward and not much of an application process. I thought it was good, though, for the middle and the youngest to sit through the whole college presentation thing.

That is until the middle informed me he slept through most of it.
Oh well. We really do try.

Anyway, after learning that we have to have a senior pic done at a particular studio if we want it in the yearbook and that the deadline is eight days away (how did I miss that memo?) I felt myself slipping into a minor panic mode. I got the graduation date marked down (only ten tickets per grad) and I think I caught the info on ordering the cap and gown (no extras for us). When the words of the speaker began to form the old blah, blah, blah sound in my ears, I knew we were done. We slipped out with the other slackers, paid our five dollar guilt-fee to the PTA, and debated if we really needed to do the whole open house thing. Keeping in mind that this is a big school and nothing really important happens in these two-minute meet-n-greet sessions, we opted to bolt for the car.

And the husband spent his birthday money on Chili's.
It was the best open house ever.

Just Tell Me How Great My Kid Is And We Can All Go Home

I am wondering where in the world August went. It seems as if we were just wrapping up summer and making school supply lists (of course, this is in the part of the country where school comes a little too early, in my opinion). I'm not complaining. I'm glad to see August go. September kicks off the four months of the year that are my favorite. Granted, we'll have to lose these ninety-eight temps before I can truly appreciate the fall months. Around here summer seems to last through October. Even so, the early mornings are cool and the late evenings are nice. Hope is just around the corner.

Tonight we have a senior meeting for parents to be followed by an open house and rounds two and three in Meet The Teacher. I never look forward to these nights. Nobody talks about what they really want to talk about and the maneuvering through the crowded halls leaves me feeling a little more than anxious. In fact, this takes me back to this same time last year. Oh well. It is the role we must play as parents. We'll load up the car, go through the motions, shake a few hands, share a bottle of germex, and have dinner out afterwards. I suppose I can make small talk for the promise of a meal I don't have to cook.

I can find joy in any Taco Bell.