Wash With Like Colors and Tumble Dry Low (A Precautionary Tail)

Typically I don't blog at 8:30 in the morning. Usually I blog at night after Samily have gone to bed and while Hot Jeff reads the paper and I just schedule it to post the next morning while you are sleeping soundly. Bestie Kim likes to read it with her morning coffee so I try to please her by having fresh stuff up in the am. Today though, my home is in post-vacation tornado status and I'm trying to do anything and everything instead of cleaning it. I'm pretty sure the disaster known as post-vacation is covered under my homeowners insurance.

I also needed to get another post up because seriously, how lame was yesterday's post? I'm not even sure telling you about how good it felt to sleep in my own bed counts as a real post. You can stop throwing tomatoes at me...I have a good post for you today. The suggestion comes from Eric the Bastard who I don't think is a bastard anymore. Thanks to our mutual friend, Green-Bean Stir Fry Rachel, we are now Facebook friends and it appears he has stopped breaking up with girls who have black eyes, and breaking up with girls who have black eyes is the sole reason he was a bastard.

Eric the not-a-bastard-anymore read the post about me killing my neighbor's cat and sent me a note on Facebook reminding me of the time my cat Macy got locked in the dryer. Yes, I said dryer. As in the large household appliance used to remove moisture from a load of clothing. Just making sure we're on the same page.

It was the summer between my sophomore and junior year of college and I was still living at home at my Mom's house in Park City. We had some company coming from out of town the following day. Having sworn off summer classes, I was home washing bedding for the guest bedroom. The bedspread on the guest bed was a charming quilt my Mom had sewn; it was thick and cozy and a favorite place for my cat, Macy, to lay. To be ready for company I decided to wash it and hang it out on the line to dry.

Only minutes after I hung the freshly washed, wet quilt out on the line it started to rain. I darted out the back door and rescued the rung out quilt from becoming dripping with the Montana summer shower.

I had just put the quilt in the dryer when the phone rang. Leaving the dryer door open I ran to answer the phone. It was Eric the not-a-bastard-yet calling to confirm our dinner plans for that evening. With the cordless phone I went back to the laundry room and without thought or hesitation, finished shoving the quilt in and shut the dryer door. I turned it on for 70 minutes and turned the setting to "Cotton/Sturdy". I turned out the light and shut the door before sitting and gabbing on the phone.

About 5 minutes in to the conversation I said to Eric, "I hear something. I hear a weird thumping". I sat quietly, listening closer. Me-ooow. Thump. Me-ooow. Thump. Me-oow. Thump. Like a bolt of lightning it hit me what had happened, I shouted in to the phone, "oooooooh nooooooo" and dropped it, sprinting to the laundry room. I flung open the dryer door and madly dug into the quilt. I felt damp fur and gently pulled the limp cat from the inside of the heavy, still sodden quilt. Macy weakly cried as I patted her head.

This would be a good time for Eric to comment and let us know if I hung up the phone or if he had to just sit and listen to me sob and pray that I hadn't killed my cat. I don't remember. I just remember the feel of her clammy fur and how her tongue hung droopily out of her panting mouth.

I rushed outside to the patio in an attempt to cool her down. The rain was softly falling and it was cool for a June day. I sat out there, holding her and crying for 10 minutes or so when I decided to come in and call the veterinarian.

The vet had me do a few home-tests to test Macy's vision and hearing and since she was standing and her tongue wasn't hanging out anymore he concluded she didn't need to be seen. She was walking like it was her 21st birthday but overall she seemed to be coming out of it ok.

I went on to have pizza at Eric's house that night and Macy went on to live another 4 or 5 years, much to mother's chagrin. When she died years after the unpleasant event I had Mom bury her in a Maytag box with a fabric sheet.


p.s.
This is why I don't blog while the kids are awake...Samuel just cut Emily's hair.

Life After Emily

Last week I was complaining on Facebook that I needed some fresh ideas for blogging and I asked my friends for some prompts. Last time I did this it was fun to hear what your ideas were and this time was too. My friend, Emily, in Seattle suggested I write about how having a 2nd child has changed the dynamic of our family.


Emily (friend Emily) is the daughter of my high school science teacher, Mr. Butler. Mr. Butler was also my speech and drama coach and one of the coolest "adults" I had ever met. I truly believe some of the success I've had as an adult is because of the strong foundation he helped lay when I was in high school. Growing up without a father left me with some pretty strong insecurities with men and Mr. Butler, or Dave as I now get to call him, was amazingly influential. I spent many a study hall hour and long bus rides on speech and drama trips chatting up life, getting advice on boys and life and listening to Mr. Butler's stories (he had some good stories). Mr. Butler also appeared to have a really healthy marriage. I never knew his wife very well but he seemed to adore her, spoke highly and respectively about her and gave me an early picture of a healthy marriage built on trust and mutual admiration. Emily was his young daughter who is now a lovely and funny adult and whom I have reconnected with on Facebook. She just had her second baby and gave the timely prompt idea of how life changed with a second child.


Ok, so now you've got your background and you're all hip on who is who so how has life changed with a 2nd?


When I first read that I thought oh I will be able to write pages and pages about how life has changed but as I'm sitting here trying to write I can hardly think of one way. I think I'm having a hard time with it because it honestly feels like she's been here with us all along. Sometimes when Hot Jeff are feeling all nostalgic and talking about life before kids it feels as though we are talking about someone else's life. Hot Jeff's dad brought over some old VHS tapes last week and we were looking at them and they were shot before we had kids and it felt like I was watching a movie of someone else's life. That night when we went to bed exhausted and desperate I asked Jeff what he thought we used to do with all our time. "Time??", he laughed, "What did we do with all our MONEY?"


I think it is probably easier to think of ways life has changed since Emily when I get to go shopping or run an errand with just one of them. One is so manageable. I can't believe I ever complained about going to Target with just one child. Two kids adds a circus factor, truly it does. You kind of become your own walking freak show when you add more than one child. My mom had such a life of ease by having only one child. Not only was I delightful, intelligent and thoughtful but I was singular rather than plural.


On the flip side of sheer chaos, Emily has given our family a sense of completion. Although we would love to have a whole passle of midgets running around and wrangling up trouble we were almost 100% certain we were only going to have two kids so when Emily came along she put this wonderful, beautiful metaphorical exclamation point on our family.

If you ask Samuel if he remembers life before Emily he says 'yes' but I wonder if he really does. He was 22 months old when she came along and he, thanks be to God, has been in love with her since the moment he met her. I've been astounded, amazed, humbled and grateful that he's never been jealous of her. Now that she's older and so onry she stinks they have their moments but really--he adores her.

So, to wrap it all up, there are the tangible ways a second child changes things like, another car seat, another mouth to feed, one more person to put to bed at night but there's no way to describe the way my heart feels when I hear them laughing at one another in the back of the car, or when Samuel is at school 2 mornings a week and Roo misses him so much. I never thought I could hold so much love in my heart as I do for Roo. I was convinced that I loved Samuel so much there could never be enough for a second but somehow in some-magical-Roo way she made my heart bigger and my love more generous (now if only my patience would catch up).

One last thought. It is kind of depressing but its true. It makes me happy and brings me comfort to know that when Jeff and I are dead and gone Samuel and Emily will have each other. What a cheerful thought to end on. Haha.

Roo, if you ever read this someday, always know that you are the best thing that could have ever happened to the three of us. Thanks for making us four.

Yesterday’s post is the perfect segue for the reply to one of the suggestions of what I should write about when I have a blog clog. Hot Jeff’s former flame and our family photog, the fabulous Leah, posed the prompt of what do I want “non-Christians” to get as followers of a Christian blog. This is a pretty loaded question and although I’ve thought about it for days and days I don’t know that I have a fully formed answer yet.

I’m going to write about it today but be warned that these are really discombobulated thoughts and most likely incomplete. I’m shooting from the hip which is indeed, my most favorite place to shoot from but I imagine that in a few days from today I will wake up in the middle of the night and wish I would have said this, this and this. Be prepared for Part Two.

First and foremost I would want non-believers to know that I love and serve a living God. He has saved me from the pit of hell and redeemed my life for His glory and His purposes. Above that, He offers eternal life to anyone and everyone who believes in His name and confesses of her sin.

I suppose another thing I would want non-believers to take away from this blog is that God has a sense of humor. The Bible (which incidentally I believe to be true and authoritative) says we are made in God’s likeness. Well…I have a sense of humor. You have a sense of humor. So that leads me to believe God has a sense of humor. With that said, I think God likes it when we don’t take ourselves too seriously and have fun in our lives. Fun with our family, fun with our friends, fun with our circumstances and fun with some of the pure CRAP that life hands us.

I want readers, Christ followers or not, to know that I am passionate about praying for kids. My kids, your kids, kids in your class, kids you see in a store or in a restaurant, kids in your Sunday school class, kids in your youth group, the kids who live across the street. I believe we are all called to pray for our kids; while some of us have different gifts and talents and are called to use them in different ways I believe God calls ALL of us to pray for our kids.

It is important to me that my non-Christian readers know that there is a difference between being religious and being a Christ-follower. While I don’t think there is anything wrong with religion at the core I do think that being more religious than being in love with Jesus can lead to legalism and um, well…piety. There’s that word again. Not being religious, but still being madly in love with Jesus has been incredibly freeing to me. For example, I love margaritas, I watch Grey’s Anatomy and I vote Democrat. I don’t think these are areas of sin in my life. The Holy Spirit, who dwells in me, may reveal those to be sin someday but I think what God is really concerned about is the condition of my heart and that I’m short-tempered, have a tendency to be judgmental and don’t love people the way He calls me to (and that’s the short list). I think it matters to God how I act and what I say not because of how I act and what I say but because how I act and what I say are reflections of what’s going on in my heart. Make sense? Like I said, discombobulated thoughts at best…

Finally, to all my readers, I feel so honored that you take time out of your busy day to read my thoughts. I promise I will never take that for granted and in doing that I’ll try to give you quality stuff to read. I hope that even if you don’t agree with me that at least you will feel it was well written and worth your time.