Observance

This morning, I read this interview with a former Hallmark writer. Though the practice is perhaps old-fashioned, I am still likely to mail greeting cards for special occasions if not sending a gift. While e-mail and facebook messages are fine for remembrances, there's something about taking the time to pick out, sign, address, and mail or deliver a card... Someone else may have dreamed up the words, but it took a really, really long time to read every card on the rack before either settling for the one mailed or, rarely, experiencing the thrill of finding one that says exactly what I would've said myself.

That said, we mailed no Valentine's cards at all this year. I chose one to send the Boy, but it was a little too precious. (I don't know what I was thinking. He's old enough to drive, so the cartoon elephants were clearly for a much younger audience.) The girls each received a small gift, and the mister and I made goo-goo eyes at each other over breakfast this morning. We're well-suited after marking eighteen Valentine's Day's together, and the expressions of love are made daily in a hundred little ways that are not necessarily pink, red, or heart-shaped. Skater Girl has her last classroom card exchange today, and she also created hand-made cards to give each of the Skate Coaches. Valentine's Day is generally just a nudge to show appreciation for the people we care for rather than the setting for any sort of grand display. Well, except for Middle Child.

She has been working away on Perfect's Valentine. She's on her third or fourth attempt at making him a friendship bracelet from embroidery floss in his favorite colors. This is a major undertaking because his wrists are as big around as her upper arms. (She was wily and tried one of his bracelets on... only to discover it went all the way up her arm.) She finally finished the bracelet late yesterday, and that will be delivered to Perfect tonight nestled amongst some of his favorite treats. She has no earthly idea what he has planned, but I'm sure whatever he's dreamed up will be, as usual, perfect.

Waiting

Dr. Seuss's Oh, the Places You'll Go!, refers to Waiting Places. (One does tend to wind up there from time to time.) Despite a range of dates, we're stalled in one such Waiting Place for answers as to when The Boy might be home.  The insurance company required a switch to their in-house pharmacy for I.V. medication infusions this year, and January saw a four day wait for the administration. February's wait is at a week and counting... That Waiting Place leads to the waiting room outside my doctor's office this morning to determine whether or not a cold has blossomed into an ear infection. Waiting on a friend's medical scan, is now waiting on an appointment with a Specialist because the scan revealed more questions rather than answers. These are the gloomier sorts of Waiting Places.
Thankfully, there are other sorts. Like waiting for the coffee to brew. The wait for Shelley-in-Poland and Laura-in-Honduras and I to catch up in person while they're on their furloughs to Pleasant Suburb. The wait for the belt/blanket to develop into a string, then a belt, and now onward to who-knows-what. The wait while Skater Girl practices her stroking, spins, and jumps toward her first big skating test and resuming competition. The wait for Middle Child to come home and launch into her play-by-play of an evening at Perfect's house. Or her day at school. Or why she loves purple. My turn for the next move in Words With Friends. The in-between days waiting for Wednesdays and Saturdays when the mister and I have our dates. Opening each morning's Bible study e-mail from the church to see what little gem is waiting inside. These are the best sorts of waits. These are the anticipatory Waiting Places full of promise and potential.
That's the thing. In these Waiting Places, there is no one simple thing. There is more likely to be a whole host of just about everything. So. I'll gather my things, and sit down to wait. Eventually, it will all shake out. If not, at least we'll know what becomes of the belt/blanket with the addition of a few more rows.

Listing 2011, V

I'm kind of regretting the Thankful List. Not the Thankful part, just the ongoingness of the list. (It is so a word. I feel a legalistic need to finish. the. list. Next year, I'm starting with one so that I will be done when I am done instead of this silliness compelling a list of precisely one hundred things for which I'm thankful.

25. The resolution of next year's ordering of the list.
24. A calendar full of Girly Coffees and Girls' Nights/Days Out.
23. That today was our last regularly scheduled Sunday at Little Country Church.
22. Another of Those Moments when Skater Girl confused tourists with terrorists. (Imagine the potential.)
21. That we were not in an airport or on a plane when #19 happened.
20. Being Happily Married.
19. Grace.
18. In honor of #19, the list ends here.

Listing 2011 Part II

75. Photos that capture an idea when words fail.
74. Buster and Maggie who always have a tail wagging greeting to welcome us home.
73. The machines that make multi-tasking easy. I mean you, Washer, Dryer, Dishwasher...
72. My in-laws who are spending Thanksgiving with the Boy today.
71. Inappropriate humor
70. Being surrounded by so much talent that I can make out three different songs being practiced simultaneously by the mister and his girls who are each in separate rooms.
69. Pie
68. A sonogram that showed no change in the Magical Mystery Lymph Node. Nothing to see there, movin' it along, people.
67. Our last reglarly scheduled weekend at the Little Country Church. And our return to our Home Church that's already begun.
66. Laughter
65. Gray hair
64. That my mister and I are still dating each other.
63. Google because it makes me smarter.
62. Jesus because He makes me certain.
61. The shapes Skater Girl's blade cut into the ice when she spins
60. Girly Coffee Dates
59. The Thanksgiving Team delivering food to needy families in Puerto Lempira, Honduras today to demonstrate God's provision rather than enjoying a turkey dinner with their loved ones at home.
58. Books
57. The mister making the coffee each morning while I'm still snoozing.
56. Big dreams and the bigger God who can make them reality.
55. For each time the light at the end of the tunnel is not a train.
54. The riot of color in the changing leaves.
53. Our monstrous Rosemary bush that grew from a single twig and survived a move.
52. Crock pots that make homemade possible even when Stay-at-Home-Mom is a misnomer.
51. That a list of a hundred reasons to be thankful will barely begin to cover all the good stuff.

Receivers

A package arrived today, and it could have been the mister's birthday gift. Except that it was not. This reminded him that right around my birthday earlier in the year, he brought home a bass guitar amplifier. (I do not play bass guitar. He does.) I'd completely forgotten about the timing on his amplifier addition, but he remembered because, just in time for his birthday, "we" have added these to "our" collection:

RSVP

The simple art of responding properly to an invitation has been lost. Fortunately, Little Bit's teacher is British. (Well, she's a U.S. citizen as of last month, but she got to keep her awesome British accent.) She has invited the whole fourth grade glass to dress smartly and attend a tea party in honor of Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding tomorrow. The class's homework assignment was to write an appropriate R.S.V.P. for the party tomorrow. Love it.
Now to get back to watching Charles and Di get married over and over again on TLC. I cannot work the DVR, but the girls can so we will now be able to endlessly watch Di's bridesmaids attempt to get her 26 foot train into the church and speculate on Kate's dress. My mister finds it funny that there's an awful lot of sighing and, er, squealing coming from the living room. Anywho... I must get back to the countdown on t.v. that I'm watching with my youngest child who is wearing ice skates (blade guards on in the house, of course) to practice her arabesques while we watch our fill of fairy tale wedding while mostly ignoring the unfortunate end to the nightmare marriage in anticipation of tomorrow morning's festivities.

Museum Piece

The Boy may well end up completing his high school education away from us. He's progressing in his new Home Away from Home. This feels like a half-life as a mom. Not a failure, but not quite what I signed up for, either. These thoughts are swimming near the surface of my thoughts of late. Not that one's offspring are ever fully banished from a mom's mind, but there are some pools of thought which are less often explored than others because they are too deep, and the danger of drowning too great.
Perhaps the thoughts are stronger today because the Boy's 16th birthday came and went with nothing more to mark it than a brief visit to the school without so much as a candle stuck in a twinkie (There are rules about bringing in outside food to the dorms, but there are vending machines with all sorts of junk. Don't get me started...) because the vending machine ate the coins without dispensing the cello-wrapped, processed mini cakes selected. The absence of the twinkie was somehow more difficult to swallow than the inability to make Evan the red velvet cake he would have really enjoyed. It just seems so pathetic to be willing to settle for the shadow of a celebration only to be unable to even pull that off successfully. Or maybe those thoughts are just more potent because I spent yesterday afternoon hanging out in what should be his bedroom?
That bedroom sits vacant in a mute testimony to what I wish. What I hope. What he did and did not choose. There have been conversations about converting the room to a space that can be used by those of us who live here in more corporeal form, but I resist. He never made that room his own. It still has the new ceiling fan to match the light fixtures in the rest of the house sitting in the unopened box on the floor because the mister and the Boy were going to install it together. The paint color was on the walls when we moved in, and he consistently deferred choosing another color despite several conversations about repainting the room to suit him. The narrow twin bed remains undisturbed by any but the old Bella cat day after day. The Boy's other furnishings speak of teenage boys in game rooms and locker rooms with a penchant for the color red. Still, I have stood guard over that room for months as if it housed my dreams.
The behavior is not terribly different from a parent who has lost a child and refuses to clean out the room or let go of possessions. This has always seemed a sad tendency to create a museum piece to the frozen last moments in time with lost loves; yet, I so understand the why and how of it. My mister began to wear the Boy's clothes because he is practical, but I was horrified by this act of betrayal as if he had voiced out loud the possibility that our son might continue on to adulthood without living under this roof we prepared for the restoration of our family of five. As if he were really gone, and we were only four. And that was not pretty. Letting go of the clothes came only after a visit when the Boy stood taller than I. The pants that I so resented seeing on my mister would be a tad too short for the Boy now. I sobbed alone later over this evidence of change and growth... but also saw in it the reality that I cannot hold on to the frozen dream of being a whole, normal family in this place at this time.
More than one crying jag, daydream of normalcy, hollow-chested desperate prayer, whistful wish, and brutally cut off thought unbidden have characterized the past months. Not unlike the Mothers with Museums, I grieve for the loss of What Could Have Been. What Should Have Been. Like those mothers, I am fumbling along trying to find the New Normal. To just be okay. Unlike those mothers, I have the possibilities of a future with my child to pull me away from the museum I would create to avoid the terror of forgetting a Lost Love. Because my love has simply chosen a route where I cannot walk alongside him, but he still travels onward toward manhood.
Yesterday, I pulled the bedding from his long unslept in twin bed, stood the mattress upright against the wall, and the mister took the frame apart. We will drive these pieces over to be donated to another family's need this weekend. Later, the mister and I drove home in the mommobile with a double mattress and bed frame in the back and a box spring tied to the roof. We wrestled the bed up the stairs and into the shambles of what was the Boy's room. The new bed still needs sheets, but I have a sense of the look of it after draping it with the quilt and the pillow shams that will match the paint on the walls. The locker room accents look wholly out of place now, and will likely be the next items to go. I feel a pull toward completing the transformation of this space into a guest bedroom not in order to cleanse it of my son's presence, but because the space will reflect the potential for future use. The unknown identity of the future guests whose heads will rest on those new pillows may well include none other than the one whose presence I have tried so hard to hold static in the place that was never really his own. Perhaps he will retreat there one night after enjoying a slice of his mother's red velvet cake...

Tidbits: Date

* The mister and I marked our 17th wedding anniversary over the weekend. He offered up a dress-up dinner out followed by the chance to see "The King's Speech". We ended up with a much more casual evening of La Madeleine for dinner and a treat. Bowling a couple of games at Splitsville and wandering around a local shopping center people watching gave way to our closing out the night at a coffee shop.

*The daughters were waiting up for us. There might have been some Mother-Daughter texting during Date Night while the mister was away from the table. There was definitely a post-date wrap up discussion with the girls as soon as the mister and I returned home. I like to think that their Daddy is setting the bar high for our future sons-in-law and those fellows who will likely proceed them in dating the daughters. I also like to think that when they are of an age to date, we will continue the precedent of filling each other in on the moments that make one's heart go pitter-pat.

Yoga

It was 18 degrees outside this morning. Walker suggested that we try a yoga dvd inside. With the heater on. There was instant agreement. Having slept in sweats last night, it was a simple enough thing to roll out of bed workout ready. Walker had a pair of bright yoga mats unrolled across the living room rug and the coffee table out of the way. She was failing to make the dvd work with the "intuitive" remote, and I was trying to stuff down the trepidation over trying to embrace a workout that involved something more complex than walking.
Artist wandered out of her bedroom and studied us momentarily before issuing the warning that her friend was coming over. (Goody. An audience, or maybe people to call 911...) Artist explained to Walker how to work the t.v. patiently (Seriously, Middle Child just takes the remote away from me and pushes the appropriate buttons to make Evil Electronics work in similar circumstances.), and we eventually had three women (in better shape than us) confronting us from the screen. I started to laugh while Walker and Jillian Michaels both pointed out the lady who would be doing the less painful beginner movements and poses. Of course, the poses have sometimes silly names which failed to diminish the urge to laugh.

Jillian, Walker, Beginner Lady, and More Advanced Lady all assumed the opening pose and inhaled. I tried. The attempted seriousness just led to laughter. The poses led to even more laughter. There was potential for hysteria when the poses were coupled with their names. Artist's friend arrived while Walker and I had our middle-aged behinds pointed skyward and Jillian blathered on about camels or dogs and encouraged us to keep breathing. Artist quietly informed her friend that I'd been laughing the whole time as they passed through. That, of course, struck me as funny.

Walker continued to follow Jillian and the Wonder Twins through the workout. Sometimes I figured out what they were doing before they were all done with it. I eventually quit laughing after a sharp pain radiated from my lower back in response to one of the suddenly less funny poses. Ow. I looked over at Walker and remarked that it was going to be kind of pathetic to have thrown my back out doing the Level 1 Yoga workout. (What the heck do they do at Level 2 anyway?!) She nodded in sympathy and managed to simultaneously keep thrusting her leg into the air in time to her breathing.
After our experimental workout, Walker mentioned that Half Price Books might have a copy of the yoga dvd. Then I could do yoga at my house, too. Mmmph. I thought about the assorted movements and poses. Then I reconsidered them from the male perspective since my mister works from home. Mmm. No. The only way I could see yoga at home being helpful would be if we were trying to get pregnant.

Tech No

In my mind there exists a line that cannot be crossed. The line between those with technical skills and those without such. Feet firmly planted on the "without" side, I tend to peer over into the realm of the technically adept with something between awe and frustration. Frustration because those like my mister make it look very easy to navigate through the strings of gobbledy gook referred to as code. Except that there are occasionally incentives that push me over the line by a hair's breadth.
A hair's breadth that feels like a mile to the inept. (That would be me.) Except that Laura had a teensy break with reality today. More importantly, she knows the key to motivating this particular stubborn, technologically illiterate individual into at least trying. The Sponsorship Page  through Reach Out Honduras did not reflect the latest new sponsors, and our links were not gong to the proper places. This seems like a big thing in my head. (Likely a bigger thing than it truly is, but in my mind there are dozens of potential sponsors cruising the page trying to determine which child... and we're not up to date! Um, yeah. I know. But, still...) My mister has access to the web site, and Laura suggested that I, "...just make the changes. If you are okay with that..."
Waaah. I do not know how. There is no way. As the wails reached a new high, my mister e-mails me a link. He then tells me to click on the link with a misplaced calm rationality. (Perhaps he does not grasp the futility of me + code?!) Then he directs me to a side bar where I click on "Pages". Oh. The page is a blog. Really?! I make the changes. I click "Update", then feel foolish for freaking out. Pshaw. Ditching foolish, I am feeling remarkably technologically literate. Literate enough that I agree when the crazy lady asks for several other changes to the website. And I think I can. If not, I will learn.

Tidbits: Yay

• Hello, 2011! This year is off to a lovely start. The offspring are all back in school, but my mister had one more day off today. This was brilliant, and we should try to schedule this sort of thing on purpose in the future. It's a welcome change to hug the man without Middle Child informing us that we should, "Get a room! Ew." Really. We have a room. In fact, she lives in the string of rooms we call our house. So there.
• Green Girl's January Giveaway has resulted in the likelihood that I will be getting to know the mail lady better. GG's posts last week offered a combination of homemade goodies for her giveaway. The trifecta of mitts, raspberry jam, good-for-you granola will be headed this way, and the anticipation is entirely enjoyable. Last week's comments on her posts were, ah, well, mostly about the giveaway goodies. See, I can focus when it's really important.
• The list of Stuff to Take to Honduras is starting to form. The pile of stuff on my dining room table is also forming in response. Hopefully, we will be carrying audio Bibles in Miskito, dehydrated vegetables to supplement our friends' diets, a DS charger and styluses for a friend of Middle Child's, and the fourth season of the t.v. show Seventh Heaven. One can only imagine what else will be added on to the packing list in the weeks to come.
• Firefly is on Ovation tonight. Who would've thought a Western Space epic would be a good idea? Only Joss Whedon.

Mystique

Today, I was making sure that I had the appropriate undergarment to wear beneath my dress for New Year's Day. I think there's a gold medal somewhere with my name on it based on the gymnastic performance involved in getting the one-piece "smoother" over all my, eh... junk. I used to think support hose were challenging. Right. This particular undergarment is flesh tone and it runs from just under the girls right on down to the thighs. This is ideal for holding one's goodies at bay under a fitted dress. (I seriously planned on something that would allow me to eat like a trucker, but the mister made this funny little sound low in his throat when I stepped out of the dressing one in the one that is going to require me to avoid breathing, so...)
I was half in and half out of the vise smoother when I heard a kid coming up the stairs. Looking down, I realized that my royal blue chenille socks and ratty bra were the only other garments currently on my body. Yanking and tugging the top of the unyielding elastic sheath upward with one hand while mashing the excess of my hips down into the depths with the other I hot-footed it to the bedroom door hoping to be either fast enough to shut the open door, or at least going to get the worst of this vision under cover before one of the children went blind. (Or worse: posted my predicament on Facebook.) Thankfully, the cat shot past headed downstairs buying me precious seconds while our youngest stopped her ascent to declare, "Hello, Zoey!" That was just the time needed to shut and lock the door long enough to finish the undergarment fitting. Eesh.
The good news is that my dress will fit properly Saturday, and my mister will be impressed. The bad news is that I'm going to have to get back into that blasted undergarment again. Last year, I had a wee tantrum  High Maintenance Moment proclaiming that it wasn't much of a date if the mister sucked all the mystery out of my feminine mystique by being present in the bathroom while I was practicing beauty secrets. He remembered this, and now he has already graciously pointed out that New House has more bathrooms and bedrooms than Old House. He seemed so pleased with this consideration of my delicate feelings. I'm just thankful that I'll be able to lock him out while I wrestle with my drawers.

Priorities

Pretzels... only better.

Because I have discovered a distinct inability to do it all, I asked the family to please indicate just what specifically was most important about Christmas tradition/celebration/revelry/expectations so that I could prioritize appropriately.  Little Bit's unequivocal statement was "baking and making treats," followed by a request for chocolate-dipped pretzels.

My mister steered me down the baking, candy, and chip aisles at Super Store to toss bags of white and milk chocolate chips, Starlight mints, and regular M&M's in the cart along with a bag of great big pretzels. My inner Grinch grumbled about how we could have picked up the conveniently prepackaged M&M variety that already had a pretzel inside and a package of peppermint bark with similar results, less cost, and way less mess.
Back at home, the makings out on the counter, I called the girls to the kitchen saying I needed some help. They actually showed up despite the likelihood that chores would be involved with such a summons. Those two were instantly certain of what the particular ingredients laying on the counter signaled.
As "The Nutcracker" played on the living room t.v., we melted the chocolate in small batches. The girls were delighted to take a hammer to ziploc bags of candies to produce the finely crushed consistency needed for adorning our chocolaty treats. The mess-making commenced even as Herr Drosselmeier was tossing the wooden nutcracker offstage so he could pop back up on stage as a real boy complete with tights and poufy hair. The task went quickly, and we had a line-up of pretty munchies before the herd of dancing snowflakes could fill the screen with their whirling tutus.

Heading

The mister went in yesterday for his Hep A & B vaccinations. He ended up with a concussion. Seriously. He felt a little woozy after the injections, and he passed out hitting his head. His blood sugar and blood pressure were normal, but he had every sign of a concussion. With him holding a plastic bag for his, ah, stomach contents, we left the doctor's office with an order for an emergency CT scan. Fortunately, all the CT revealed was a brain. Still, it was not quite the day either of us had planned.
The good news? Our practitioner goes to church with friends from Casa de Esperanza, and we had a great conversation with her before the mister's appointment went south. I was a little concerned that she might forget the conversation, but Don took care of that by making sure everyone in the office would remember us. The admitting representative at the hospital was also interested in hearing more about Reach Out Honduras. While Don was having his head scanned, she came tearing into the x-ray department excited about what she had already read online. These two new contacts made our unpleasant circumstances feel much  more positive, especially now that the mister appears to be fine despite some lingering headache and tiredness.

Picture Post: Peeking

Family picture day is always painful. It's a day that begins in grumbling and griping over the dreaded "What to Wear". That is followed by the wheedling and threats of a mother desperate to preserve photographic evidence of this particular moment in the family's timeline. It's bewildering to look at my children and see the glimmers of the emerging adults peeking out with increasing frequency. I'd like to slow the process a bit, but will settle for freezing moments in pictures that I can hold onto as the process of letting my children go continues.
Walker's daughter is an artist. She reflects her Creator's infinite creativity in many different mediums including photography, so I asked if she would take our family pictures. She agreed, and we met at an urban center that combines a variety of architectural and landscaping goodies for gobs of great settings. We quickly discovered that my desired background was lost in shadow. A new site that was bathed in afternoon sun was selected instead. We turned ourselves over to the eye of our brilliant artist friend, and I cannot wait to see through her viewfinder.
We were quickly and painlessly posed. There was an ease to the process unheard of in past sessions. There was laughter. Seriously. People were happy. Artist had a friend along for our session who snapped away with my camera, and there was a shot offered up on Facebook as a sneak peek from Artist's cache of images so I'm not giving all that much away while still keeping the family pix a surprise!

Artist!

The Painless Process

Sneak Peek of the family session!

Carpe Diem

What to do? What to do? Last weekend's training at the church yielded the possibility of serving in a lay counseling role at our church. There also arose opportunity to be an active part of the East Pleasant Suburb initiative called Neighbor to Neighbor. This weekend holds the much awaited volunteer training, TB test, and background check for filling in a slot on the schedule for a local emergency removal children's shelter. All of these opportunities are good ones; yet, they present a challenge, too.
Knowing that my mister is not enthusiastic (at this time) about fostering, it's worthwhile to seek ways to care for children who might not have the same benefits my own lovies enjoy in place of that particular desire. There is a caution to all these good opportunities, though. There are a pair of teens and a tween in our home who need their own Mom, too. The mister has a rather strong claim as well. The same may also be said of the precious friends who share our lives.
Commitment to one or any of the Good Things outside of our existing relationships and commitments is something withheld for the moment. Not out of stinginess, but out of a desire to genuinely give a full commitment to whatever service is undertaken. The next couple of weeks are for mining data--- determining what our family's needs are going to be with the new school year starting, the mister working a couple of days a week in an office rather than solely from home, athletic schedules, regular meetings and appointments, new school start and release times, etc. Then it will be time to determine which of the Good Things can be opportunities seized.

Turnabout

The foster/adoption web sites I have visited have advice for married couples. One takes the tongue-in-cheek title for a section, "Top Ten Ways Foster Care Can Ruin a Marriage", but the accompanying article is entirely serious. This is just the sort of article that helps to balance my perspective on children who need a family to love them and a temporary home to shelter them with the reality that my mister does not feel the same pull on his heartstrings. My mister and I have spent years enjoying the idea of our forties when the kids will be out of high school, and our fifties when they will likely be building lives of their own. (This is the "up side" to parenting while one's peers complete their degrees and begin careers.) In the past few months, one of us has had a change of heart.
Having been surgically, permanently cut off from our child-bearing years, there was no reason to consider the possibility of more offspring. Friends with small children and infants have been willing to entrust their children to us while they work, are ill, or enjoy a date. This seemed sufficient, and on occasion even had the hallmark feeling of being overwhelmed that is, as it turns out, not solely the mark of being 21, broke, and in charge of someone who cries to communicate. Those challenges are offset by the moments of sweetness like being presented with a painstakingly drawn stick figure in thick waxy crayon for the refrigerator door, an infant's head resting peacefully on one's shoulder, the endless entertainment of translating the gobbledy gook that passes for speech at 2, and little arms wrapped tightly around one's leg in a hug that can only reach so high.
My mister is far less intrigued by such things. His memories of infants involve rather a lot of crying--- sometimes by the babies. He is content with a world that revolves around us as a couple, and the goal is to raise our children and get back to the honeymoon as soon as the kids are reasonably self-sufficient. (That is rather an enticing idea.) I read of the ways to dip a toe into the pool of children who need safety and love without disregarding the differing goals that the mister and I see before us. The opportunities to care for others' children, the crisis shelter for kids facing removal from their homes in the face of abuse where volunteers are needed, and in months a return to La Moskitia where the youngest children can face uncertainty and benefit from one more pair of open arms reaching out.

Carefree

The mister has been on vacation from both jobs this week. That alone is a rare enough occurrence, but The Boy is also out of summer school for the week. With two of the biggest commitments in our Summer daily schedules cleared, the days stretched practically wide open before us. There was talk of looking into all sorts of tourist attractions that are so often missed by locals, but that was scarcely even an idea before it began to feel claustrophobic. Instead, we have done a little something most days, but not too much of anything.

The mister took Little Bit out on a Daddy & Me Date to see a movie, and she chose to invite the rest of us to meet them at La Madeleine for dessert afterward. Middle Child, The Boy, and I will go catch a morning showing of "Eclipse" since we have devoured the young adult book series (again... The Boy did not see the movies with the teeming halls of females on the night of the movie release, but he did enjoy both the story and the first two progressively less low-budget movies.) All five of us caught the M. Night Shyamalan snore-fest "The Last Airbender". It's been a quiet week laced with these frequent escapes into fantasy.

Not that we have been in danger of becoming vacant-minded lumps staring blankly at screens teeming with make-believe lives in darkened rooms. There have been peaceful hours tallied sitting on the covered patio over coffee, breakfasts, grilling, and just chatting. We've wandered the exhibit halls of the Museum of Nature and Science again where each of us has favorite displays. There have been many, many miles logged by the assorted runners and walkers thanks to cloud cover providing cooler mornings. The mister and I slipped out yesterday, leaving the children to assorted other activities, for a date involving a trip to peruse the book store, wander through a lovely urban outdoor shopping and dining mecca built around a faux creek and waterfall. (There was a stop for gelato. The scale will no doubt say something unpleasant to me after this week's indulgences. Not that I care enough to feel guilty over the treats. What goes up, can certainly come down.) We have done the loveliest list of near nothing I could ask for over these days.
The doctor gave an all-clear mid-week saying that there were no signs of malignancy in my scans or blood work. He had no idea why the struggle with fatigue and shortness of breath go on, and he suggested that I go back to the immunologist. Again. I think I will simply ignore the symptoms in the relative conviction that I have done enough to chase down a cause. Besides, our family has better things to do than worry.

Back Track

• The Honduras girls went to see all the Twilight movies.
• The next-to-last chapter in Holy Discontent pretty much described my soon-to-depart friend Laura and her heart for Honduras.
• Laura and I shared a farewell brunch and talked of the needs her family is going to meet and those they will need met. She opened my small mind a bit further to big, new ideas.
• Jan asked for pictures from our Spring Break trip to use in a slide show. Pictures like these:

As I sifted through photo files, listening to the Casting Crowns track Jan sent along with her photo request, there was a certainty that there was a little girl like Alba Rosa (held by Katie in the above photos) who was waiting for there to be extra arms to hold her. (This may have been somewhat influenced by a conversation with Laura earlier in the week about the amount of red tape involved in ministering to kids in the U.S.) I wonder about the kids we met, and those who minister to them daily. Next thing I know, I'm in tears.
My mister is one to greet the tears of the assorted females in our home as a call to action of some sort. He asked what was wrong. I told him. In minutes, the decision was made that Katie and I will go back to Honduras at Thanksgiving.

Exploring

It's Friday. The Boy's last day of Summer School for Art IA. The girls have opted not to get out of bed, and the mister and I are headed out to steal a little couple time. That's not been an easy feat in the past few weeks with the combined schedules of our household, and we are both looking forward to staring deeply into one another's eyes over coffee cups without the words, "Mom," or "Dad," punctuating the conversation. Okay, so maybe the soulful looks are beyond either of us the week before Staycation begins, but it is still entirely desired to be alone together. Hopefully, the school will not call while we are off making goo-goo eyes at one another.
Because there is a call coming. Yesterday, due to PSAT testing, the students were restricted during their break from their usual haunt (the cafeteria). So, our kid went "exploring" with "the guys" upstairs. The exploration led to the teachers' lounge (a place students should not be) where a soda was removed from the fridge (that ought to be free from the predations of students) and used for some sort of idiotic game before supposedly being returned to the fridge. The Remover was my kid. Uh-oh. He says he returned the drink, but it was missing later, and the whole world saw him out playing with it. Oh.but.no. So. He was kept after school yesterday in the determination of his guilt, and the consequences will come today.
The consequences at home will likely be mitigated if we don't hear about the consequences at school during Date Day. In the meantime, I am periodically calling the kid, "Dora" and have him explore a list of additional chores available to keep him busy and out of trouble.