Yes, not only is February the month of looooove, but it is also the month of my Hunka Hunka Burning Love’s birthday! Happy Birthday to Rickey, my sweet husband who is absolutely more than I could have ever hoped for in a best friend, husband and father.
We recently discovered Flying Wild Alaska on Netflix. Basically it is a reality show about his first flying job… just the names have been changed. We have watched it for a couple nights in a row now, with several episodes still calling our names. Rickey is (I was about to say “having a sleep over”) overnighting away from home tonight which is extremely rare for him in his current pilot job. So we won’t be watching FWA tonight. Anyway, the show brought back MULTIPLE memories of our time spent in the North when he was flying for Little Red Air Service. Seriously, the flight crew that spent the same three years up in Fort Vermilion would have at least two seasons of episodes simply from the stories I know about. And as all good pilot’s wives know, there are many stories that we are glad we still don’t know about.
Those were exhilarating years we spent up in the freezing tundra, but I must say that our last 16 years in the desert have been my favorite! We have traveled more, laughed more, forgiven more, cried more, spent more, prayed more and have definitely loved more in the last 16 years. Thanks, Rickey, for making my life so thrilling by living out the calling on your life to be a man of integrity and passion. I love you! XOXO
My husband of 25.5 years and myself will leave our home on January 4, 2013 with a van stuffed full of college paraphernalia and our firstborn child…. to just drop her off in Oklahoma and run for the border. It’s a first for our family. Children leaving the nest. Much preparation, turmoil, tears and rejoicing have gone into this event. Way more turmoil than I originally anticipated for a college departure.
There are nine more days to teach her everything she needs to know for infinity and beyond. That is the key right there that keeps me from losing it… again. Infinity and beyond is what really matters. Kingdom thinking. Have we prepared our daughter (the one who once asked for scotch tape and a box of envelopes for Christmas) to love God and serve people? That people are more important than things? To build others up and give a helping hand?
Yes, she plowed through algebra and ancient world history… but that is knowledge and not necessarily wisdom. Wisdom is what matters in life. Proverbs says that we should seek after wisdom and that it is found in those who take advice. And wisdom will save you from the ways of wicked men.
Yes, she can effectively run a household, hold down a job and save money… but it is her heart that matters. Getting to this point with child number one has helped me focus with children numbers 2,3 and 4. They will also make it through algebra and ancient world history… but I need to be an example of love to them no matter the circumstances.
My firstborn daughter and I watched Les Miserables in the theater in Mission, B.C., Canada last night. My favorite line was “To love another person is to see the face of God.” A GREAT movie to see before heading off to college.
(This picture has nothing to do with this post…. but it’s cold outside, so I picked a snow picture!)
Math is different around the world. I’m convinced of that. My husband was taught math in Canada and he DOES NOT do multiplication the way I was taught here in the good ol’ US of A. And he’s not converting from metric either; he simple learned a funky, three-step process to do the facts, and I merely memorized them. On occasion, I do use my fingers for the nine’s times tables, but that’s only really late at night. [You know... hold up your ten fingers. Bend down the number you are multiplying by nine. Read the tens and ones with the remaining fingers. I.e. 9x4 Hold up your ten fingers. Bend down the fourth finger from the left. There are three fingers standing on the left (tens = 30) and six fingers still standing on the right (ones = 6) Hence, 36.] But my dear husband’s process has you subtracting and adding numbers up and down from the number you started with. And you’re supposed to remember all these numbers as you go. Too many steps for my little brain.
Today, at the kitchen table while teaching math to the little Colombian princess, I was assuming that Colombians learned addition differently than I did. Here are the equations and her answers:
15. 5 + 4 = 24
16. 3 + 8 = 27
Get it? I didn’t. For a LONG time. Finally I explained that it was a pre-test and I didn’t expect her to know how to do those problems yet. THEN I SAW the DOTS. She draws little dots and counts them. For the first problem, she drew 15 dots, 5 dots and 4 dots. She counted them all and wrote the correct answer! SHE WAS INCLUDING THE NUMBER OF THE PROBLEM! Hahahaha! And she DID know how to add them ALL! So after we got it all ironed out, it was smooth sailing. Colombian math is just like USA math, but probably not like Canadian math! (If I can help it!)
Remember back in April when I spent all my birthday money at Goodwill on 50% off day with visions of a shabby chic backyard? Well, it is slowly materializing! Finally! I found this top from a girl’s bedroom set… maybe from the bed or a desk hutch… and I could envision a garden shelf dealie to stack my pots and hang my tools.
Then I looked for MONTHS for a bottom piece to store my dirt and fertilizer and turtle kneeling pad. I think it was in August or September that I happened on this gem at Goodwill… on another 50% off day! Sweet mother of baby Jesus! It was perfect. The guy at the store told me that it came in from a monastery full of religious books all in Chinese. So half of the finished product was in the ministry. :o)
After much painting and sanding and hammering 1×4′s on the back so it doesn’t fall and kill a small child or dog… it is finished! My husband took one look at the finished product and asked, “So you had all that junk?” Nice, eh? Yes, I did… and one man’s junk is his wife’s treasure. I actually will use the junk, well, most of it. The ceramic butterfly in the center was handmade by my six-year-old self in Renton, Washington in a ceramics class at a neighbor’s house. The rest is truly junk. Not the butterfly.
We did have a near catastrophe whilst waiting for the 1×4′s to be nailed on the back. I had it set up in the middle of our back porch… clearly capable of falling and killing a small child or dog. The wind whipped up a gale to behold and knocked the top right off. It fell backwards, hit the NEW, glass patio table, got a big bash-in on the back piece and fell to the ground. Shoot. I put the big tin plate on the top shelf in front of the bash-in evidence. All is well now. Why would anyone need this in their yard, you ask? Because now my gardening gloves won’t get chewed and buried by the dogs. That’s really what this was all about…. me having to repeatedly replace my flimsy gardening gloves from the dollar store. See, all is well now. (I have since planted those violas in those six pots in the little green stand on the right. They are darling.)
Most families have stories that have been told over and over and over… until extinction is unthinkable. One such story in our house is retold almost every single time someone makes popcorn with the hot air popper. Yes, we still have a hot air popper, remember those? I bought it in 1985 when I was heading off to college…. an obvious necessity.
Fast forward to 1987, the year we were wed, in our first apartment in Langley, BC. The hot air popcorn device had indeed arrived back in Canada with us as a married couple. Unbeknownst to me the horror that would follow, I pulled the shiny yellow dream appliance from the cupboard and proceeded to pop some corn kernels for my Indian husband…. in memory of his people who introduced us white folks to this delicacy. (That’s not really why… we just love buttery popcorn.)
As per usual, I placed the huge metal bowl under the popper’s spout, poured in the kernels and slid the button to ON. All was going well until one stray unpopped kernel flew out of the popper, shot down one side of the slippery bowl and out the other. The kernel reminds me of the song “On top of Spaghetti” with the meatball that goes on a journey. The tiny golden corn kernel bounced off the kitchen counter and down toward the floor. Little did I know the pain and agony that was coming. You see, I was barefoot. Somehow beyond reason, the little fiery hot kernel landed between my baby toe and the next toe over and lodged itself there for all eternity, sizzling into my skin. If you have ever burnt the tender skin between your last two toes, you probably have memory tears in your eyes at this moment. I screamed. I dropped to the floor. I cried. I pried my little toes apart. I dislodged the burning morsel. This all happened in a nanosecond, but the results were excrutiating. The screaming, dropping, crying rapidly brought my husband to the kitchen…. he probably assumed I had chopped off a limb. But no. Burned my toes making popcorn. Ice was applied and tenderly the toes were put up to rest.
Every time the exact same popper is brought down from the pantry shelf, as it was last night, one of my children will mimic me in mocking tones, “Do you want to hear about when I burned my toes making popcorn?”
The moral of the story is: If the shoe fits, wear it (especially while making popcorn!)
It started out as an ordinary day in the life of me, but no day is ordinary in my life, as I have come to realize. It was a “don’t-have-to-go-anywhere-or-look-nice” kind of day, so I was sporting my summer uniform of denim shorts and a Walmart USA t-shirt. Breakfast was under way, but the blown-up chili and eggs on the inside of the microwave grossed me out beyond my comfort level. As I always do, I filled a small bowl with water and set it in the microwave to be heated to boiling… and thus moistening all the hard-as-cement bits glaring at me. This has been my “clean the microwave” practice for over 20 years. It has never failed me until today. I set the timer for four minutes and stood by spreading cream cheese on a bagel. I was a little too close to the microwave for comfort. The bowl boiled down to vapors and the pressure inside the little white oven blasted the door open. Yes, the water hit the side of my head and soaked my Wally World t-shirt. I also screamed…. quite loudly. And scared the dog. Thankfully it was not boiling hot water… it was luke warm water that didn’t burn the skin off the side of my face.
As if that wasn’t enough excitement for one day….. I decided it was time for the bi-annual shower cleaning in the master bathroom. Don’t judge me. We do not have a water softener and the hard water clings to the shower door and walls like Saran wrap to itself. Happily (ok, not really) I was spraying and scrubbing the shower… fully clothed, still in my summer uniform. I was utilizing a large 7-11 cup to rinse the walls as I went along. Then the phone rang and I abruptly stood up, my shoulder hitting the shower tap and turning on the cold water from the shower nozzle….. blasting the same side of my head that WAS recently dry after the microwave blasting only an hour earlier. This was WAY more water, however. Sufficiently drenched.
When my husband finally arrived home and we were sitting like the Cleavers having dinner around the table, he asked the ominous question, “How did your day go?” “Before or after I got blasted in the head twice?” Another classic Linda day.
Eleven years ago, my sister and best friend, moved away from Phoenix to Washington state. REALLY far away. I didn’t want her to move away…. with my two cutie-pie nieces… it was not fair. But life is rarely fair. She left on a Saturday and I woke up Sunday and just cried. Preferably, I like to keep my peeps right close. I did not prefer this arrangement, but knew God’s hand was on their move.
Before Christy left she recorded this song on a cassette tape and gave it to me. (Remember those?) I played it over and over as a sweet salve to my sad soul. My husband got sick of it really fast. Well, maybe it was after the 127th time I had played it. And I usually couldn’t make it through the song without crying either.
A few weeks after Christy’s move and my mourning period had eased, Rick came home to find me crying again. It was totally about something else, but he non-sympathetically asked, “Were you listening to your sister’s tape again?” HAHA. It’s funny now, but it wasn’t funny then. Time has a way of changing scenarios.
Still today I love this song. The Lord has blessed me with so many friends through the years. I truly am thankful! Every place we have lived, He supplied a bosom friend for me. I love you, my friends!
As I have confessed here before, my life is so much different now that I have four children. This week we will have been home from Colombia with the Colombian princess for five months… also marking HALF A YEAR that she has been our girl. My, does time fly when you’re having fun coping issues. :o) But a light has begun to shine at the end of the tunnel for me. I’m back on top in a few areas that I feel are worth sharing for my own cathartic needs.
1. I am back to being a coupon queen. With the aid of my son (who loathes de-collating coupon books, but loves his mama) my coupons are all up to date in the file box. I spent about a half hour making a list and checking it twice and headed off to do BIG saving shopping at Fry’s grocery store. When it all came down, I filled two carts (mainly because I stocked up on paper towel) and the total would have been $280, but after my coupons I paid $106. My pantry was bare-er than it has ever been in the past four years, but I remedied that in one trip! My children are much happier now that they see a supply of food that will last more than two days! Nora could not believe how much stuff I bought! And she doesn’t even understand the savings yet!
2. My Tupperware cupboard is cleaned out! This is almost a miracle. When do I have time to do mundane chores like that? Hardly ever! But this week, with the help of the same son and my little new helper, everything blinkin’ plastic thing was pulled from the cupboard and MATCHED with its lid! Whoa! I know! We filled the recycle bin twice with those containers that were partner-less. It makes me happy simply to open the cupboard door and look at the tidiness.
3. My master bedroom closet is clean!!! That means I finally hauled out all the Christmas decorations, wrap and bows that were thrown in there in early January! I also went through my clothes and threw out items that should have been thrown out years ago. I also put together a BIG bag for Goodwill. And filled the garbage can twice! This does not mean that I touched any of Rick’s clothes or junk quality paraphernalia. But I did count his t-shirts….. 33. Why in heaven’s name does any grown man need 33 t-shirts. They don’t. That is on the agenda for today! (Don’t tell!)
I’m feeling almost close to normal… about three minutes off.
Some people are born with a filter and some are not. This filter I’m referring to is the one that stops you from saying things in public before you realize that you shouldn’t say them. Please hang with me, people, while I share a few nightmarish stories that are unfortunately factual.
Four years ago, right after I had reached the B I G FOUR-O Plateau of Life, I found myself sitting at a scrapbooking event with a table full of women that I was not acquainted with. Across from me sat a beautiful younger woman who was ready to deliver a child in the next twenty minutes, if my calculations were correct. She made me feel old. Making friendly conversation and assuming that she was 20 years my junior, I asked if it was her first child. Her answer shocked me. With a terribly ungrateful tone she blurted out, “It’s my fourth and my youngest is 12!” Knowing exactly how she was feeling with three older kids of my own at home, but taken aback by her response, my filter malfunctioned and I spat back in all honesty and truth, “THAT is my nightmare!” Oh boy. The good news is, I’ve never seen her again, and thankfully that was one of the only times I remember a filter malfunction.
My husband does have a filter, but it has much larger holes than mine does, allowing more humiliating information to pass through. Yes, only humiliating for me. For some strange reason I can think of SEVERAL instances to share with you. From three days ago, as a matter of fact, comes my first example. We were at a wedding, seated around a table with 6 members of my family, one acquaintance and two strangers. My dear husband blurts out, “Did you see the wedding cake?!? It looks like the Wailing Wall!” Now that would be all funny and amusing, but my mother went pale, made a horrible face and slightly shook her head four times. Both my husband and I saw her response and glanced around the table to see what the big deal was. No sign of anything that I could detect, but we later discovered that stranger #1 was the son of the cake maker. Great.
Another recent occurence is only nine days old. Rick and I were asked to attend a leadership conference to see if we are interested in serving on a state-wide committee. It was slightly an interview-type meeting. We lunched with current committee members whom we knew by name, but not by face. They didn’t know us from Adam and Eve. There were three other couples and the two of us sitting in a corner of a banquet room conducting pleasant conversation when it happened. BAM! Just like that! I had an out-of-body experience hearing my husband tell a story that is not “new-committee-member-appropriate” about a cycling trip, unexpectedly running into old friends and then finding out later that he had holes in the back of his biking shorts. GREAT! We haven’t been contacted by anyone on the committee since the fateful holy-stretchy-shorts story. Maybe this was God’s way of keeping our responsibilities to a minimum.
Another time, when we were up in front of a married couples group…. with microphone in hand, my dear husband actually told everyone to wait a minute while I wiped his bum. For that story of awesomeness, please go here: http://mysistersjar.wordpress.com/2009/03/24/a-little-dessert-please/ (Someday my sister-in-law, Jennie, will show me how to use links for your viewing pleasure.)
Okay, I just thought of the other time my filter leaked out a response that was less than cordial. It is a 25 year-old story. My husband-to-be and I were in a shoe section of a major department store looking for steel-toed boots for Rick. The salesman brought out two specimens for him to try on, one with a smooth leather curve from the laces to the sole, and the other with a sewn ridge around the top of the toe. Curiously I asked, “Which one is more durable?” The salesman, somewhat cockily answered, ‘Obviously THIS one.” And my filter did not stop me from firing right back, “OBVIOUSLY, that’s why I asked!” Oops. :o)
Seriously, I could think of twenty-seven more cool stories about my husband and the missing filter topic, but I’ll spare you for now. (Blog topic dedicated to Mary Ann, a filterless friend.)
I’ve heard it been said that everyone has a twin some where in the world. I’m starting to believe it’s true. We met Rick’s Colombian twin in Cali… he lived across the street from the house we stayed in. His name is Juan Carlos and even without communicating very well, he and Rick were up to mischief from the get go. They both love soccer. They both think they are good at soccer… but Juan Carlos has videos to prove his story.
We taught Juan Carlos and his kids how to play Ticket to Ride one evening. Juan Carlos “helped” Larisa by illegally putting her trains on the board when no one noticed. Later he got the Spanish/English dictionary and thumbed through it for some time before he came out with the accusation against the other players, “They are deceitful.” See? Rick in another body! Larisa was winning for quite a while and he said it was because of his help. When she ended up losing, he said she didn’t listen to him.
Both Rick and Juan Carlos love Mexican/Colombian food. The foods are so similar… the only difference is that the Mexicans use tortillas and the Colombians use arepas. Juan Carlos hooked us up with some sumptuous food more than once…. SOOOO something Rick would do! He also invited us to go with he and his wife to the neighborhood fiesta. He tried to teach Rick to Salsa dance….. later he gave Rick a Salsa dancing video. I guess his teaching skills require students with promise.
We didn’t just gain a daughter in Colombia. We gained life-long friends (and cohorts.)
Welcome to My Sister's Jar. The story behind the blog lies in the original post on Feb. 2, 2008. Type "giddy moments" into the search box to find it.
I'm a homeschool mom who loves to speak and write, encouraging moms to press-on in motherhood. Two of my books are available NOW! Laughing in the Midst of Mothering and Laughing in the Midst of Marriage. See them at www.LindaCrosby.com or www.cbd.com.
I have four children, one of whom is adopted from Colombia, so there are LOTS of adoption tidbits here.
~~~~~~ Linda Ann Crosby
