Black Out

Can it possibly be the end of July already? I knew it would fly after we had the baby, but good grief! It's just slipping away from me. Last week our computer refused to boot no matter how many different ways we tried to coerce it, so forgive my absence. I can't be certain that I would've posted any sooner if it hadn't taken the last train to Parks ville, but it was a good reason for the time being and so here we are.

SO much going on around here... We had a snake, VBS, basketball camp, a close call at the library, tents in the living room, spying on the neighborhood teenagers, and Deisha is sleeping through the night. Our anniversary with the BOP passed, Tre's turning six, it's fifty-seven degrees outside, and I finally started the quilt I've been mentally piecing for almost a year. Life goes fast when you're not paying attention.

Doctor Randy Carlson has this motto or mantra that I hear him philosophizing on over and over again: Live deliberately. It's something I think about every day. Not doing that means that I miss deadlines, have late library books, forget about phone calls I need to make, and dust stacks up an inch high on the ceiling fans.

I wonder if I calculated the activities for each day whether I would be better off or bored with the monotony. Sometimes I tell myself the satisfaction of getting everything done would counteract the monotony, but like most things I have spent hours over thinking it and no time following through on it so I don't know the outcome yet.

Here's another thing. Screaming fries my brain. I had a baby less than three months ago and last week at VBS a friendly acquaintance at church asked how much she weighed when she was born. I looked at her like she had just asked me to translate the Qumran. I laughed when I realized I couldn't remember and told her that the baby had been screaming most of the morning and it had left me fried. And it does. Remember (man holding egg) "This is your brain." (cracks egg and drops into frying pan, immediately sizzles) "This is your brain on drugs." Well, that's my brain on colic. She only cries sporadically, but when she cries, she screams and it immediately begins the frying process. And not only that but Leila has fully immersed herself in the screaming phase of toddlerhood. She's not really a toddler anymore, I guess she'd be considered a pre-schooler. But the kid has minimal volume control, which also acts as a hot frying pan on my nerves. At the end of the day, I sit in front of the TV with Dale hoping for an intelligent conversation with another grown up, but unfortunately for me I am unable to initiate one. And unfortunately for both of us, his job leaves him in the same state of mind most nights, so we compete to beat each others' brain age and laugh at ridiculous commercials and call it a day. Good conversation will come back to us someday, but not at 9:30 at night, not for now anyway.

We're reading around here, working hard to sharpen each other before school starts again. I love reading; I read a book and feel compelled to tell everyone in my network about it hoping they'll immediately go out and get a copy of it, no matter what it is. Kennedy made the painfully clear to me when after finishing a book I'd read she remarked, "I didn't like it as much as you did, but it was good." It was juvenile fiction, fantasy no less. I'm kind of a dork that way. What can I say... I love the written word on all levels.