Worth the Wait

Dear people,

It has been a while!

I have excuses. So many excuses to offer you for my failure to post.

However, since none of these (really, very good) excuses are actually very interesting, let’s just skip ahead to the part where we’re back in the swing of things. It will be like Monday night’s dinner:

Usually, I cook something, Leo rejects it, and I give Leo a bowl of cereal. Since it was just the two of us eating at home last night, I skipped steps one and two (cooking and rejection) and went right to step three (cereal for dinner). Leo still didn’t eat very much, but we saved a lot of time and effort. I’m calling it a win.

So. Mike and I took a trip to Chicago over the weekend. I attended Why Christian 2016; Mike explored the city and enjoyed Quiet Alone Time; and we went to opening night of Das Rheingold at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. It was an incredible few days of learning, listening, worshiping, reflecting, and just being together. We had whole conversations where no small child interrupted us. We ate in restaurants without children’s menus and we got to eat our food while it was hot and drink our drinks before the ice melted. You get the idea.

There are many standout moments from the weekend. Here is one:

Satisfaction Guaranteed

 

I’m pretty sure this is a behind the scenes photo from Amazon headquarters.

 

What did we do before Amazon?

Seriously, what? How did we find the every day things that aren’t for sale in our town, or the obscure things we forgot we needed until we needed them immediately, or the things we didn’t know we needed until Amazon suggested them to us?

Amazon is a magical  place. When you live in a small town, it is a lifesaver: you can get the stuff they don’t sell in your town delivered to your door (and you can still shop in your town for all the stuff they do sell). Party favors, Halloween costumes, expensive but effective eczema shampoo and body wash, Thomas the Train everything. (Pro Tip: They still sell books, too.)

But it is dangerous, of course, for the same reason: they have everything, and they deliver it to your door. It’s easy to fall down the Amazon rabbit hole, especially if you read the reviews. One product review leads to another, and another, and another, until your virtual shopping cart is filled with things that have suddenly become essential.

We recently converted Leo’s crib into a toddler bed. (Or, in Leo’s words, “Daddy broke it!”) The transition was not as smooth as we had hoped–he was on the floor multiple times a night. So, I turned to my friend Amazon for the answer.

I didn’t find this on Amazon, but maybe I didn’t look hard enough.

What would it be? A traditional bed rail? An inflatable bed rail? A foam bed rail? “Magic bumpers”?  There were so many options, each more expensive and complicated than the last. I was overwhelmed.

But then. Then, I was saved by the very tool that had brought me down this rabbit hole: the Amazon product review. I can’t find the actual review now, but the gist of it was: “This product is basically a pool noodle. Don’t waste your money on this. Buy a pool noodle instead.”

And it’s true! Cut a pool noodle to size (we went with the thicker kind), stick it under the fitted sheet, and voila! No more sad thuds in the middle of the night.

Thanks, Amazon, for once again helping me find exactly what I needed. Even if I found it on clearance somewhere else.

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What is the best or worst Amazon purchase you’ve made?

Make ‘Em Laugh

Did I ever tell you about the time I got kicked out of class?

It was a Spanish language intensive in Oaxaca, Mexico, where I spent the first semester of my senior year. Something was funny–I don’t remember what–and my classmate and I locked eyes and started to laugh. Since we were in class, and our teacher was kind of strict, we immediately looked away and tried to pull ourselves together.

We failed.

Whatever it was, I know it wasn’t that funny, but we could. Not. Stop. We laughed uncontrollably, and when our teacher sent us out of the room to compose ourselves we laughed even harder. It probably took us ten minutes to calm down. A classic case of church giggles.

I mention this because a similar thing happened at Saturday’s wedding.

Why I Vote with My Children

“Can I vote?” Zoe asked at the supper table Monday night.

“Not yet. But you can come with me,” I said, sorry to crush her democratic dreams.

Luckily, she wasn’t crushed. Clearly, she knows the drill, because her next question was:

“Can I have your sticker?”

I said yes. And when Leo asked if he could come, too, of course I said yes again.

In the morning, our conversation went like this:

Swimming Among Various Citrus Fruits

I love this.

It’s one of the many hidden gems on The Commons, where the caption is maddeningly  brief: “Sharon Conrad, swimming among various citrus fruits.”

There is so much more I want to know.

Balloon Drops for President

I’ve been too busy Poppinsing (Pro Tip: of course it’s a word!) this week to catch much of the Democratic National Convention. Luckily, I have the internet to keep me up to date on the most important moments of the week.

For example, the balloon drop.

Seriously, friends, click on that link right now for all the Clinton balloon drop GIFs and memes you never knew you needed. They are truly delightful.

The photos are pretty great, too. For example:

Survey Says: Guilt and Floss and Family Feud

The Fox’s Pizza Den in Madelia has it all:

They have, of course, delicious pizza and stromboli.

They have a popcorn machine.

They have games.

As we waited for our pizza and stromboli last week, we munched on popcorn and busted out a box of Family Feud game cards. Zoe decided to read the questions. I decided that the positive (reading practice) outweighed the negative (reading questions like, “What is a cocktail that is also a person’s name?”). Although, Pro Tip: Knowing what a Tom Collins is–heck, knowing what a cocktail is–will totally give you a head start in second grade.

It was all fun and games (see what I did there?) for a while. Cocktails with people names; things in your kitchen you couldn’t live without. Then, Zoe pulled this card out of the box:

Sticktoitiveness

“We have to be at the doctor’s office at 7:45,” I said to Mike Tuesday night.

“7:45 in the morning?” he asked. If he were a cartoon character his jaw would have been on the floor.

Even though the Cumings kids are early risers (and, Pro Tip, no respecters of Saturday mornings, either), actually leaving the house early in the morning is not exactly one of their spiritual gifts. So, when we pulled up to the clinic at 7:47 AM on Wednesday, I was pretty proud of all three of us.

The appointments went pretty well, too. No one was injured despite robust use of the exam table as a play space; no fingers were crushed in the frequent opening and closing of the exam room door; we spilled some Trix on the floor but didn’t crush any of it underfoot.

So I’m pretty sure I earned my reward:

Yep: a sticker. We each got one, and each wore them proudly all day long. (Or until we led a prayer service at the funeral home, because, Pro Tip: stickers are not actually professional wear.)

In my first call, I sometimes awarded imaginary stickers to my confirmation students when they had a really great answer. For a really, really great answer you might even get a sparkly one. This was a surprisingly effective motivational tool.

So, what can we learn from this?

1. Recognition matters. When we acknowledge the small victories and the everyday successes, it makes a difference. It makes us happy and proud and motivates us to keep on keeping on.

2. We need more stickers. While I was writing this post, I remembered that today is recycling day. I filled the bin and rolled it around to the front of the house exactly in time for the recycling truck to collect it. Sure, an empty recycling bin is its own reward. But you know what would be the perfect thing to commemorate this mundane achievement? A sticker.

Make it a sparkly one, please.

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What motivates or inspires you?

Brrrrr

It was a blisteringly hot, humid day in 1993. But Mrs. Artabasy’s teeth chattered as she wrapped a beach towel around her shoulders, shivered dramatically, looked at a classroom full of stunned and sweaty seventh graders, and said, “I’m freezing.”

She was one of the kookiest, quirkiest teachers I ever had. (Pro Tip: And also one of the most beloved.) She crafted music shows in which her students sang and danced to the Beatles and Billy Joel and loved doing it. And on a miserably muggy day, she showed us how to keep cool: fake it.

We all practiced shivering. We all said, “Brrrrrr.” And, you know what? It almost worked for a minute.

Today is another hot and humid and just plain gross day in the Midwest. I believe there are three perfectly sensible responses:

Rainy Day Verse

Thunder and lightning! Hail and rain! It’s a dark and stormy morning in Saint James, dear people.

It’s the kind of weather that makes me think of this early 16th century poem, “The Lover in Winter Plaineth for Spring”. My English Lit I professor recited it for us on the first day of class, calling it a perfect poem, and I think he was right: