I’m lying.
I actually hate it. I sometimes love it, but for the most part, I can’t stand the mess of it all.
The good news is, I can get my computer sort of working kind of sort of kind of. If I breathe right and the stars align and it’s a month ending in “R.” The bad news is, it heats up and wants to die pretty quickly, so turning it on and committing to a few minutes of writing is me engaging in some sort of warped time war with an unseen enemy -I WILL BEAT YOU.
I can’t transfer my photos from my phone, and this is a problem because
1) I take a lot of pictures. A LOT. No really. I annoy myself.
2) They’re pretty cool.
Meaning: my kids are pretty cool. And life is pretty cool, if you’re willing to pay attention to the little things, like grandma using her walker to walk to grandpa -who is leaning on his walker and working on a tractor -and grammatical errors on posters and honest kids in shopping carts and sunsets and sunrises and Tevye (on the other hand).
I have a stack of Halloween pictures… pictures of the 30-minute Batman costume that won’t make Pinterest but will make a 6 year old feel super human. Pictures of The Toddler running around with a grocery sack open wide, embracing this THING they call “Trick or Treat” where the Trick is all on the big people with the candy… handing it out like FOOLS. FOOLS! Pictures of Lacy as an EVIL QUEEN (moment of silence for the year we officially lost her girlish desire to be a princess and nothing scary -ever). Pictures of me snuggling up with the thrifted linen throw I found for 2 dollars and TWO BITS (“and two bits, and two bits…” ~Jud Fry) that everyone else now wants. But I win warped time battles with my dying computer, so… ain’t nobody stealing my linen. Pictures of Lacy and Alice staring at the mechanized Santa at Wal-Mart and wondering what it all meant. Pictures of my mom’s cat forcing my Dad’s eyes to do funky aerobics to see his work computer. Pictures of Alice sitting on TOP of the couch where heads usually rest because… well, it’s the closest thing to a throne this place has to offer. Pictures of the day I hit housekeeping rock bottom and covered my wall paper in, erm, paper. Because if it isn’t bad enough that I can’t keep a thing clean, at least I shouldn’t have to look at DARK BLUE PLAID that reminds me of just how powerful hate can be.
“We call this print ‘hate ya more’n Hilter‘ and we can get it in ANY shade so long as it’s heavy royal blue.”
Pictures of the ketchup I made at 9 pm tonight which is just ONE hour shy of the tomatoes hitting their Not Even Chickens Will Eat These stage.
There’s a lot going on around here, folks.
A lot.
Life isn’t ALL about pictures -which is why I’m holding down the fort on the I Don’t Instagram, Latergram or Hashygram Island. There are so many things that pictures can’t capture but which words can.
Example:
Scene: Night. Mother is driving home from the store with her two daughters.
Lacy, 7: Mom?
Mom: Yeah?
Lacy: You know that movie where she’s all, “LLAMA!”
Mom: The Emperor’s New Groove?
Lacy: Yeah, yeah! And there’s Kronk and he’s having that -those -when he gets -you know the tiny devil that’s all, “Look what I can do.”
Mom: Yeah, and the angel?
Lacy: YEAH! And the angel! And the angel tells him to do good stuff and the devil tells him stuff doesn’t matter?
Mom: Yeah, it’s funny, right?
Lacy: Wellllllll, sometimes that happens to me.
Mom: It DOES?
Lacy: Yeah! Like at recess when I saw some girls stomping butterflies and I saw some girls WATCHING the other girls stomp butterflies and then the devil was all like, “Just watch… the butterfly is fine. It doesn’t matter. Who cares?” and then the angel was all, “That butterfly has a family and eggs and seeds, and when they kill it, they could kill a WHOLE FAMILY.”
Mom: So what did you decide to do?
Lacy: I told the Principal. He said he would talk to them about it, and I feel like I did the right thing.
(At this point, I want to hear the Principal’s take on the situation. And the Butterfly’s. But I digress…)
Lacy: But sometimes, I just don’t listen to the angel. Like in activities. FOR EXAMPLE (her new favorite phrase, very growed up), if I bob for apples and the water is SUPER cold, the angel tells me, “NO! NO!” and the devil just says, “Aw, who cares?” so I do it.
And that’s when the giggles erupted.
Lacy, folks, is… naughty? I don’t even know. She’s incredibly adorable, for all her fire-starting and antics.
As we waited to check out at the grocery store, she pointed very bravely at the model on the cover of Cosmo.
“LIES!” She cried out, “LIES!”
“What lies? Where?”
“Legs aren’t really THAT skinny,” and then she pointed to her very obvious breasts, “And those are lies too.”
“Why?” I asked. She had no answer, but I clued her in on the fake quality that a computer tailors to, moving my finger over the flawless skin and pointing out my very own perfect skin’s fluctuation in color and spots.
What a girl.
I am finding myself more and more teaching my kids about lies around us rather than turning things off or running another direction. My first time doing this, I shocked myself by PAUSING a movie during a questionable scene.
I thought I should turn it off, but something stopped me.
I had turned the movie on because it appeared safe, and I wanted to curl up with Lacy to enjoy a fun chick flick.
I paused it. The screen held a still of a lazy man with little respect or connection to his life and the lives around it. A woman in thigh highs and a frilly corset was FANNING HIM and feeding him grapes. Her heels made her look uncomfy. Her hair and make-up were pristine.
“He is treating her like a toy,” I said, “Is she a toy?”
“No…”
“Why not?”
“She’s a person, a daughter of God.”
“She IS a person, with parents on earth and parents in heaven, and he is treating her like a toy. And THIS IS A LIE.”
And then we watched three more scenes before turning the movie off. Because corsets aside, the plot was so shallow, even my 7-year old suggested we watch something with a little MORE to it. Like Care Bears.
Technology. I SWARE.
Before I go, I will share with you ONE picture that made it from the wide icloudy space between my phone and my computer. I call it The Mercy because it is full of MERCY.
Last year, I bought some Pyrexy dishes at Savers in Flagstaff, AZ. There was only two, and they weren’t LEGIT Pyrex, but they had the Pyrex feel to them. I picked them up and put them back about 4 times before finally deciding that my heart needed them and it was worth breaking my $5.
I love those dishes. They’re the perfect receptacles for salsa, yogurt, pudding, marshmallows, and water to rinse off water paints.
They’d make GREAT and cute chicken pot pie homes if I only had a few more…
On Saturday, our family took a day trip to Payson, Arizona. We stopped at antique stores along the way. It shall here be noted that Lacy reported to her cowboy grandfather that, “We stopped at cowboy stores!”
“Um, Dad… they were actually ANTIQUE stores.”
Wonder how much his hat is worth?
As we wandered around one really great thrift shop, I found FOUR. FOUR! of the exact same dishes. It was mercy, looking down and smiling on my general COVET of all things kitchen that I don’t need. But need.
So there’s chicken pot pie for our entire family PLUS ONE which means our cats will eat like KINGS.
Also making an appearance: my paper wall paper. The anti-Hitler.
There’s no technology in thrift stores, just cheap pearls and double-knit threads and 200 CD changer stereos (my iPad got the biggest kick out of that).
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