I finish my evening rounds, putting the cookies back in the highest place, checking locks, turning off lights. My last stop is checking on "the babies", who are not babies anymore. 

They're both on the bottom bunk, and I stop for a minute to soak in the achy sweetness of them. She's curled up over her Barbie pillow in her pink swimsuit. My 4 year old sleeps in whatever she wants, because I pick my battles. Toby's laying awake on the other side of the same bunk, because he's boycotted the top bunk until his 6th birthday, for legal reasons. 

Usually if he catches me, he'll ask me if I have any fried chicken, or why we can't see wind, or if you could survive hot lava, or when did God start, and I tell him to go to sleep and go Google the answer. But I just felt like lingering for a minute. I crawled into the bunk with him and we laid our heads next to each other, and we talk, his grubby little hands on my arms and his legs resting on my knee. 

"Someday," I tell him, "you'll be taller than me, and you'll be a daddy." 

"And you'll be a grandma," he says. "But you'll still be my mom. Because even grownups have moms."

"I will always be your mom."

"And I will be your son, and I will still be your baby, because you'll always be older than me."

This son, with his sensitivity and his brilliance and his sweetness. My miracle baby, the one I worked so hard to get... he will always be my baby. So maybe I'll be okay. 

Inside my mind, I am mired in controversy and drama and intrigue. I have like 3 totally separate things that my brain is freaking out about. So here, on my personal blog where I mostly tell jokes, I will keep it light. For today, anyways.

So I know you are all dying to see my renovated kitchen table. See ya later, males! Or hang around for tales of mild female incompetence, you know, for conversational material.

I started, 3 yrs ago, when I bought this table on Craiglist. It had these flowers painted on it, which I hated, but mostly I was busy cleaning bacterial concentrations off the walls (hey, I'm still doing that! What the heck) so it took me 2 years to find a piece of sandpaper and sand those cheery flowers off, leaving naked little patches on the edge of the table.

No matter, I thought (last year) I'll sand the whole thing lightly and then paint it black. (get that devil music out yer head) So I did, kinda. I painted the leaf black and then I took a little break for a year, during which time certain parties in my marriage expressed strong and frequent disapproval of the "table plan".

So that party went on the road recently, and I decided to finish the table, because I only have 4 kids and I don't have much to do. First, I took said kids to Lowe's, where they both delighted and disgusted the elderly public. I bought spray lacquer, because, hey! 1 step. Ehhhhh....

I sprayed the table top outside and the seats of the chairs. My goal was black top, black seats, white legs, and I accomplished that, eventually.

After 3 cans of spray lacquer, it still looked super stripy, so I used a little bit of leftover black paint from long ago. But it was old and thick and it started making all these pits all over the table, and I was out of money... so I dragged a paintbrush down the surface, and that texture fixed the pits. I'm like friggin Martha Stewart up in here, if Martha Stewart let her kids eat Ramen Noodles while sitting on the floor for 3 days.

New white, old white

I also re-whited all the white parts. Then I started reassembling everything, and progress ground to a screeching halt. I'll tell you what I DID NOT want to happen. The MOG walks in the door from his trip and I am lying on the couch in a swoon, and he has to swoop in and put the chairs back together. Not so much. For one thing, because like I said, I am the Furniture Assembly Spouse and b) this guy doesn't need more reasons to question my interior decorating prowess.

Lucky for me my sister in law had some kind of magic touch and was able to shove the chair rungs back in, with maneuvers that I still don't understand. It's a little rough, you can still see the stripes a little and the whole thing needs some kind of shiny coat that makes it more washable. But it's a big improvement. Even the other parties in my house like it. Kind of.

The MOG got back from a weeklong ministry trip to Texas last night. While they were  there, our trailer got robbed and we lost over $15,000 worth of musical equipment. This is the second time this has happened, in Houston. Next time, we're filling our trailer with radioactive goo and laser robots, so tell your Mafia friends we're on our way.

But anyway, they had great ministry times, God really moved and once we got over the initial panic and deep despair, we all feel faith that He's got us and it's going to work out. The MOG is tired, though, no doubt.

So far this morning, he's been alternating between responding to emails about The Response and asking me, "What was it, exactly, you wanted me to do?"

I'll say, "We need to put money in the bank, buy some groceries. Maybe eat Taco Bell." as he types frantically. After a minute or two, he quits typing and looks at me, slightly irritated.

"Why aren't you answering me? What was it you wanted me to do?"

I'm laughing. "Bank. Grocery Store. Taco Bell."

He's looking at me with that unfocused look that means he is not looking at me.

After a moment, he looks down at his keyboard. Sighs, keeps typing.

"What was it, exactly, that you wanted me to do?"

I expect that eventually, today, we will eat at Taco Bell. It just might take a while to get there.

I never linked to this over here, since I figured that all my internet worlds were combined, but just in case they aren't: my article on potentially abortive birth control over at Bound4Life. 

I've been a busy little bee this week, painting the bathroom and disassembling and redoing the dining table and chairs. Fact: it is easier to take something apart than it is to put it back together. Y'all feel free to use that in a sermon illustration. Oh! and when I was painting over the old antique white with new bright white, I thought, here's a Baptist sermon right here. That's free. You're welcome, Baptist buddies.

Sometimes people ask me, "How do you do these projects with kids around?" Excellent question. I'll explain.

I give them electronic devices. Whatever I've got, phone, computer, stud finder, calculator. That keeps em busy for a little while, while I paint feverishly instead of taking a shower and changing out of my PJs. Time is of the essence, whatever that means. Google break! (well, that was boring. I was hoping for something more mythological or poetic) Anyways. I work fast. Sometimes I stay up late taping and doing all the hard part so I can just paint as soon as I wake up.

Eventually, someone gets hungry. I put out food, like a bowl of crackers which they can then carry through the house and crush under their feet. This usually buys quite a bit of time, especially if there is peanut butter involved. Crunch, crunch, smash, smear.

Oh, and I do projects while my husband is gone. Always. "WHA?" you say. "Why not make use of a co-parent?" Well, because a) he parents very... casually and b) he hates every project idea I ever have. He hates all color and change. (exaggeration) So if I ask him if I can paint the bathroom purple, he would say very, very strong things about how much he hates purple and how everyone hates purple and how Hitler used purple, primarily. If I don't ask him, then when he sees it all finished, he might be like, "Meh, not crazy about purple, but whatever. Studio CD kingdom kissing." Something in that vein.

Sometimes, I do a project for so long that my children FORCE me to interact with them. I usually give them a project they can't mess up, like painting the underside of the table with their watercolor brushes and real paint. They'll do that for like 5 minutes and then start dropping paint around and threatening each other. That's when I usually quit and pick it back up when they get bored with me.

I would show you the table, but I'm going to wait and show it to the MOG in person first. Besides, it kind of reminds me of those paintings in the nail salon with a piano and long red fingernails holding a rose, and I'm not sure how I feel about that.

One of my kids has a terrible fear of doctors. It probably has to do with being poked and prodded and wired at the time when his peer group was still chilling in their amniotic fluid, taking it easy. I can't blame the guy.

So before our dental visit, I called ahead, as is my custom with new doctors. I said mommyish things about special needs and panic, and violent self-injury fits, and can we have sedation, and fine, then, if he flips out make a note for the staff to clear out so I can deal with it.

So we arrived yesterday and spent a great deal of time in the waiting room, where R2 wavered between being very excited to be out without his siblings, to R2 pointing concernedly at his teeth 4000 times. "Yes," I would tell him, "this is the dentist. No ouchies. They want to see Richy's teeth. Just looking. Counting your teeth. No ouchies."

 Eventually a timid looking nurse, or dental hygienist or whatever came out and asked nervously, "Is this Richard?" and "Is he OKAY?", peering closely. He is intimidating, in his 5T jeans and tiny glasses.

"Yeah, he's fine. He might be nervous when you put stuff inside his mouth, but he's fine now."

"OKAY RICHARD! WE'RE GOING TO GO IN THIS ROOM! DON'T BE AFRAID!"

(note to all: mentioning being afraid makes kids, well, afraid)
(also, visually impaired kids can hear just fine)

They try to get him to go stand inside this machine and bite a stick so they can X-Ray him. He looks concerned. Three staff members shout encouragement from a safe distance away. I wanted to tell them he's not a tiger, they can get close. I also wanted to say there was no way in heck this biting/xray idea was gonna work out.

"OKAY RICHARD! DOING GREAT! NOTHING TO BE NERVOUS ABOUT! BITE THE STICK!"
"SCOOT YOUR LEGS, RICHARD, NOW TURN YOUR HEAD! BITE DOWN! NOT LIKE THAT!"
"HERE, TURN THIS WAY! YOU'RE DOING GREAT, RICHARD!"

The X-rays were wonky, but that's how we roll. They sat him in a chair and did the bite X-rays. "GREAT, RICHARD! JUST BITE... WAIT, HOLD YOUR MOUTH OPEN (is he okay???) AND NOW BITE DOWN NO NOT LIKE THAT! OKAY RICHARD! (that will have to do) LET'S TRY THAT AGAIN! NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT!"

Richy is looking around, wondering what's up with all this noise and why people keep making him bite stuff. He wasn't nervous, just getting a little irritated. They dropped us off in our cubicle where we waited for the Dentist/Senior Dental Student or whatever, and the girl in the cube next to us started up her exorcism routine, with the screaming and the running away and the demanding to be left alone to die and the pain, which at first R2 thought was pretty hilarious, because he's always had a twisted sense of humor about kids crying, but after a while I think he started making some connections and indicating grave, grave concern.

Eventually Dr. Student arrived and looked cautiously at Richy. "HELLO, CLARK!" he bellows cheerfully. "HOW ARE YOU TODAY?" I try to correct the name thing. No go. "ARE YOU CLARK'S MOM?" he asks. Yeah, yeah, that's me. I am Clark's mom, whatever. Let's do this thing.

"I'M GONNA PUT THESE COOL SUNGLASSES ON YOU!" shouts the nurse/whatever. "WOW! YOU LOOK AWESOME! I'M GONNA PUT THIS BIB ON YOU WITH THESE CLIPS! IT DOESN'T HURT!" Richy flinches as she clips it on, alarmed by the word choice and the volume. I take a picture of him and show him. He likes the glasses.

Dr. Student did okay. He did most of the exam with his fingers, which is not as scary as the tools, and eventually he (the dentist) calmed down and figured out that despite whatever HORRORS must have been warned in the chart, R2 was small and mild-mannered, and so he just did his exam. I mean, we had to pry his mouth open by force every single time, but he wasn't ever afraid, which is like a miracle.

In the end, yeah, the kid has 2 sets of teeth, which I knew, but his dental age is like, 6, so the baby ones still have lots of time to fall out. And no cavities or real problem areas, so good. Very good. He jumped like a gazelle all the way to the car, thrilled to be released.

I bought him a cake pop at Starbucks, because there is no trooper like this trooper, and if we've made it 12 years with no cavities and only sporadic toothbrushing, we're golden. Amazing.

Earlier today, I thought I heard something moving in the garage. Nah, I thought. I poisoned the heck out of all the mice, they've been gone for 18 months or something. I am good at denial.

Later, I opened the garage again to find some paint. Something flashed by and I screamed like the proverbial girl. Just before I swooned, I noticed the white stripe. It's a chipmunk, I thought. The chipmunks from the yard are now in the garage.

I called the MOG. "I can't remember why I called you," I told him. "So never mind."

5 minutes later I called him back. "We have chipmunks living in the garage." I say.

"Aww," he says, like it's a good thing.

"I'm afraid I'm gonna move a trash bag and a chipmunk will jump out at me."

(uproarious laughter from band, who is evidently on speaker phone)

"They're not aggressive," he says in a patronizing tone. "Maybe play some Alvin and the Chipmunks, see if you can lure them out." he says, and again with the laugh track. Everybody's a comedian.

So, okay, fine. I'll just stay the heck out of the garage. Because the only other option is poisoning the suckers, and even I am not mean enough to poison a chipmunk. 

In my mom's group, we talk about various topics. The Bible, of course, because we are spiritual women, but also, like, our husbands, and how they are perfect (and also how they are not) and other things. Thursday night we talked briefly about dating and why I am considering starting an arranged marriage service, or maybe just a dating referral site or something. I am having a lot of ideas these days, I should probably get another baby to suck up all my brain energies.

We touched briefly on "the list". You know, that list you make of what your spouse HAS to be. I didn't have a lot of time to make a list, since I got married before all my baby teeth fell out, so mine was truncated. It said, "Musician. Long Hair." Richy was everything I was looking for, and more. That's a benefit of getting married young, you're simpler.

But so much, the list is goofy. I mean, nobody is going to measure up to that stuff, unless you're a pessimist, and your list is things like, "Only yells once in a while", "Keeps up with basic hygiene", "Does not kick cats." And then some joker comes along with buck teeth and you don't give them a chance. Just saying.

I'm not saying don't have ideals, prayers you throw up to God for Prince Charming or Cinderella or whomever, I mean, God likes to know what you want, even though He already KNOWS. I just bet Prince Charming's list didn't say, "Girl from dysfunctional home", "Skilled at cinder-sweeping", "Difficult in-laws", "Tendency to misplace belongings, i.e., shoes." "Weird transportation."

And everything changes, in life. You'll find the things you thought were crucial are so secondary when your bald husband is a totally rocking dad, or whatever.

Maybe what's important is who you are. Maybe make a list of who you want to be for a future spouse and then pray that in, and do the work to make changes. Maybe you've got a minute here to work on the one you can actually change. I'm talkin bout the man in the mirror. Make that change. (Sorry, unavoidable.)

Sidenote: if you're already married, the principle still works. You can't fix your spouse, you can change yourself, at least, most of the time. Turn it around, yo.

Sometimes it hits like a freight train. I cannot keep my child safe. His own brain is his enemy, and I don't have the remote or the instructions.

So I'm sitting in the sunroom with a thousand pounds on my chest while he sleeps, moments after his brain attacked him with violence. And it's not about me, I know, but when the crisis is over and all the adrenalin fades, I'm left with myself. And my helplessness.

And I know God loves him, and me. I know he is a miracle of God every day of his life. I just wish God was more programmable, or something.

There's not language for this hurt.

Over the course of a marriage, you find out your strengths and weaknesses, and especially your spouse's weaknesses. The man I married is a gifted worship leader, and he has many other skills, but furniture assembly is not really in his wheelhouse. The instructions frustrate him, and then stuff breaks and screws fall down the drain and he ends up hammering the bookshelf together with drywall screws and a hairbrush, because I have lost the hammer. And honestly, the 12 hours he spends building a dresser are much less fruitful for us than the 12 hours he spends in the basement, plotting the salvation of East Texas or writing worship songs that will be translated into Spanish and so on.

That makes me the furniture assembly spouse. Of late, I have had 12356 children, and so we've been hiring a buddy to come build things, but the budget is tight, and I got tired of waiting for the bunkbeds we bought in the spring to be assembled. I had to carpe the diem, seize the bull by the horns, live in the moment and dance like nobody's watching.

I knew it might be a challenge, so I set a dresser up to be one "wall" and then leaned the other side panel on the other wall. Then I picked up the long back panel and began attempting to hold it up, straight and touching both panels while putting screws in. Mostly I dropped everything. I mean, everything. All 3 panels, screws, Allen wrenches, profanities (not really), the butter knife I was using for various tasks, etc.

Side note: we had the windows replaced yesterday and we have no blinds up in the house. I bet the neighbors behind us just set up the camp chairs and the citronella and watched me drop bunkbed pieces on myself for 6 hours, because that had to be entertaining. You're welcome, nice lawn people.

I tried to recruit the MOG a couple of times, but he had to go teach youth worship leaders a class or something. As soon as he left, I realized it was way past dinner, and then I found a great deal of fecal matter in an unauthorized location, and then Tristan decided nothing would ease his pain like being carried around on my hip, and then Toby knocked the bowl with all the dinner seasoning on the floor, where it both shattered and rerouted my dinner plan. Project shelved.

Once I got everybody to bed a room away from me with a door, I threatened the MOG with divorce (not really) and then he brought ice cream home and I was revived.

I ended up building it myself. I used a great, great deal of patience, used my shoulders as a panel holder, throwing out IKEA's instruction page order and switching it around to make it work for me, and getting it done. They are solid. I'm proud of myself. Their room is going to be adorable.


I have to give props, though. Could not have done it without the chocolate ice cream.

(sidenote: I have a post up at Moral Outcry about affording adoption. You should read that next)

I'm 32 years old. That is weird, every day, but I think I'm settling into it fairly well. Some things are starting to worry me, like, it's not so easy to lose weight and my feet hurt. Oh no! I think, I'm middle-aged! And really, if I live to 70, I am kind of middle aged. But women in my family live to be 120 or something and work 3 jobs until somebody makes them stop. So I'm not really middle-aged yet.

It's confusing, this age. I tried to buy some summery shirts at the thrift store yesterday. I was thinking something that said young and breezy without saying "I work in a nightclub" or "I am in denial about my arm flab". And look, the merchandise in thrift stores is limited. I know if I went to a real store and paid full price, I could probably find the slightly-chubby-mommy-who-can-still-look-hot-with-some-makeup-and-rouching department. But I don't shop at real stores, I spend all our money on food. So.

So thrift stores tend to put you in 2 categories, Grandma or Floozy. I was hoping to hit right in the middle of those 2, but I was mostly out of luck. And hey, if you are a 30+ woman still rocking the halter top and Daisy Dukes, I'm not saying YOU are a floozy. I might be saying it's time to rethink that... maybe.

So maybe it's time for me to buy some lavender floral tees from Walmart and some Dr. Scholls and settle in for a nice long elderly season.

Or I could just color my roots, because that is probably the source of all this angst anyway.

My kids went to Vacation Bible School today. Brynn had a cupcake and colored a picture of a koala. I, on the other hand, dropped into a pit of introspection on the topic of parenting.

I've never done MDO or preschool or daycare. I've gone on tour and left them with grandmas, but I've never put them in a stranger's hands and driven away. So as I drove away today, I felt a small tear in the cord that ties us to each other.

Parenting is a bit of dying every day, starting with the cutting of the umbilical cord and then moving on, as I encourage them to sit up alone, to hold their own bottle, to walk away from me. Make friends, I say. Try new things! And as he buttons his shirt all by himself, a little piece of why-he-needs-me dies. There's a continual ache amongst the celebrations.

And I know it will keep going. Learn, grow, fly! I'll urge with my heart breaking. Love! Leave! Cleave! as I let go, over and over and over.

And when it's all done and there's no pressing need, no one screaming for me to cut their sandwich and the silence is deafening, then I will know I did the right thing, and that they will need me in a whole different and much deeper way. Until then, I'll die as much as I need to, every day, to make them alive.

Just when I think I'm turning into one of those well-balanced women with multiple talents, I realize I'm not. Case in point: to redecorate the kitchen, I have fed my family mac and cheese and pbj's for weeks. Oh, and fast food. Lots of fast food. If Jamie Oliver was here in my kitchen, he'd be weeping copiously while piling mounds of corn dogs and cheeseburgers all 'round in great heaps.

I decided to turn over a new leaf the other night, after looking disgustedly at myself in the mirror for a while. Here's the thing. You have your own comfort level, you know? And I don't like the dimensions of my current shape. So I've decided to go on a diet. Kind of.

Being the youngest, I watched my mom and older siblings and sibs-in-law wander through every diet program known to man. I mean, South Beach, Cabbage Soup, Weight Watchers, Slim-Down Workshop, Slim-Fast, Atkins, etc. They did 'em all. Primarily I recall them chowing on multiple Weight Watchers frozen desserts in one sitting. "It's a reward," they'd say.

So I'm genetically predisposed to try and fail at diets. I'm not at that stage yet, though. Right now, I'm just focusing on trying to eat like an adult. And not so much the adult with the Playstation T-shirt and sweats, but more like the fit, responsible adult with a clean car.

Today I went to the grocery store with that goal in mind: buying meat, fruit, and vegetables. It was my first time at Costco and I was pretty intimidated. I mean, do I want 24 cans of pork-n-beans? I found myself standing in the middle of the aisle, frozen in indecision. On one hand, I need 5 pounds of sweet potato fries, I think. But 17 bucks seems like a lot. But it's a lot of fries. So. Or salmon, do I need salmon? A lot of salmon?

So now I have some grownup groceries, and I want to eat Oreos. The upside is, a healthy subcutaneous layer will probably pay off in the end times when we're all eating locusts and stuff.

Most of my kids take out their anger in a healthy way; by bludgeoning each other with toys, or making somewhat nonsensical comebacks, like, "I'm going! You don't have to warn me." (hands on hips) Or they lay down on the floor and scream until their little faces get red and sweaty, with no one to hear them, because we have closed the door. (Not Tristy, we never let him cry)

But this one kid I have doesn't have those reasonable coping mechanisms. His strategy is to grunt hoarsely when annoyed, and build up to poking himself in the eyes and eventually beating his own head, like a one man version of West Side Story. Last week he started slamming his arm into the table, and managed to do enough damage to convince a pediatrician and 2 parents that it might be broken, and to cast reasonable doubt on various decoy doctors and radiologists. We like to keep 'em guessing.

It was a bad day. Spending the day at the hospital is always emotionally draining, even when it's not really a crisis. There's just no good part of trying to help a kid who hurts himself. It's guilt-inducing and frustrating and so on. But if there was a break, it was at this one place in between growth plates and it wouldn't show up on x-ray, and it didn't seem like it was. So we got our splint and came home and then he alternated slamming the splint into his hip and taking it off all week and bringing it to us, gesturing at his aching arm. Yeah, about that splint...

Today was the follow up appointment and they confirmed once again, that it was probably not broken. I have great faith in modern medicine, but it gets a little old hearing guys in white coats say "probably". Don't those guys have the inside on this stuff? Because me and the guy over at 7-11 could come up with "probably not broken".

Anyway. They gave us a new little velcro splint, since he says it still hurts by emphatically signing "yes" with his probably not broken wrist. School starts August 17th, y'all.

I love this house. It fits us. It looks fairly normal, but then you hang out for a minute and you figure out it is.... quirky. Some might say weird, but I stopped liking that word by the time I was 6. Quirky is fine. So now we're trying to buy it, and our loan officer is learning how to do loans and mortgages and things by trial and error, process of elimination. Somehow we always manage to be the guinea pigs in these kind of experiments.

So we're taking possession of it, while the paperwork is being wept over and lost in the mail. My primary contribution has been painting walls instead of doing the dishes. Oh, and painting the refrigerator.

I've been working for weeks or months or something on picking a color for the kitchen. It's a tiny little apartment-style kitchen and it's been a little disheartening shock every morning for 2 years now, like serving breakfast to your 17 year old daughter while trying not to look at her nose ring and neck tattoo. I painted yellow splotches on the wall, green, purple. The MOG shot them all down. Finally I said I just wanted to use the leftover green bathroom paint and in a moment of weakness he said he didn't care.

Now I'm a submissive type, and I hear you laughing. No, I mean it. I typically defer to what Richy says, and on the couple of occasions in our marriage that he has absolutely put his foot down on something, I was okay with backing down. But every now and then he just waffles on something and says something along the lines of, "I don't think I like that", or "I'm not sure" and then I have to carpe the dang diem and try new things, like dyeing my hair black or painting the kitchen.

So without much further ado, my green kitchen. (Note: it's not quite as lime as it looks in these pictures. The interwebs is lying)

Before: Gray blue walls,
navy beadboard, beige refrigerator,
small baby

After: Green walls,
white beadboard, black refrigerator,
FAT baby

Project cost breakdown:
White paint: leftover from other project $0
Green paint: leftover + 1 can= $15
9 picture frames with mats from Dollar Tree= $9
1 can glossy red spray paint= $2
Photos printed from Shutterfly= $ 3
Appliance paint for refrigerator= $15
= kitchen mini makeover: less than $50 spread out over a few months. Yay cheap!

I still want to replace the countertops, floor tile and fluorescent lights when our ship comes in, and touch up the white on the cabinets and switch the hardware and paint the other beige appliances black. Or maybe I'll take a nap.

We spent most of the day Wednesday in the ER with R2, who might have fractured his arm in a self-injury fit. Lots of good emotional blog material there, but when we got home, the AC was broken and it was 85 degrees in my house. So I haven't blogged in 2 days, because I was hot. I'll get to the deeper stuff next week. Today I need to talk about my pain.

Now, maybe you're like, "You're from TEXAS. Houston, even. You grew up in the belly of hell and you're calling 85 degrees hot?" Here's the deal. In Houston, it's like 115 degrees in the shade in March or something. And the humidity is like 123% all the time so you have a heatstroke walking to the mailbox. Seriously. It's insanely hot and humid. Insanely. For most of the year. The trick is, Texans keep their thermostats on 60 pretty much year round, just to prepare. I mean, it cools down a little in the winter, maybe 40 degrees a couple of times around Christmas. In my mama's house, it would still be 60 degrees. In Houston, you wear tank tops and short shorts and carry a sweater, because when you walk in Walmart you will be driven backward by gale-force arctic blasts from the air conditioner. It's a way of life.

So if it is 85 degrees inside my house, even you lucky Texans left in Texas have to admit, that's nasty. The MOG kicked into gear right away, going up in the attic and doing something and buying box fans from the hardware store, and calling the AC guy who promised to come, someday. I, being a proper Southern woman, wilted into the couch. I got up to get a cold Coke, and then it was back to wilting. (also, it had been a very long and emotional day, but that didn't cover the next day of wilting)

We put the kids to bed with fans and dire threats of what would happen if they stuck their fingers anywhere near the fan. Think: rivers of blood, screaming, and loss of computer privileges. They listened pretty well, and just knocked them over a few times, while jumping from bed to bed. The MOG and I camped out in the sunroom, which has the only ceiling fan and tile floors. It ended up not being so bad, at least for sleeping. Once the sun came up I was plunged once more into American Air Conditioning Entitlement Syndrome.

Finally on Thursday, Elvin's former son-in-law came and fixed it, and then it took 12 hours to cool down, because this place is a barn. This morning it is 73 degrees in my room with 2 fans, and I can type on my computer again. Don't expect blogging in the end-times, y'all.

---

On an unrelated note, the MOG led worship in the Prayer Room last night. You can watch the archive here. (10 pm Thursday)