I sit here in my relatively comfortable mattresses on the floor. In the new house, I'm getting a bed frame, doggone it. We had this little Japanesey one that sat super low, but in the process of moving multiple times, it died.

As I was writing this, the children went in the kitchen, opened the fridge, and ate raw cookie dough. We like to live on the edge. Sheesh.

We're moving today, kind of. Our last day in the current house is Thursday, but we've been invited to lead worship at Fascinate in addition to our previously scheduled Teen Camp, so that has become our primary focus, and we got permission to start moving stuff over to the other house today.

We will still be sleeping here, unless something changes. So I think the plan is to move all the big stuff today, and all the packed boxes, and leave our mattresses and food and our dish rations. Me and Han are both kinda confused by the plan, so we just nod and smile.

I will miss this little place, but not that much. One thing I will definitely miss is how easy it is to make it pretty. The new house has a lot of potential, but I think it probably needs a bit more foundation and mascara than this place to make it presentable. So.

R2 has double ear infections and strep throat. We're hitting it with amoxicillin, and he seems to be feeling significantly better. As to if the rest of us have or will get strep? I don't know. The pedi just said call if the toddlers show symptoms and she'll call in a script with no visit, which is nice.

Toby is currently playing drums in the closet. We've been trying to give him space he can play alone if he wants to. It's pretty cute, to put it mildly.



So, here we go. Moving. Kinda.

I'm supposed to write fiction today, but a) I'm not sure what's happening in my story and b) I drove to Chicago yesterday and saw a Broadway play and c) Michael Jackson died. So, no story today.

I want to write about all of those things, but I can't get my brain settled. So, I will just tell you that I am terribly sad about MJ, and the play was the most amazing thing ever.

If I am ever terribly wealthy, I will go to Broadway plays for fun, instead of the thrift store. Well, actually, I will probably go to the thrift store and buy beautiful dresses, and then go to Broadway plays.

In a couple of minutes, Hannah and I will be hitting the road, headed to Chicago. It's very exciting.

Muchas gracias to Han's family, for giving her this trip as a birthday present, to Han for inviting me, and to the MOG for watching the wee folk for two days so I can go!

I'm pretty excited. In fact, Han and I may or may not have danced wildly in the kitchen last night out of sheer joy. Okay, we did.

I'm going to try to make a little roadtrip video, because I imagine it's going to be pretty funny, what with the me and Han factors, and the hyperness, and maybe some caffeine. Oh, and I got a pretty dress. So there you go.

I'm not one for potty stories. I mean, I was raised to not even discuss what happens in the bathroom, and that's fine with me. So I tend to tread lightly on the topic, because, it's gross. And private.

Still, there's a line- and potty training is that line- suddenly a good deal of my time and attention is consumed by bathroom-y things. Like today. Lemme tell you about today.

Actually, let me back up and tell you about the last week. To protect the innocent, I will use a pseudonym for the party in question. Let's just call him "Tony".

"Tony" is pretty well potty-trained. Everything is going along pretty well and then we have this major regression and all of the sudden he is... there is no way to put this delicately- pooping in his pants EVERY day. For like a week. Being a levelheaded and responsible parent, I have tried all my sane, responsible methods,

a) losing my cool and yelling my head off

b) namecalling (not as bad as it sounds- I just say he's acting like a BABY

c) spanking, well after the act and the hose-off

d) threatening

e) pleading, reasoning and begging

Like I said, I am the adult here, and I recognize that something is not working.

As I lay in a fetal position on the couch this morning, bemoaning the smell and the grossness and will-my-hands-ever-stop-smelling-like-this and i-have-to-bleach-the-tub and so on, it occured to me- there is one sane, responsible choice left. The bribe.

I offered "Tony" one chance at a computer game on the condition that his next solid waste made it into the proper receptacle. He has obsessive-gamer tendencies, and so we rarely let him play computer games, and we don't have a game device, nor do we want one. Anyway. He was very, very excited about this plan and immediately went to the bathroom to attempt -

I underestimated my charge- he is determined to poop all the time. After two herculean efforts that produced tiny amounts- (still, successful- so he got the game) I realized I was going to need to rethink this. He then spent 10 minutes on breakfast, and then played for maybe 30 minutes, and then he went back in the bathroom for 15 minutes, and refused to give up. (sigh)

I eventually took the mature choice and dragged him out, kicking and screaming, and made the new rule. The official policy is, "There has to be a lot of poop in the potty to get the game."

This is disgusting. I can't believe I blogged about this.

The thing is, it's not really about the poop. Ugh. It's about the determination and willpower of this little person. I better figure out parenting, quick.

Last night we led worship for ATC, IHOP's youth camp. We have a mixed team of IHOPpers and Radiants, and we did all cover worship songs, except You are Holy. It was good, and weird. For one thing, I am paranoid because IHOP is such a different culture and they have certain ways they do things, which make perfect sense when you are sustaining worship 24 hours a day for the last TEN years. It's just intimidating for me to step in with relatively little knowledge of how it works around here. (the MOG, on the other hand, has learned how to fit his spazzy self into the "model" and has a blast)

The other reason is that we are wearing in-ear monitors, aka "the devil". In-ears are kind of like ear buds, but you have to CRAM THEM WAY DOWN INTO YOUR EARS. Now, I have never been accused of having small ears. In fact, I remember Stevey Ellis clearly asking if I could fly with my ears in third or fourth grade. They stick out. The smallness issue is inside said ears. I don't have a lot of space, and so I have to wedge the hard plastic molds into my whole ear canal, causing pain and suffering and emotional damage. THEN I have to plug it into a monitor control thingy connected to a music stand, and I am forevermore tethered to said music stand with cords hanging down my legs. It's a little distracting, what with the shooting pains in my ears and the cords underfoot and then my monitor got a short. So I would have very, very quiet rock and roll worship followed by a WAVE of sound directly to the brain. Ouch.

I like floor monitors, and amplifiers, and drums with only a little drum shield and not a private cottage. I like STAGE noise and CROWD noise and such. So that was a bit of an obstacle.

(disclaimer: none of this is a criticism of IHOP. It's merely a rocker's lament, my dear KC friends)

It ended up being great, the kids were awesome. I remembered how much I love teenagers.

We have not started packing yet. The end.

This is part of an experimental experimenting with random or continued fiction ideas on fridays. Click here for Part I

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Well, there she was, bold as brass, right there on my TV, wearing some slinky evening gown and talking fast Spanish. For a second, I thought maybe I was wrong. But really, if you saw your mama on TV, don't you think you'd know her?

I was so surprised, I nearly dumped my Ramen in my lap.

She looked good, real pretty and her fingernails with little diamonds on em and just talking fast as you can imagine. Some guy was over in the corner, listening to her, looking real suspicious-like. That was no surprise, given Mama's taste in men. She was working hard on convincing him of something, but he wasn't buying it, which if you ask me, was the right choice. Then she starts to crying, and he gets all disgusted and looks out the window, real angry.

After a minute, I stopped watching and started getting mad. She run off and left us. We had been comforting ourselves, me and my brother Jimmy, imagining her dead in some ditch somewhere, with the Buick all smashed up and maybe a note or somethin in there sayin she was on her way back to us. 5 years we'd been waiting.

Instead, she'd been livin high on the hog and here we are just gettin by, living in Grandmas old house and working all the time... tell you what, I was getting pretty steamed by the time Jimmy got home. Course, he was drunk off his gourd and wouldn't listen.

I figured I'd try to have to catch him in the morning, maybe make him some eggs before he left for work, sweeten him up a little. I was gonna need his help bad.

Cause, way I figured it, we were due for a little trip to Mexico.

we had R2's belated birthday party at Chuck E Cheese last night. It was just our little family and Daniel and Hannah. I didn't get any pictures of Toby because he was a blur moving from game to game all night.

Fun was had by all the small people. I didn't have that much fun personally, because my kids evidently have sensitive stomachs- I will not elaborate, as I would like to forget.

Anyway, we ate pizza and had cupcakes and used a LOT of tokens and won some little prizes and then we were exhausted and we went home. The end.

Brynn is 2 now. I always hesitate to say "terrible twos", because a)that's kinda cursing the whole YEAR and b)she's awesome when she isn't acting terrible. Also, it feeds into that whole kids-are-an-inconvenience mentality that I really really dislike.

Nonetheless, we have had a couple of terrible days around here, as it relates to Bean and her will.

It's a challenge for me to figure out, because Toby was so logical- I mean, he has always been into everything, and he makes lots of messes, but if I explain "You can't play with knives because you will cut your fingers and bleed," he gets that and stops playing with knives. Brynn does not believe me. In her eyes, I am a one man party crashing bully.

Today, Bean refused to wear a napkin on her shirt during lunch. Now, I let my kids eat. Sometimes, they get covered head-to-toe in spaghetti, and I just roll with it. But when we are out running errands, I want them to only get dirty in washable areas, i.e. not their shirts. (explore: vinyl clothing. Research needed)

It went something like this. I tuck the napkin into her collar. She takes one bite and then pulls the napkin out and throws it on the floor. I tuck it back in, explaining.

"You have to wear this because-"

"I NO WERDIS! NO NO NO!"

Brynn, you have to-

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"

"Okay, fine, you don't wear it, you don't eat"

(alarmed glances at nearby tables "Is she starving that child?")

"I WAND MY FOOOOOOOOOOOD! NO I NO WERDIS I WAND FOOD NO I NO!"

"If you want to eat, then you have to wear the napkin."

(wailing, concerned looks)

The MOG tells her, "You have to wear the napkin first."

(wailing, gnashing of teeth, "I NO WERDIS!")

The MOG asks me, "Is this the hill you want to die on?"

Well, no. Not anymore, with the bystanders and the screaming. I crumble and give the nachos back.

"I AW DONE. I GO TRASH." she explains, crumpling up her paper.

I cratered under the pressure. Will she ever believe I am the boss? Maybe we should just stay inside the house until this phase is over so I can spank and threaten to my heart's content. Sheesh.

Spring China is a little storefront Chinese restaurant a couple of miles from my house. All I know is, someone mentioned in passing that there was a good place in that shopping center, and then when I went there on one of my breaks, I saw a Mexican place, a fish place, and a Chinese place. I picked the Chinese place out of curiosity.

Does it show how BURNT I am on Missouri and their "Mexican" food that I would just pass it by- I'm not falling for that one again...

Inside, SC is a little rough. They have one two seater table, about 6 random chairs and two booths, one of which is typically occupied by a sleeping elderly man and a phonebook. He is very, very thin and he wears brown pants that are a mix between velvet and suede, and old brown dress shoes, and a hat with an American military insignia. Sometimes the young guy who works there sits in the booth with the sleeping man and reads the paper.

When I come in, the young guy goes behind the counter and takes my order. He never smiles or appears to recognize me or remember my order, even though I come in about once a week and order the same thing. He and a young girl wear Hollister shirts and apathy.

There's another older man behind the counter. He's heavier set and his hair is all silver. He uses open flames and a giant handheld skillet/wok. My General Tso's takes about 20 seconds to cook, and I'm always disappointed that it's over.

What brought these guys here? How do they stay in business? Are they happy, lonely, bored? Did the old guy fight in Vietnam? I want to know the stories, and sometimes it just makes me a little nuts.

Oh, and the General Tso's is awesome, enough for 2 meals and $5.45. Yessssss.