Endings

Tomorrow marks the last Sunday that we will worship with our current church family. We plan to attend on Wednesday evening, of course, but there is something about Sunday that draws you more closely together. First and foremost Sunday is the day to worship our Lord, but the joy derived from doing that in the presence of friends can't be matched by worldly pursuits.

The last time we will partake of the Lord's Supper together. The last time to enjoy our monthly evening singing service in lieu of the regular preaching service. The last time to worship on the Lord's Day from beginning to end as a church family.

I'm grateful that we'll be able to attend this last Sunday, because we all love the monthly singing service, especially Harry. Music really speaks to him like nothing else, and spending most of a worship time in song together is his favorite thing right now. Mine, too, really - I'm as much a songaholic as he is.

It will be the last time that the kids attend Bible Class with a teacher who's watched them grow from babies. The last time I'll get to hold "my" babies and play with them after church, in no particular hurry because we live so close to the building that we can stay without running late. The last time I'll get to check on the lives of various members and see what adventures they've had this past week.

I know I'll see them all again, hopefully soon. We plan to come back for at least one evening in November because my cousin will be preaching for a few days there. But I know it won't be the same. Someone else will probably take "our" bench. (Although, they're welcome to it - that bench is FREEZING most of the time!) We'll have to check and make sure we're not taking someone's seat, and try to figure out where we can squeeze in. We won't be up on the latest news, and will have to try and squeeze it all in in just a few minutes before and after.

It's all part of a new beginning, and I'm happy, I truly am. I'd be happier if I were a little more confident about what kind of church-hunting situation we're going in to, but I know too much to be truly confident. (I won't get into that.) But I know we'll be led to where we need to go. We've been led too much in the last few months into greener pastures not to trust that church, of all things, won't be covered just as well.

It's just hard to let go of something that you've had for 12 1/2 years.

Oh. My. Stars. Just SHOOT me NOW!

I needed a 6 month membership to the gym before we started this move. Seriously. And access to a lifetime supply of Ben Gay.

I'm just sayin'.

ARGH.

We don't play pool, so WHY....

...do we own a pool cue chalking thingy?!

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

AAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!

Insert Witty Blog Here? No thanks.

Insert PANIC ATTACK HERE.

We now own two houses. We can afford it, but just barely. The next few weeks are going to be dicey to say the least. Pray for us, y'all!

Semi-Hiatus

We just found out today that we will be closing very soon on our new home - possibly as early as tomorrow afternoon. Therefore, I won't be able to be online much. Hopefully, I'll "see" all of you again really soon - and from a new location!

~~Demeter

Give me some advice and maybe win a contest!

Okay, we're hopefully coming down to the wire on moving soon. I need some advice! The general move should be okay, but I'm concerned about two things: having the basic necessities on-hand and eating well in the days around the move, without having to cook. So, a contest!

What do you have to do? Two things:

1. Leave a comment in the comment section giving advice on at least one of my questions; AND

2. Please make a post on your own blog, pointing others to this contest.

That's all! So, here are my two questions:

1. Of course, we'll be packing a suitcase for each of us with a few basic changes of clothes and some toiletries. But I also want to pack a box with things we'll need when we move in and don't want to have to dig out. Like - a set of sheets for each bed, towels and washcloths, toilet paper, soap, a shower curtain. What else do I need to have set aside for those first few days so that I don't have to either go buy something new (when I already own it, it's just packed), or lose my mind trying to find it in the boxes?

2. The last couple of days before the move, I don't want to cook because I want to be able to get everything packed and not have dirty dishes to deal with. Same for the first couple of days when everything's going to be a mess, plus we'll all be tired. I need some good ideas for stocking up on non-perishable food that doesn't need to be cooked, is filling, and is at least somewhat healthy. I have some Boost drinks stashed for some extra nutrition, so that will help. Some fruit will be good, but I don't want to have too much to have to deal with moving it. Give me your best ideas on good eats that won't break the bank and won't leave us with rickets and scurvy!

So - hit me with your best shot! Contest will run from now until next Friday, the 14th, at 4:00 Central time. What will you win? Hmmm.... how about a $5 Amazon gift certificate!

Thanks, y'all!

Hallelujah!

All together now, to the tune of the "Hallelujah Chorus"!

Hooooootttt Water!
Hooooootttt Water!
Hot Water!
Hot Water!
Hot Waa-aaa-aaa-ater!

Yippee! The hot water heater is FIXED, and it cost me NOTHING. Waiting two weeks wasn't fun, but at least it's summer, not winter. And now I can wash dishes more easily and take decent temp showers/baths.

My poor fridge

I took all the "stuff" off my fridge last night and boxed it up. The only things that are left are a comic about moving and my magnet holder thingy that holds my knock-off bleach pen.

It's so bare and white, and it just makes my heart ache! It's the most visible reminder I've seen yet that we'll soon be gone and it just tears me up. Fridges become one of the little "hearts" of a home, with family pictures, drawings, fancy magnets that have been given to you, and more. Having it all down makes it seem like I don't love anyone around here enough to put up all those little reminders.

I can't wait to decorate my fridge again!

SO tired....

I am absolutely given out.

They weren't able to fix the water heater - the plumbers quoted me $396, so I said for that kind of money, I'll wait two weeks for Sears to come out and fix it under warranty. YES, TWO WEEKS. I have an appointment for the 30th. I begged her to see if she can get somebody here sooner - baths aren't too bad, but I have no dishwasher. I don't want to wash my dishes in cold water! But there is also no AC in the kitchen - so every time I heat water, I heat the kitchen, too. Oh, I cannot WAIT to get out of this house!

But tomorrow afternoon, we have to leave to spend the night with family because Saturday is the family reunion - which Westley is Chairman of. Of course, just because HE is the chairman doesn't mean he's actually going to do it - that falls to the shopper of the family, me. Which I didn't mind too much last year (yes, we did it last year, too!) but this year it's just too much.

Add to this the fact that the kids are going to spend the following week with my mother, and I've got a ton to do. I did several loads of laundry today just to make sure the kids have enough clothes to get at least half way through their week with Mom - they'll still have to do one load of laundry partway through the week there.

I'm also trying to decorate two cakes to take with me tomorrow afternoon that are going to the reunion - a 65th birthday and a 50th Anniversary both this week. I don't know if I'll get those done after all. The cakes are made, and the toppings are purchased, but I just don't know that I have it in me to try and get them done tomorrow. They may just go in the freezer for a future project. Maybe our farewell party with church friends.

Which is NEXT Saturday.

I'm going to be a melted, gibbering mess the first part of the next week. DH may have to just pour me into my pew seat Sunday morning and elbow me every 10 minutes.

No hot water!!

Dear God,

Thank you for this being summer!

Our hot water heater went out yesterday. We didn't discover this until Westley was trying to take a bath and was getting progressively colder water. Turned out the pilot was out, but he got it going again - but that only lasted maybe 10 minutes. No go on getting it going again, so we just shut it off completely.

Called the gas company, and the gas man said he thinks its the thermocouple, but he didn't have the parts. Call Sears, he says - it should still be under warranty because it's not very old.

Finally got a real person at Sears, and you want to know when the next available appointment was? Today is the 14th of August. Their next available appointment was......

August 29th.

FIFTEEN DAYS, y'all. 15 days with no hot water. Baths might be doable, but I don't have a dishwasher - I'm not boiling water to wash dishes, that's too hot and I would worry about accidentally scalding myself. So I called up a repair place I've used before, and they'll have someone here in the morning. One night is doable.

Fifteen days for an appliance repair. The cynic in me can't help wondering how long I would have had to wait if I *weren't* under warranty. It just burns me up that I'm going to have to pay for it all myself because I can't wait two weeks for a repair.

My little twig is growing up

Yesterday, Hermione spent a gift card she had received to buy a new shirt. Technically, it's teen's shirt, but in a size small it fits her just right - since on a teen it's supposed to be very form-fitting and tight. (Don't get me started on modesty - the fact that a TEEN'S shirt fits my not-quite-9 year old daughter just burns me up, y'all!)

The shirt has some tucks in the middle, at what would be the waist on a teen, just a simple little attention detail. Hermione was asking me last night if those were supposed to be up around the chest area - which I had thought at first, too - and I was trying to explain detailing and how it would show off her waist if she had one. How that, you know, when you get older you get a bigger chest AND bigger hips, so you're not just straight up and down any more.

I held up my hands, side by side, and was telling her, "Well, right now you're kind of a stick. But when you get older, you'll be more like a..."

"...a branch?!" she says.

Okay then.

Maybe you just had to be there. I 'bout died laughing, myself.

I feel sorry for the boys in about 5 years....

Lately, I've been noticing that whenever I'm cranky, irritable, bloated and in major pain - which seems to happen about every 4 weeks ;-) - that Hermione is just as cranky and irritable. Or maybe she's just irriTATING. Or maybe I'm just over sensitive. At any rate, on the one day when I feel the worst each month lately, she turns into this monster child that I just want to throttle. She gets mad at everything and everybody, yells and screams more than usual, and butts heads with ME every chance she gets.

She's lucky she's going to be able to sit comfortably today.

If she's picking up on some pheromone thing that's causing such a hormonal shift, then I shudder to think what's she's going to be like in a few years, when it's her own hormones raging. And the two of us in the same house together? EEK.

It ain't going to be pretty, y'all.

We may have to send the boys to a hotel or out camping once a month. Either that or they're going to start plotting to lace our Hershey bars with Xanax or something.

It's ours! Sort of....

The home we are wanting to buy has been cleared to be sold to us. Now I've just got to go through all this headache-inducing paperwork and do a ton of praying that we get approved. I think we should, but with our credit history I always worry. Things are SO much better for us now that Westley has a great job, but he's only been there 3 months, not much time to establish just how good we can be at paying our bills, finally. On the plus side, the home we're buying is only half the cost of our current home, so our mortgage will be low, so that should be in our favor since that means an even smaller debt-to-income ratio when they look at what we're trying to get approved.

I've never done the home-buying thing before. DH bought this current house from his brother when his brother needed to move suddenly, and actually originally bought it with a signature loan using his Dad's CDs as collateral, instead of a mortgage. We later turned that into a regular mortgage, and have re-fi'ed once since that time. But neither of us have been through the selling and buying process from scratch, so we feel like ducks out of water.

I absolutely DREAD the next few weeks!

Modesty Rant

On Sunday, I swung by the nearby Walmart to get a Sunday paper. I wouldn't bother with Walmart except for the fact that they have the Sunday paper for 99 cents rather than the $1.50 that it costs everywhere else. I decided to look around for a few minutes, pick up something for dinner, etc. While wandering around, I saw a girl and her mom shopping together, and my eyes nearly popped out. This girl, who was probably no more than 7 years old (maybe a tiny 8) was walking around - IN PUBLIC - in her swimsuit. Not a one piece bathing suit, oh no. This was a two piece - a tank/halter type top and a standard, panty-style bottom. NO COVER-UP. Just walking around in her swim clothes. And the bottom was riding up a little bit, oh joy.

I admit, I do not believe in even going to the pool or the beach in swim clothes, but even I know that people do that and you're not going to stop folks anytime soon. But in what reality do these people live that they think it's even remotely okay for a girl to be walking around in her swimsuit out in the general public?! Y'all, a swimsuit is nothing more than walking around in your underwear, especially when it's a two-piece. Would this mother ever dream of allowing her daughter to go out in a tank top and her Barbie panties? I think not. Would Mom go out in her bikini like that? I think not.

I just do not understand the current culture of "I can do whatever I want, but don't you dare look at me in a provocative manner" that so pervades America today. Where is the sense of pride of self that prevents you from being so brazen? Where is the sense of even general modesty that people used to have even if they weren't religious?

I can just see this mom a few years from now, worrying over the possibility that her "little girl" might come home pregnant one day because she knows how provocatively she allows her to dress. Just think how much smaller that worry would be if she taught her daughter starting now that some things just aren't done, and that a lady covers up!

Sigh. I feel so badly for the young women of America today. All I can do is do my part, raising my children right. But some days, that just doesn't feel like enough

If I'm sobbin' into the spaghetti, honey, just turn off the radio

I grew up on country on the radio. I loved music, loved to sing. 70's country is, if you'll pardon the obvious bias, the best out there. I was a bit naive, though, as I clearly remember my mom and I singing loudly along to the "Jose Cuervo" song many a time - we had no idea it was tequila!

I can't remember now if I was naive when it came to tearjerker songs. I just can't recall any that I thought were particularly sad. Maybe they didn't infiltrate my brain, or maybe I didn't have life experience to recognize them for what they were.

I moved away from country when I was in high school because I was tired of being the odd one out - NOBODY else listened to country! I've pretty well stayed with pop/rock since then, when I bothered to even turn on the radio, which wasn't often after getting married and having kids. I also love to listen to Broadway musicals, so those have often been what's on instead of the actual radio.

But, you know how it is when you start getting ol.... er, slightly more advanced in years. You begin waxing nostalgic for the things of your youth. So, I decided to hunt down a country station here. What fun! I found a great station that has a good mix of old and new, so I get the fun, new stuff while not feeling completely lost because I don't know any of the songs at all. Hearing those old favorites brings me right back to my childhood.

But then. ACK. That very first day, I'm listening along, trying to decide what I like, when this song came on. Wife is in the hospital, husband apparently travels a lot and has been caught out away from home when she goes in the hospital, tries desperately to get home in time, but misses her and is left with just a loving note. THIS IS ENTERTAINMENT, PEOPLE?! I was a sobbing wreck by the time this was over!

There's something you should know about me. I'm very emotional, but I HATE, HATE, HATE to cry in front of people. Anyone. Not that I don't like to have a good session of wailing and gnashing of teeth, but only if there's nobody around, and they won't be for a good 6-8 hours. I go all Rudolph, and my eyes get that puffy undereye thing going on that betrays me. It's not pretty, folks.

It's not that I think crying is a weakness, in general. I have never looked down on anyone who cries, anywhere. (Excepting the two drama majors who live in my house and are currently less than 5 feet tall.) It's just something I don't like to do, myself. It's just one of my quirks.

So imagine my surprise when a couple of days later yet another one comes on the radio. This song at least isn't crushingly depressing, but it's something that makes a parent's heart just break into a hundred pieces, because let's face it - it's going to happen someday. And we all know that's exactly how we're going to feel. Truly, we "Loved Her First", and giving away our daughter in marriage is going to be one of the happiest and saddest days of our life, all wrapped into one.

Despite the fact that I hate to cry in front of people, I'm distressingly emotional, especially after becoming a parent. Kodak commercials? Pass the tissues, please. Those Campbell's Soup foster children commercials that were on a few years ago? I had to leave the room. And we won't discuss just how bad reading the last Harry Potter book has affected this currently PMS'ing woman this last week. (Let's just say that my tear glands are wondering if they get vacation benefits, and leave it at that.)

Since most of my radio listening happens in the kitchen while I'm either washing dishes or cooking dinner, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if my husband manages to come home a little earlier than I expected one day and catch me boo-hooing into the macaroni. And boy, am I going to feel really silly when I have to explain that, no, everything's fine, I was just listening to the radio. Yeah. Just turn off the radio, honey, and pass me a Prozac. I'll be fine once Jose Cuervo comes back on.

A VIPSA

That's "Very Important Public Service Announcement".

When pouring boiling hot water from a tea kettle, make sure that the stupid lid is actually SNAPPED ON, not just lying casually atop the opening!

Don't ask me how I know just how freakin' important this is.

Apparently, Westley and I have still "got it"

Westley calls me every day when he leaves work, as right now he works 50 miles away. The other day we chatted for a few minutes while he was getting out to the car, talking and laughing about various things. When I got back to the living room, Harry grinned at me and said that his sister told him, "Mama sounds like she's got a new boyfriend or something. She's all GIGGLY! They sound like they're not even married!!"

Kids. Gotta tolerate love 'em

I didn't wanna do it, I didn't wanna do it....

Just got back from giving blood today. I'm O+, so the vampires blood donor people love to see me. They called this time and asked me to come in - I've been going in on my own from time to time as I remembered, but the last time I gave blood, they blew the vein and I ended up with a small hematoma and some sort of weird reaction to the adhesive on the bandaid. The hematoma went away in a day or so, but the raised skin reaction around the puncture site lasted for two weeks. Understandably, giving blood on my own hasn't crossed my mind for a while now! But when the Red Cross called, I went ahead and made an appointment. I know they need lots of O, especially during the summer, so I went on.

I'm kind of tired now, but I know it was worth it. It's summer - go give blood yourself!

If a dozen book characters are dead....

... then why am I the one who's dragging?

Oh yeah.

That would be because I stayed up until 3:36 **AM** finishing my book.

Got about 2/3 of the way through it, tried to go to bed, couldn't do it, had to gulp down the rest.

FABULOUS. Parts could have been better, there could have been a tad more "oomph" in the final battle, but I'm satisfied, for the most part. I loved it. :-)

It's 4:00 my time....

...and still no book!!!! >SOB<

UPDATE:

It came about 10 minutes later. I managed to squeeze in a chapter and a half before I had to go start dinner. And then, would you believe, my husband had the audacity to STEAL it and start reading it! Well!