One of my favorite children’s books is “My Many Colored Days” by Dr Seuss. I can relate well to the black days mad and loud, the slow brown days, the busy yellow days and the happy pink days. My last post is testimony to a sad purple day. And you know what, that’s ok. It’s ok to be sad. God makes room for it. “To everything there is a season. A time for every purpose under heaven: … A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance: …” Ecclesiastes 3:1&4. A year is a long time and I want these posts to show all sides of it.
With Dale gone, dinner has been a pretty unimpressive event for the last month. Not that it was impressive prior to Dale’s deployment, but at least I was forced to cook something. Last week Gabe asked what was for dinner to which his sister replied with a bit of eye rolling “probably sandwiches”. Since they can’t roll their eyes at school, I feel I must allow it at home, so that they have some level of preteen normality. That comment spurred me to action and I made a commitment to myself that I would cook decent dinners this week. I made meatloaf on Monday, chicken and rice on Tuesday, spaghetti on Wednesday, sloppy joes on Thursday, and by Friday I had run out of momentum. I watch the food network, I buy cookbooks, but I am just not someone who likes to cook. It is a chore to me. Sunday is probably the worst day to try to get me to cook. After church on Sunday, my Mom makes a big Sunday brunch of bacon and eggs and fried potatoes. Everyone gets so full that my Dad eats popcorn for dinner. I decided to be my Mom today and made bacon and eggs and biscuits after church. However, the kids wouldn’t agree to popcorn for dinner and ruined my plans. So, instead of cooking a decent dinner, I made pancakes. Eating breakfast for dinner is one of the unifying characteristics of families with a spouse deployed. Cereal or pancakes for dinner is a standard meal. Australians, however, do not accept pancakes as a meal. Pancakes are a dessert to be served with ice cream and sauce. The only time they eat pancakes for dinner is the Tuesday night before Lent starts. When my kids saw that Australians put ice cream on their pancakes, they decided that was a great idea. I, however, refused to allow it. They already spread peanut butter (Dale’s family), chocolate chips (my family), and syrup on them. Ice cream is out of the question. I have to draw the line somewhere. Josiah asked me the other day, “What would it be like to live in a family that ate healthy all the time?” As long as he’s living with me, I’m afraid he’ll never find out.
I love books and I love to buy books for my children. Therefore, we have a lot of books. However, I do not have a lot of bookcases. I dream of one day having a house full of nice solid wood bookcases instead of the hodgepodge of particle board and unpainted pine shelves that I currently own. I periodically make a pledge to not buy another cheap bookcase. I declare that I will save my money and invest in wooden bookcases that will survive our relentless moving. Then, I move to a new house and have piles of books with no where to put them. I see in the newspaper ads that Big Lots has white particle board book cases for $25 and I think “I could buy a bookcase for each of the kids for less than the price of a nice one.” So, off I go to Big Lots. There are people who love Big Lots, the Dollar Store, and yard sales. I am not one of them. I greatly admire frugal people. They love to search for the best deal and save money. I like to go to the nearest shop and spend too much for an item, because I’m too lazy to look around. I walked into Big Lots and told myself to walk out before I purchased more cheap bookcases, but I couldn’t be stopped. Big Lots is a dangerous place. It convinced me I couldn’t pass up a great deal on a jewelry table and a child’s table with stools. So, I came home to assemble all my various purchases. I had help in assembling. Gabe operated the screwdriver and Zeke helped with the hammer. Zeke has a special knack for hitting my thumb. I successfully assembled the jewelry table and the child’s table with stools and was beginning to feel cocky that I was finally getting the hang of these home improvement tasks. Gabe, Zeke, and I started on the first bookcase and I made sure the unfinished edges were all facing upwards. Gabe worked the screwdriver and Zeke worked the hammer. We screwed the boards together and carefully pounded the nails that held the back on. I then went to put in the shelves and realized that I had connected one side with the peg slots facing out. I let out a frustrated scream and scared Zeke. All my new gained confidence was gone and I was reminded of the two other home improvement fiascoes I had this week. Josiah was out mowing the lawn and came into tell me that the lawnmower had stopped. Assuming that it had run out of gas, I went and got the gas can and filled it up. I went back inside and seconds later Josiah came in to tell me the lawnmower was smoking. I went outside to find the lawnmower coated in oil and smoking. All I could think was that Dale had mentioned to me that the weed eater took an oil, gas mix and I must have filled up the lawnmower with the wrong can. I stood there thinking, “I can’t believe I’ve broken Dale’s brand new lawnmower.” I sent the neighbor kid to bring his dad who concluded that when Josiah checked the gas, he also checked the oil and forgot to screw the oil cap back on. The oil bubbled out onto the engine which resulted in the smoke. I was much relieved. This week I also decided to shock myself by attempting to pull out an old fashioned multiple plug expander from the outlet without turning off the power. I didn’t do so well in electrical engineering at college, but I do remember learning that if you grab a bit of metal connected to a power source, you will get shocked, and get shocked I did. I have had many offers of assistance for home improvement tasks and have finally agreed to accept one, because who knows what I could do next.
School starts in two days and my attempts to move the kids bedtime back to a more reasonable hour have so far been unsuccessful. I am primarily to blame with my habit of making dinner at 1900 and allowing long baths and wanting us all to read together. The main culprit, however is that I am a night owl and if there were no outside factors, I would stay up until 0200 and wake up at 1000. Ezekiel appears to have my same inclination. I put him to bed at the same time as his siblings who eventually fall asleep. He, however, is up in his room, playing his Diego game, putting together a puzzle, reading books, or singing tunes from the 70’s. My brother, Rob, bought me the first season of the Muppets on DVD and the kids love to watch it. They loved it so much that they pooled their money together and bought the second season when the disk was released last month. Zeke has learned all the songs that the guest stars sing and you will periodically hear him burst forth with “Ahhh-Ah-Ah-Ah-Ahhh Close to you” or “Searchin, I’m gonna find her”. I know people must think I listen to the sounds of the 70’s radio station with all the ridiculous songs he sings. The other night, we said our prayers, all the kids got tucked in, and I went downstairs to paint. After awhile, Ezekiel walked down the steps. I looked up and asked him what he was doing. He told me, “Taken a break”. I asked him if he was taking a break from Nigh, Nigh and he said “Yah, taken a break.” So, I’ve decided to look at things from his perspective, I’m not staying up later than I should, I’m just taking a break from bedtime.
Today was the day when I finally had enough nerve to open my boxes that have been in storage for 2 years. When you have no recollection of what is in the boxes, do you really need it? Even though prior to every move I get rid of so many things, there are always some things that seem to follow me. I found my personalized German stein with a naked lady on the bottom that was a welcome gift from the unit I was in as a 2LT. It will soon be mailed to Australia to become the property of Karl Hillbrick, the only person in the world who would want such a garish thing. I have always been too embarrassed to donate it and unwilling for some unknown reason to toss it in the rubbish. Josiah was thrilled to uncover the farside comic books and promptly went up to his room to read them. Abby was excited to find an old phone that she plugged in her room. Somehow she managed to get the one other bedroom with a phone jack. Amazing, isn’t it? Gabe found Dale’s fur hat and promptly put it on his head. Zeke wandered around picking up every breakable thing just for the fun of it. I got down to the final box and soon discovered the one thing that I move from place to place but never use. In 1991, I purchased Christmas stoneware dishes from Waechtersbach, Germany. I didn’t just purchase a small amount. I bought 12 large plates, twelve small plates, twelve mugs, a teapot, creamer, sugar, dessert plates, large bowls, small bowls, star bowls, etc. I told myself that it would be terrific to pull them out every year after my birthday and use them throughout the month of December. No matter where we lived, we would always have the Christmas plates to make it familiar. It is painful to admit that was 16 years ago. For the majority of those 16 years, those dishes have sat in a box in the basement, garage, or closet. There may have been a few years when I pulled out some of them, but never most of them, and certainly not all of them. The fact that I would not give up these dishes was used against me often by my husband when I was busy throwing his things out. So, I hereby declare that for penance I will use my Christmas dishes for the next 16 months to make up for the 16 Decembers that have gone by with only occasional sightings of Christmas dishes. So, if you come visit, you’ll eat off a Christmas tree plate and drink out of a snowman mug whether it be March, July, or October. So, it’s “Holly Jolly!” all year long at the Manry home where we have Christmas every day.
