Summer Rules

1. Tuesday- Thursday- Saturday

Mandatory Complete BODY Wash

With Soap and Shampoo, conditioner optional

Question: Does Shampoo count as a soap if you slather your head then your body in it?
Answer: It does smell like coconut, which is better then you were before. Ok for every day but Sunday (which includes Saturday Night).

Addendum: If you are younger than your mother, your mother can add "SHOWER" as a personal responsibiltiy for any day (in addition to the above suggestions).
* manditory for completion before firends come over.

2. Clothes

You may wear your same shirt and pants all day long and yes, even to bed, if you so desire (although you all own pajamas) But come morning mandatory change of clothing which includes new pants and shirt, underwear etc.

Amendment-- if by chance you own two of the same shirt/ pants your may not wear them in consecutive days, so that it appears as though you are wearing the same outfit you wore yesterday and to bed.

Question: If we run through the sprinklers (Added by a Brother) or go swimming, in our clothes could we wear them again-- Theoritically they got washed, they got dried, and you didn't even have to fold them.

Answer: Do they still smell like... you after playing all day, sleeping in them and then swimming in them? Then the answer is NO! you may not count that as another wearing opportunity.

Addendum: On good principle, you may not take off your clothes that have been worn all day and night, but them in the dirty clothes basket, skip a day and then wear them again-- That is Cheating!

3. Homeless

At least one other day besides Sunday you must NOT appear to be Homeless. The day is at your general discretion.

Persons with a home would have all these things done on the same day at least for a moment at the same time:

Hair combed, teeth brushed, face washed and clean clothes on.

Addendum: At breakfast Mom may announce that today is not a Homeless Looking day. Complaints will cost you a minimum of 25 cents or an extra job (if you are out of money).

Summer is About...(dot, dot, dot-- it's important)

Summer is about,
Otter Pop Wrappers
on the floor--
And discovering that no matter how many times you sweep in a day,
There will still be wet little pigs that walk across the floor
and drop off their grass clipping hitch-hikers
And even though the floor was just mopped
those are dirty toe smudges
tip- toeing across the floor.
If that child had wings they would have flown through the house,
with their Muddy feet never leaving a trace
But as conscientious as a child
raised up on Ballerina point to keep the impact at a minimum

Summer is about,
Otter Pop Wrappers
In the bed,
where a cross child lift the chamotion of friends, foe, and family
to snuggle into mom's side of the bed
to take a break, slurping on the end of a plastic wrapper
with festive colored sugar water
which some how rights wrongs and heals ouwies.
There are only a few bright drops on the coverlet
yes, a bit leftover on the pillow.

Summer is about,
Otter Pop Wrappers,
A whole collection of them
Lined up expertly in the hidden recesses of the couch
It might be the only thing holding the couch together
Three friends play rock band,
Four girls make a princess castle
that looks a lot like a bandits hide out,
subsequently, being attacked by a rival band
with many screams of delight and horror
from all sides
Two girls riding side saddle,
no, wild west style-- with a somersault dismount
with otter pops dangling from their lips
as the arms of the couch whine with effort.
Giddy Up!
One Dad watching the channels buzz by,
No, those were the Snickers wrappers not the Otter Pops

Summer Is About,
Otter Pop Wrappers
A green smile from lack of oral hygiene
A purple smile because there were only six left
A red smile because it's a favorite
A Blue smile in the family photo OP
A pink smile, in answer from the brilliant child who know how to hide the signs of an Otter Pop addiction
Sticky, Sweet that is impossible to wipe off your hands
It's the smell of supper delight, covered in Otter Pop
It's a kiss, Thanks Mom, with a side of Otter Pop
It's the Hug that leaves a little behind, on your shirt that No One told you
It's bright eyes and smiles in all the colors of the (Otter Pop) Rainbow.

Achew

Lindsey came home, amazed that he hadn't sneezed the entire six day trip in the mountains with the scouts, and he walked through the door. And Achew. "Bless You"
"My Dad's allergic to Giraffes."
Which ironically is true-- Giraffes of all things.
How does one find out they're allergic to wild animals?
We were at the zoo, and we were all thrilled to see the baby giraffe only days old, it was so cute, except for the incessent sneezing that was kind of upsetting the baby and us. We looked around and there to our astonishment was Lindsey: He could hardly breath for sneezing, his nose was running, his eyes were swollen. He was a total wreck! And was in a hazard of killing him self by excessive sneezing.
My own thoughts at her comment were-- And do you usually house a giraffe, not usually with our limited ceilings, but the sneezing could be cause by the carpet.
He is also violantly allergic to cats which is another reason to avoid the zoo. There is a tiger house; which although the tigers are hundreds of pounds not cute little fluffy, they still have exactly the same kind of 'cat dander'. So a very smartallic Doctor advised against becoming a lion tamer. That is exactly what we need to be when we grow up. Large Cat veternarians, Performers, or Zoo Keepers.
But the icing on the comments-- days later-- at a friends house, this same wide eyed beauty, held a book in her hand and stated, "I'm not even allergic to dinasaurs."
And Aren't we Glad!

Birthday Dream

In signiture jeans and t-shirt, her jacket came off the moment we walked in to the store with the painos lined up like chairs for giants. I felt small-- Kelly's stature grew. She held my hand and walked confidently past the monster instruments and their gleaming black and white keys.
In the back of the music store there is a desk, and a man smiling as we walked towards him.
"Can I help you?" he directed his question to Kelly.
She looked up at me with her big green eyes, then in a smaller than usual voice she replied, "It's my birthday, and Id like to get a violin."
"Have you ever played before?"
"No, but I'm going to learn."
He smiled a very knowing smile. "Wait right here, I'll bring some out to see how they fit."
He brought back a very delicate violin, and placed it in the crook of her neck and wrapped her hand around the scroll. He took it out of her hands and tried another. Her long thin arms stretched out and a giggle escaped her lips. "This feels better."
"Yes, there isn't too much bend in your elbow and its not too much to big either, yes, I think this is the one."
Then he handed her a tighted bow.
A slight moment of hesitation. Then gingerly she placed it soundlessly against the string.
A look at the man. "Go a head," he almost whispered as though on sacred ground.
She ran the bow across the string.
A single note, no scretched, no wobbles.
confident and focused
"A melody (of one note) pure and sweet like heralding angels sing."
And then the most beautiful sight:
She glowed.
Her eyes sparkled and a smile radiated from her whole body.
It was the Man's turn to chuckle.
I walked out of the store, hold desperately to the hand of a girl that was simply floating next to me with her large instrument case banging unnoticed against her leg.

Early Morning Conversation

Mom, I miss Daddy.
Honey, Dad is at work, we all miss him when he's at work.
pause--
but my heart is broken-- and it really hurts.
Let me hold you and tell you how much Daddy and Mommy love you.
Jesus mends hearts. He fixes them with love. I'm going to pray.

It is privilledge to be the mother of someone so noble and full of faith.

Orange Belt

White Gui pants-- Check
White Gui tops-- Check,
"Mom, did you get the black shirts that we HAVE to HAVE for the promotion ceremony? "
"NO-- but you can wear what ever black shirts you can find."
The hunt for the black shirts took less time then brushing teeth in the morning.
Ceremonially, the white belts were place around little pop bellies.
Identical faces scan the almost identical bodies for any mistakes in uniform.
one last tug on the tunic to right its errant ways.
A roll of the sleeves for extra coolness.
A nod of the head, a silent agreement that yes, indeed, they were ready.
And the very confident boys walked out the kitchen doors to collect the reward of only eight weeks of training. Because they are SO AWESOME, they passed the first belt test in only two months not the required three.
As the first of the identical ninjas in training passes, he has on a very serious expression, He will collect his belt with the up most decorum, his concentration will not be broken. He climbs into the car, only barely pinching his sister when he gets into the back seat of the car.
The other ninja raises an eyebrow and a mischievous smile hides in the corner of his mouth. Then back to business. He punches his sister with all the restraint he can muster in his over excited state. Then sits next to his brother, and smooths his hair back into place.
There is something simply exzillerating about having your name called, and you only you rise from your seat and show the rest of your class your best kick and blood curtaling kui, Ahya, ending in your most formal bow. And then your master instructor places your new belt around your neck, and you pump his hand a bit too hard. Then trot with a wave to your mom back to your seat. There is something brilliant in the smile of a boy.

Where is Home?

Why do we long for home?
"Where is the place? Some place beautiful and safe? Someplace where answers for the heart are found-- Where is the place my heart can call home? The place my heart longs for."
When I was younger, home was my mother's face, and the smell emanating from the kitchen. Home was the walls alive with pictures of my thoughts. I had a poster that my sister created when she went to college of beautiful men, perfect looking men-- and yet in my heart the look was not significant to the content of the man. They were empty.
When I was in high school, home was the familiar grip of the steering wheel in my hands and my gym bag with 'day old sock smell'. Home was my own four walls with me as their center. Home was my own thoughts as familiar as friend's faces.
I went far away from home, And made someone else's home my own for a year. But, not quiet. And when I came back there was a longing for the familiar that I had never experienced before. I wanted home. And when I got there I didn't belong, It wasn't the same, it was the same but I was different.
And one night I realized, that my parents house wasn't my home. The longing in my heart and strangling of my mind was-- for my own home.
Years later,in a long moment of sickness, I again had that intense longing for home. And in the middle of a fantastic Pity Party-- this thought of home again hit me. I want home. "Where is the place, the place my heart longs for?"
These thoughts of home brought me to an understanding of homesickness. I desired to see and feel my home but, I was at my own house and not feeling home. Maybe my own home was not my final home of which my heart longed for.
"There must be more than this provincial life?" go head singing it like Belle from Beauty and the Beast.
Where is home? It is often said that we are spiritual being living a mortal life. Does that make us aliens ?. This is not our home, we are simply living here. Doing our best to make it feel right.
We went to our old home town. We drove by the Cheese Factory, past our old house, and to our friends new homes. This wasn't our town any more. But there was a sweetness there of all those moments came rushing to us. We embrace our good friends, held them in our arms and they grounded us in the present by crying and laughing about the past.
Home is more a feeling then a place.
I am so grateful that I have so many places, and people that are "Home" to me.

I Would Never Forward This, But, I Find It Delicious

Emerson writes that friendships are gifts and expressions of God; they form when the divine spirit in one individual finds the divine spirit in another, and "both deride and cancel the thick walls of individual character, relation, age, sex and circumstance." (Forward by William J. Bennett, The Book of Virtues)

I do not wish to treat friendship daintily, but with roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frosting work, but the solidest thing we know. For now, after so many ages of experience, what do we know of nature, or of ourselves? not one step has man taken toward the solution of the problem of his destiny. In one condemnation of folly stand the whole universe of men. But the sweet sincerity of joy and peace, which I draw from this alliance with my brother's soul, is the nut itself whereof all nature and all thought is but the husk and shell. Happy is the house that shelters a friend! Happier, if he know the solemnity of that relation, and honor its law!... A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissolution, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another. Sincerity is the luxury allowed, like diadems and authority, only to the highest rank, that being permitted to speak truth as having none above it to court or conform unto. Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person hypocrisy begins. We parry and fend the approach of our fellow man by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds. I knew a man who, under a certain religious frenzy, cast off this drapery, and, omitting all compliments and commonplace, spoke to the conscience of every person he encountered, and that with great insight and beauty. At first he was resisted, and all men agreed he was mad. By course, he attained to the advantage of bringing every man of his acquaintance into true relations with him. No man would think of speaking falsely with him, or of putting him off with any chat of markets or reading rooms. But every man was constrained by so much sincerity to the like plain dealing, and what love of nature, what poetry, what symbol of truth he had, he did certainly show him. But to most of us society show not its face and eye, but its side and its back. To Stand in true relations with men in a false age is worth a fit of insanity, is it not?...But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me. My friend gives me entrainment without requiring any stipulation on my part. A friend, therefore, is a sort of paradox in nature. I who alone am, I who see nothing in nature whose existence I can affirm with equal evidence to my own, behold, now the semblance of my being in all its height, variety, and curiosity reiterated in a foreign form; so that a friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
Emerson 1841

After a Long Rain

Have you ever had a heart break so deep, just thinking about it made it bleed. There are no words for a heart break like this. And every time you thought, finally, I'm not thinking about it, I'm good- I can move on , your heart is once more beating. A single shard of thought enters your mind, and before you can catch yourself, your bleeding. For months you think perhaps,... your dying--one thought at a time, but you're still here, alive. There is an awful dread that prevails with this darkness.

There are some people in our lives that are so important that when they are taken from us it like not being able to breath. There are some people in our lives that are so much a part of who we are and what we think that when they are gone... we are lost. We are un- Named. We are un-done. Beautifully said by my friend, "[People] are too much a part of the pattern and texture of my life to try and pick out [individual] threads." The color and texture and pattern of who we are and the light that we see ourselves should be based on Jesus Christ, but sometimes it is so much closer to see ourselves through the eyes of our friends.

That poet/ quote (whatever) Who said, "Some people come into our lives and leave quickly, and other people come into our lives and leave footprints on our hearts and we are never quiet the same." I don't think he/ she understood what Emerson was talking about in his essay on friendship. Yes, we are lucky to have some people come and some people go. And yes, there are encounters with people that leave us for ever marked by them for good and for ill. But the more powerful are people who are genuine and no matter if it were but a day, or years they are ours. They are for keeps because they have had their souls woven souls together. And they are still one of the same heart. How glorious the friendship that weather storm, drought, distance, and death.

After a long rain there comes a moment when darkness still prevails in the sky except for that single beam of sunlight. Catching every particle of air between earth and heaven. The Light has come. To me this has always been hope, its what it feels like, its what it tastes like,.. and like Sense and Sensibility,..Let us chase after a bit of sunshine. with reckless abandon... let us catch it in our hearts the hope of sunshine after a long, long rain.

The Real Reason for Science Projects

There is a triumph about a well carried out science projects. A personal satisfaction that you can really not achieve any other way. You meticulously research a subject that would provide you a means of transporting army men from one side of you diorama to the other, and wow, you realize that all this research is exactly what your teacher was pestering you about for the Science Fair.
Tooth Picks pains takingly placed into gum drops in a structurally sound triangular pattern. and then... (do you hear music playing, it is, if I knew how to add that to my blog, of course it would be the theme from Star Wars) Suddenly, there is a competition between parent and offspring. The Bridge competition.
Whose bridge will hold the greatest amount of weight before meeting its failure point. There is fierce concentration. Dirty Looks, Side way glances. A bit of smack talk. And then... Science Project in the making, they video it. There is great disappointment on the child's face as he realizes that his bridge lost. Then, in a moment of mathematical genius, he calculated the capacity of the bridge (how much the bridge weighs to the amount the bridge can hold)-- Sure delight spreads over his whole body. There is a happy dance as mathematics proves the The Child actually roasted his Dad (5.5:1 over 4.73: 1) There was whooping, there was good times-- right there in a small calculation... I think we might have just proven why Science Fair Projects are of vital import to the maturation of our children.

Distractions

I think that sometimes my life is like living in a carnival. There are monkeys, and tigers doing tricks. A girl riding backwards on a horse in a ring of fire, people waving scarves here and there, clowns in scary makeup, Gypsies, and the man with the pooper- scooper. A constant bombardment of lights, and sounds, and movement, and smells, and bustling bodies.
I get distracted.
I lose sight of what I thought I was looking at in the first place, and then suddenly before I even realize it; I'm the little girl that is lost, and frightened and alone.
How can you possibly feel so alone when there are so many people around you, and yet, it is alone that you find your self. How can I possibly be the little girl, when I am the mother?
The carnival is full of people that are fighting for your attention. Look at me, Look at me, Look at me know,.. you can have fun if you only know how. (Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat)
And then I'm the one screaming-- I can't look at you there is too much to do. Maybe that is me not knowing how to enough the carnival. I really do preferre a quiet book. The sight and sounds and smells of the carnival are mesmerizing, sometimes you just walk around not focused on anything and try to take in everything, but end up just staring at the people walking by without actually seeing the featured attractions at the carnival--
I lose sight of what I thought I was looking at in the first place.
I get distracted.