Gatekeeper

So every time I think about writing in this space I imagine some internet behemoth, sitting with his giant arms crossed, asking me, "Do you have anything worthwhile to say?" And giving me a suspicious look...

I don't know if I have anything worthwhile to say, but that's really not stopped me in the past.

Here are a few tidbits from the last three weeks:

• Rebound has escaped, twice, in the last couple of weeks. Once when Harper opened the front door to wave at a friend in a passing school bus. He gleefully frolicked around the yard, licking the dewy grass, as I frantically chased him. I only managed to catch the door because he paused to christen the stop sign at the corner of our yard. The second time I was in the front yard with the kids and Rebound on a leash. A truck towing lawn equipment passed on the street and Rebound lunged for it, ripped the leash out of my hand, and chased it down our fairly busy street. I yelled at the children to stay on the drive way and chased him. Fortunately the person driving the truck realized what was happening and stopped, as did the cars driving in the opposite direction. There's a rush of emotion for you. As you can imagine, it was not at all embarrassing to catch up with the dog in the middle of the street when half a dozen drivers are staring at you. Here's hoping that is the first and LAST time anything like that happens. 
• Michael told me the other day that he wants to be God when he grows up so he can die and come back to life. 
• After a little chat about the fact that he probably won't grow up to be GOD, he decided he'd just really like to be a helper at our church when he grows up.
• The kids are on spring break this week and have each had a turn sleeping over at Matt's parents' house. They claim to miss each other. I do not miss the sound of them fighting.
• Tonight is Michael's night away and Harper and I went to see The Lorax. We both enjoyed the movie (although Harper thought a couple parts were a little scary), especially because we were the only people in the theater.

That's all for now - I am thinking it won't be three more weeks before I post again. I've missed you Internets.

The State of Things

I really don't know how any of you people who work full time have time to blog at all. I don't remember exactly how often I managed to do it that one semester that I worked but my guess is that I didn't get to it very often.

As tends to happen when I hit these blogging lulls, I have many ideas swirling around in my head and somehow lack the energy/motivation to get any of them down in this space.

Things are going on around here; a real job prospect, Michael's 4th birthday this week, minor home disasters, visitors, and lots of indulgent thinking about what I really want to do with my life.

Today, though, I'm going to talk about the weather.

As you undoubtedly know, last Friday brought a horrific storm outbreak to this part of the country.

We knew it was coming - the forecasts were so terrible that my stomach was in knots all morning. The PTO board decided to cancel the event we had scheduled for that evening; agreeing we'd rather make the mistake of canceling when nothing bad happened than the mistake of having hundreds of people at the school when a bad storm hit.

I've written here before about the intense anxiety I have about severe weather, especially since the children have been born.

While Michael napped Friday afternoon I spent an hour shuttling things down to the basement, anticipating that we'd be spending a lot of time there in the evening. By the time we had to leave to get Harper from school I'd had time to supply the basement with extra blankets, spare EpiPens, a first aid kit, water for all of us, non-perishable food items, a battery powered radio, flashlights, extra batteries, and the kids' inhalers.

You can laugh if you want, but the other thing I did Friday morning was look up the patron saint of protection against bad weather...Saint Medard, if you're curious, and I asked him to pray for us. And yes, I remembered to thank him when the most severe weather sort of fell apart before reaching us.

We've had this extremely mild winter, unlike anything I can remember, and I worry that it will somehow translate into a very stormy spring. Sigh.

*****

If you want to know how you can help the victims of last week's tornadoes, American Red Cross is a good place to start.