Sunday, July 30, 2006

Greetings from the land of utter chaos. I’m writing to you while monitoring the progress of some fresh welts on my right leg, compliments of Braeya’s latest attempt to scurry from the hardwood floor to the top of the desk to receive documents as they printed. She’d make a great midwife – if cats had such things.

But the great news is – I found out this week that she can be declawed at three months or three pounds, whichever comes first. I did manage to get her to sit still long enough to weigh her this week. (The pink princess scales in the bathroom feel so sorely neglected since I am not currently in a frame of mind to accept their news to me.) Despite many instances of my sharing pork chops, pizza, chips, chicken nuggets, and scrambled eggs with my bottomless pit of a kitten, she still only weighs two pounds. (How can I eat the same stuff and gain ten?) But all is not lost because Friday is her three month birthday. If I have my way about it, I’ll be singing happy birthday as I deposit her at the vet’s office bright and early that morning.

Fortunately she’s only discovered curtains in one room – and the ficus trees she learned to climb last week are suddenly missing from her world, as they were borrowed by a friend of mine who needed them for wedding décor. When the designated driver arrived to pick them up, I practically shoved them into his hands. Here! Quickly! Take them! Run! I was left to clean up the mess of shredded moss and scattered leaves left behind after her many climbing adventures.

Why do I sense a bit of a complication headed my way this year when Christmas arrives? Do you think she’ll find any of the five trees that grace the house?

Kaegan, on the other hand, remains unamused and slightly irritated by his sister whose behavior is somewhat reminiscent of a crack addict. He still gives me that “MOM!!!!! WHAT WERE YOU THINKING???” look when she pummels him from behind right when he’s entered the best part of a dream. Or steals his food. Or bites his leg. Or takes his toys. Or breathes.

Right now she’s just lounging on the desk, alternately playing with the yet-to-be-paid Discover bill and pawing through a stack of papers that represent my latest completed writing project. I’ve been working on that for several weeks and am very excited to have draft one under my belt. It’s forty chapters long and if I ever get any sort of guts about me, I will see what I can do about publishing it. It still needs tweaking, but it’s very exciting to have it all committed to paper. In fact, the official printing of it was what Braeya rushed to deliver – so it is literally hot off the press. You’ve already seen a little of it in weeks when I didn’t know what to write about – and who knows – I might sneak in a little more of it to you before all is said and done. But until then, I will just keep quiet about that.

The unpaid Discover bill is full of purchases from my recent bedroom/office swap, which I am excited to say, is almost done. Dad spent an evening here this week building saome fantastic shelves for me in the closet of the office so that I could move all my stamps downstairs. This is the scary part. I loaded them all up into the laundry basket and lugged them down the still-to-be-recarpeted stairs. Then I sorted them into categories and made a master list of all the sets I own – over one hundred and thirty, to be exact – and when I finished, I said to myself, “I’m missing two sets.” That is when I knew I had a problem worthy of therapy. When you catalog that many sets of stamps and know precisely which two are missing, you are too in-tune with your stamps.

But it is so nice to have them all neatly organized again, to be able to write from a clean desk, and to have all my scads of books right here where I can gaze upon them whenever I like. And the king-size bed, though able to lose me at times, has been very comfy to fall asleep in these past few weeks. Not to mention how much I love being able to watch TV in bed once again….I’d missed that!

I think I’ve officially caught you up on most things now – and to round out my week of catch-up-with-Bekah time, allow me to share with you the long-awaited (okay so I know, you forgot and didn’t care to begin with) picture of me with Ronnie Booth. I wrote to the whole gang of them this week to share something that had happened and how one of their songs was God’s “mop-up-Bekah’s-tears” vehicle. At the end of the email I told them a few other things that I’d intended to tell them in person when I met them at the concert. While I knew they’d get a kick out of the true version of the story that you all got, I spared myself the humiliation of the replay of my intro to stuttering and simply told them that my ability to speak coherent English momentarily left me. And after you see the hair day I had by the time picture-opps rolled around, you’ll see why I didn’t attach the photo for them. I can always try again in September at the next concert - perhaps the humidity will be lower by then and so will the frizz!

Saturday, July 22, 2006

Surprises are downright exhausting. I’ve decided this. Months ago, my sister Julie decided it would be fun to throw a surprise party for my Mom, who turns 70 this year. (We will not even go into my “I’m too young to have two parents over 70” mournful monologue.) So Julie began to plan and prepare and invite and assign tasks.

We decided it would work best if we shrouded the day under the guise of being a shopping outing for the three of us, and I even marked as such in my day planner – in case it happened to be out in full view when Mom came to visit. My tasks were assigned: make a broccoli salad (my specialty in life) and get Mom to Julie’s house for the party.

All went well for a while until my other sister, Lori, found out she would be able to be home the week of the party. Not that that was a bad thing – it was actually great to be able to include her. But with Lori’s announcement of a visit home came Mom’s enduring attempts to change the day of our shopping trip to include Lori. See, Mom thought that Lori was attending a wedding on her husband’s side of the family on Saturday, so through a variety of emails and phone calls, she came up with no less than half a dozen alternatives of times, days, and locations that would allow everyone to shop together.

And that was where the lying began. I’m not a good liar. When Angela lived here, she had a motorcycle accident one evening and the only thing she asked me to do was not tell her dad about it, should he happen to call. Given that she’d lived with me for months and I could count on one hand the number of times he’d called, I didn’t sweat the assignment. He called four times that night. Every time he asked where she was, I said “Oh, she’s not home yet,” and my voice went up another octave. By the fourth call, I sounded like a canary. After I hung up the phone I stared at it and said, “She’s not home yet because she’s in the hospital BUT I CAN’T TELL YOU THAT!!! AAAHHHHHHH!!!!” So lying does not work out so well for me.

Julie and I had to resort to all sorts of tactics. We had to coordinate our vacation days last week to make sure they never fell together, so we could say that it just wouldn’t work to switch the day. We couldn’t move up the time because her dog had an appointment at the groomer. We couldn’t move back the time because I might have a date. (Right!) I wasn’t sure I could keep all the fake reasons straight!!

But none of that compared to the ride to Indy today. I had promised Julie I would drive (a great sacrifice given that I hate city and interstate driving) because it was the only way I could control the time we arrived. And I had strict instructions that I was not to be early. So I carefully left home late and conveniently got stuck in line waiting for polar teas at the Handy Andy (and yes, I know it’s a Circle K now – but it’s forever the Handy Andy to me). When I arrived at Mom and Dad’s, Mom invited me to ride along as her passenger. I panicked and out came the canary voice. “But I need to drive! I have to practice! I have to learn how to drive to Julie’s!!” Whoa, Bekah. Back off. She’s gonna get suspicious. She patted the passenger seat. “I’ll drive.”

I hopped in and pulled out Plan B. “There were no good donuts at the Handy Andy. Do you think we could stop in Windfall so I could get one at their gas station?” She agreed and said that I could take over the driving once we go there. Whew. Crisis averted. Later she told me that had been her plan all along. She might have mentioned that and saved me a small coronary.

When I finally took my place behind the wheel, I tried to keep the pace as slow as possible. That was met with a “Do you not like cruise control?” I rolled my eyes and sped up – and used the cruise. When we got to Noblesville, I managed to get every red light – that bought me several minutes. I was checking the clock about every 30 seconds, hoping the stalling was working. I didn’t have long to wait. “Did you know we were supposed to be in Castleton seven minutes ago?” Thank goodness! Out loud I just said, “I’m sorry! I’m doing my best!”

We arrived only ten fashionable minutes late and Julie came to meet us at the car. She led us to the front door and oops! it was locked. How’d that happen? We had to walk around to get in the back door. When we made our way back by the pool, Mom looked in to the fenced area to check out the flowers and found herself facing a paparazzi of cameras and friends yelling “Surprise!” I didn’t spend a long time enjoying the surprise. My Plan C had been to need a bathroom break and the combination of stress and extra iced tea had kicked in – though my need for Plan C had not.

The party was a wonderful success – her friends dressed her up in a fabulous rendition of “When I am old, I shall wear purple” – a purple graduation robe, a gaudy belt, men’s work socks, high top work boots, a tacky feathered purse, and a slouch hat. I so want to put the picture on here – but I know better. I do enjoy receiving Christmas gifts and don’t want to be cut off.

And so the days of celebration begin…my friend Lynette says you should celebrate one day for every year you are old. Even though Mom’s birthday isn’t until September, I think today might be the start of her 70 days of partying! All I know is that the rest of the days had better not include any more lying. The canary sound is not attractive for Miss Bekah.

Sunday, July 16, 2006

I worry too much. Hey, you can stop nodding. I admitted it – you don’t have to rub it in. This week has been a week packed with character building opportunities. Not the kind that you as an outside audience can really see, but definitely the kind that kept me close to home and journal and nearly made my mind explode. And for those of you who get to hear from me on a daily basis, I apologize if some of it leaked out and almost made your minds explode too.

Yesterday I was working on a writing project that is still in the very early stages. God nudged my attention in the direction of Ephesians and told me I had some learning to do, so I dug a new notebook out of the corner of the closet and sat down with my Bible. I’m to the beginning of chapter one, verse three. This project has the potential to take a very long time.

But anyway, when I hit verse three, I saw these words: Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

I didn’t even get out the journal yet. I am still in the thinking stages. And apparently God wanted to drive home the point He is trying to make, because at the end of our Pastor’s sermon this morning, he talked about being thankful each day – even if it wasn’t a monumental day. So the whole praise and thanks thing has me thinking…

…that I worry way too much. And in so doing, I don’t spend nearly enough time dwelling on the things I have to be thankful for. Something tells me that until I learn to do that, I’m probably going to be sitting on go, not collecting $200 or anything else.

So as I’ve been sitting here thinking over the past week – I thought of the following things I’m thankful for – and it’s just a starter list.

I have a Dad who knows how to hang chair rail and a Mom who knows how to sew – and a set of parents (the same people…just to clarify) who were willing to share said talents with a daughter who possesses neither. And because of a couple of days of very hard work, my brand new bedroom is dangerously near completion.

Free coffee. I was sitting at my desk this week, grumbling inside that because of a stupid decision I’d made earlier in the week, I was going to end up missing half price latte night at Tree of Life. Mid-complaint, one of the girls in my office strolled in with a rather enormous frappuccino from Starbucks with a mound of whipped cream on top. It was an extra drink they’d given her for free – did I want it? I guess God understands the need for coffee more than I’d given Him credit for.

Caller ID. Oh how I’ve missed it. It was one of the frivolities of life that I’d given up when Angela moved out, but a recent series of events has made me realize that it might not be a bad idea to get that back. No more spending $1.50 per call on *69 because I’m too OCD to not know who just called and hung up on me.

My haircut lady, Kelly. I visited her this week for the first time since the great hair disaster of 2006. (That was the coloring disaster that was my fault, not any sort of cut disaster on her part.) I walked in resembling a cross between Vanessa Huxtable in that one rather awkward season she had and Mia Thermopolis before she was made into the Princess of Genovia. I’m very thankful for people who know how to thin and cut hair! And of course, I had residual thankfulness for how she saved me from going to my reunion the color of Ronald McDonald’s love child.

Air conditioning. I get very cranky when I’m hot. Just ask the people in my office, as they’ve had to deal with me in the on-again-off-again air situation this summer while our building undergoes construction. On a day like today when I hear the heat index is somewhere around 400 (okay maybe a slight exaggeration), I’m thankful to write this to you from directly in front of the air flow and a thermometer that clearly reads 67. Life is good.

Selling articles. I got a check in the mail this week for two articles I just sold. If you could see my legs and arms, that have been through the war zone of Braeya’s loving claws, you’d know how thankful I am to have the money to rush her to the vet the very minute she’s eligible to have those suckers ripped out.

A patient God. This week He has heard the whole range of emotions and seen everything from giddy smiles to a few tears. And in every book I’ve opened, in every Bible study I’ve attempted, He’s had something to say to comfort me. I’m sure I’ve exasperated more than a few of my friends this week and I know I’ve flat out exhausted myself, so I’m thankful that He hung in there with me and kept meeting me with kind words.

I hope for the sake of your sanity that you’re not quite the worry-wart that I am. But whether you are or not, it never hurts to take a few minutes to be thankful and offer God the praise that He deserves. He really does put up with a lot from all of us. He might enjoy hearing words of appreciation for it.