Life in Bullet Points

Other than the sounds of Baby's babblings, it's quiet in my house.  The teenagers are up at FaithFest today, Little Miss is napping, and Sam and his dad went over to the neighbor's to do some work.  I'm trying to get everything checked off my to-do list, as well as write a monologue.  A year or more ago a friend at church approached me about writing a Christmas monologue for her to perform at this year's Christmas Eve service (that we won't even be attending).  I said sure and promptly forgot about it.  She reminded me at the beginning of summer and I kept it in the back of my mind.  She needs it by October, which is in, oh, one week, so I'm trying really, really hard to be creative today!  Actually, I have the story in my mind.  Ten days ago I had nothing and then I prayed for a story.  One has slowly developed since then.  But I write better when I have chunks of time and silence.  Unfortunately, both are in very short supply these days.

I think I may have to account for the last 3 weeks in bullet points.  It's just been crazy, which is why I haven't been blogging - not enough time.  Honestly, it's probably going to be January before I can really slow down again.

So, here's my quick, updating points:

* Life is getting sweeter with Little Miss.  I went out of town overnight and both she and Baby were all over me when I came back.  I asked Sam if he had a hug for me, but he said, "no" and walked away.  Sigh...But I got lots of loving from the girls.  The next week Little Miss was an angel and very, very cuddly.  This week I saw more of the familiar vinegar in her personality, but that may always be there.  It may just be who she is.  That's ok.  Not everyone is all sweetness and light!

* I went to Ladies Retreat a couple of weekends ago.  Our speaker was tremendous.  She is president of an organization that rescues women from human trafficking.  I honestly had no idea of the scope of the problem until listening to her.  Wow, oh, wow.  Her Bible teaching was wonderful too.  I'm still going through all my notes.

* Will played his first post-concussion game last night.  Every time he went down, I was muttering, "Watch the head, watch the head!"  He was fine.  In fact, all night long, I kept hearing the announcer say, "And helping with the tackle, #7 - Will Heywood!"  He said his upper arms are awfully sore today.  I can imagine. 

* David finished up a watercolor painting this week in his Art class that he gave to me.  On the back he wrote, "Thank you for always being their for me."  The grammarian inside of me is totally groaning.  He also added, "You are a great butterfly!" (his picture has a butterfly in it).  I'm really not sure what it means to be a "great butterfly" but I'm going to choose to take that in the vein in which it was offered and assume it means something really good, not, "I think you're a worm with wings."  I may frame his picture.

* Sara and family visited last week for an afternoon and evening.  They were anxious to meet the girls and I had not seen Baby Allison since her birth.  She's 6 months now and a chunk.  She's been crawling for a month and is already pulling herself up to stand.  I have never heard of a baby doing those things that early before.

* We had our visit with our licensing renewal person this week.  I feverishly cleaned and cleaned my house since she told me she'd be doing a walk-through.  She never went past my kitchen table after coming in the back door.  All that work!  Oh, well - it's not like we can't appreciate a clean house, too.  She'll be back again next month and I'm sure I will clean like a madwoman again.  If I don't, I know she'll definitely want to do the walk-through then!

* Will gets his senior pictures taken next Sat.  It was literally the only time we could make work between our schedule and that of the photographer, who is a college student.  It sure had better not be raining...

* Sam's 5th birthday is a month from today.  He is SO excited.  For months now he has been flipping the calendar to October and gazing longingly at day number 22.  This week he complained to me that his birthday was still so far away and he didn't think that was quite fair.

* Work on the basement is continuing to progress.  One wall is completely finished already.

*No word yet from the court.  One night this week I felt strongly as though I should pray about the judge's decision.  I almost woke Paul to suggest he do the same, but convinced myself not to because it was probably just my anxieties at play, more than anything.  But I prayed for quite some time.  I mentioned that to my friend who is waiting for the ok to make the girls' bio brother her forever son and she said that she had had the same feeling Wed. night and had been praying as well.  I found that exciting and would not be a bit surprised to learn that that was the night that the judge pondered our case.

*This week I have: 1) attempting to get the city's annual street report submitted (a very arduous and head-banging type of job) 2) night out with Melissa 3) first mammogram since surgery - not looking forward to this since that boob is still tender from last March's surgery  4) Homecoming parade and auction of senior jerseys (I'm hoping someone else will bid for Will's because I sure don't want to spend more than $20 on his jersey, but yet I don't want him to suffer the embarrassment of not having anyone want his jersey.  He said one senior's jersey went for more than $400 last year.  Yeah - not happening.  Besides, embarrassment is a character strengthener, right?) 5) Friday night's homecoming game 6) senior pics

I also need to put together a 1950s outfit for Ben for one of his Spirit days at school.  I thought about wrapping a cigarette package in a white t-shirt for him, but I'm guessing that in this day and age of zero tolerance for anything, the school might frown on that.  Maybe I can slick his curly hair back into a James Dean do, though, and roll up the cuffs on some jeans.  Wonder what guys wore for shoes back then?  Hopefully, blue Skechers tennies...

Oh, and one nice thing...allergy season is drawing to a close!  It's getting colder and colder these days.  One of these nights we're going to have a hard freeze and good-bye sneezing and waking up in the middle of the night to fumble for a little yellow pill so I can breathe and get back to sleep.  Actually, this year has probably been the best ever allergy-wise for both Ben and me.  That dr. we're seeing is really helping, I think.

I tried to buy the girls slips today since it's going to be chilly tomorrow.  I didn't want them freezing under their dresses.  I just checked at Walmart but they didn't have any.  So I bought them tights instead.  I got home and did some internet browsing.  When I was a kid I wore slips under every dress I owned.  As an adult, I only do it when I'm wearing something sheer or clingy.  But I'm thinking they would be helpful for warmth, too.  But it was hard to find them!  I finally found some on Amazon and ordered them. But it took some searching.  I guess maybe little girls don't wear them anymore like they did when I was little.

Ok, back to being creative.  I have a deadline!