My oldest child wants to argue about everything.

Everything.

He is only six, and already refuses to take direction without a complete run down of why he must complete said requirement and  by the way, might he suggest a different way to accomplish it? I cannot imagine how incredible his debate skills will be by the teen years. If I’m not careful, his father and I will be the ones with a curfew and Isaac will have taken over the master bedroom. After that, look out law school, Isaac is coming and you better have your student handbook in order, otherwise the Captain is going to find the loopholes.

I often have to tell Isaac to just.stop.talking. No, just stop. Nothing more, child, cease speaking. After 32 “buts” this mama starts to loose patience with my little arguer. He is smart, I will give him that. He sees the holes in my logic and hones in on the weakness like an eagle on its’ prey. I can’t even start to give him direction unless I make sure I know the answers to his inevitable follow up questions. Dealing with him is not unlike a game of chess, if I’m not thinking a few steps ahead…I will loose. I am not sure what happened to my little, precious baby boy but he has officially been replaced with a pint sized scholar, with an attitude. For example:

Isaac: Mom, are Storm Troopers good or bad?

Me: Bad, they work for Darth Vader.

Isaac: No, you are wrong.

Me: Isaac, I have seen Star Wars a few more times than you…

Isaac: Well tell that to my Leapster, the Star Wars game let’s me be a good Storm Trooper.

Me: Okay smarty pants, then why did you ask me if you knew the answer?

Isaac: To see what you knew.

I am proud to be Isaac’s mom. I am ecstatic that God gave him such a bright and engaged brain with which to turn the world upside down and around while he searches for flaws in logic and ways to challenge the world. But he drives me batty with this character trait as well. Sometimes I can see in his eyes that he just wants to be the boss, to give direction and be in charge because he thinks he knows it all. Some days, he even seems to get stressed out over the details, as though his brain is years ahead of his 6 year old heart.

Damn.

Isaac gets it from me. The arguing, the quest for justice and logic and fairness in everything. The desire to grow up too fast, to be the boss, to be in charge. All.from.me.

Now that I am the grown up, I am in charge, I wish I could go back. Be a kid, enjoy not having to know the details behind all the decisions. I think my job as Isaac’s mom is to keep him a kid as long as possible. To let him ask all the questions but to also let him know there are limits and that he is not the boss.

Seeing your weaknesses displayed on your children is painful. I know that Isaac’s strong personality and his quick mind will serve him well but it will also bring challenges. Challenges that I have faced and life lessons that I know come with grief.

I am 33 years old and I am just now really beginning to understand and accept the flaws in my personality. I am just now learning when to shut my mouth. How do I teach my child these life lessons, pass down my “wisdom” when I am still learning the lessons myself?

After a blissful weekend with the family, I approached Monday with cautious optimism. Sunday had been filled with sun and celebration of my mom’s birthday. I had even managed to get all three children to take a nap at the same time. I got to lay out on my deck, ocean in plain view and a margarita in my hand. Sunday was nice. You can see why I thought that Monday was going to be okay, I was going to not only survive the first day of my work week…I might actually have a good day. (insert maniacal laughter here)

Getting ready this morning, Kevin and I were having yet another lively discussion about disaster preparedness. I explained that Jesus could take me at any moment now because my closet was actually clean. Any of you who remember my shopping post last year, know that my closet being clean and organized is as sure as sign as any that the apocalypse is forthcoming. In fact, pretty sure that the Bible mentions it in Revelations. Right after the giant cosmic battle for the world begins and right before Jesus shows up on a horse.

Jesus rides a horse? Girl what Bible you reading?

Look, you are missing the point. My closet is clean. It wasn’t until the closet was in a lesser state of chaos that I noticed one of the overhead lights was out and one of the sliding doors wasn’t sliding anymore. After mentioning my to-do list to Kevin,  he gets out of the shower, wraps a towel around himself and walks over to my closet to inspect the situation. His main job description, aside from Disaster Planner, is Fixer Man. Oh and Trash Man. I don’t do trash. People, it is pretty glorious being married to me. Like really, awesome.

As he is inspecting the slow rolling door situation, he looks up at the overhead light. This is how “distractable” people do things, halfway into one problem, investigate other tangent. Apparently I am a “distractable” writer…..So, then he decides the light situation is more pressing and removes the plastic casing in front of the light. That’s when things go black. Black Monday. Here is the scene of the crime:

I am blow drying my hair (this is a theme these days) and hear a little girl scream. A little 6’4″ 190 lb girl. As I start to laugh, thinking that Kevin must have encountered a spider in this little adventure.

Oh no, so much worse than that.

Remember the part of the story where I say that Kevin was only wearing a towel? Well, as he is removing the plastic, a rat fell upon him. NOT a small one. NOT a live one.

A.BIG.DEAD.RAT.

Oh, you think I’m kidding?

This object, formerly known as Rat, was nearly petrified. It had been sitting in that casing for so long that it was probably the reason the light burned out in the first place. Clearly the light in the picture above leads to crawl space access  so it is not an unlikely scenario that this rat would end up there. However, what I want to know is who endured the smell of this rat carcass decaying? When this guy went to the big rat heaven in the sky, the scent, made worse by the fluorescent light he was cooking under, couldn’t have been pleasant. What in the world landlord – really? It isn’t like our house was empty for any long period of time before we moved in so someone had to wonder what was “cooking” in that bathroom.

After the rat and the screaming and the almost puking were all completed. I cautiously got ready for the rest of my day. A day that just really couldn’t get any worse right? I mean when your day starts with petrified rats falling from the sky, clearly things can only get better?

Yeah, then I got a parking ticket at work. Seriously.

If this week keeps going in this direction, I am pretty sure the disaster preparedness will be fully necessary. Those zombies just might show up after all. Well, at least my closet is clean, and as of now, rat free.

The post below is an entry for a contest to win a trip for two to a conference by Donald Miller. If you have been around here for a while, you know I am a big fan of his. As I wrote this entry, I realized I’ve never really wanted something more than this. I think that is a good sign that it is the right place to start.

I can feel the constriction from any given point in my day. It is like a belt that tightens around my heart, my dreams for tomorrow.

The voice that says: “You could go to law school!” is always answered by the voice that says “But we have too much debt already.”

Again the optimist says: “We could give to that ministry!” is again followed by the “We have to pay our debt first.”

The second voice isn’t mean, just practical. The problem is, the practical has squashed the dreamer, the optimist, almost to the point of extinction. In considering entering this contest, I realized I was in pretty bad shape because I couldn’t identify what story I wanted to live. I hadn’t allowed myself to think about that because my eyes are fixated on the here and now. The future isn’t something I can afford to consider.

Our story isn’t different than many others in this economy, we lived beyond our means for a time when things were good. Then jobs changed, the market changed, we had another child and…..well now we have enough consumer debt that we feel a little strangled on most days. All of the big ideas, the good ideas, the God ideas, get shelved.

The dreaming. gets. shelved.

It is squashing my spirit, pulling in tight around the corners and making me feel less alive. So what is the better story? What am I hoping to do? My hope is that by writing about this, talking about it out loud, my commitment to changing it will be forged into solid, granite determination to rid ourselves of debt. That the ideas for changing it will flow like water out of a refreshed soul.

God’s Word is clear about debt.  It takes away our freedom to think big, to live the story that attracts and promotes joy.

So my plan is this:

I love to write and I have had a blog for a long time now. I would like to find a way to make money doing something that I love so that I can help pay down our debt. Debt that I had a big hand in accumulating (thanks Banana Republic!). In order to make any decent contribution to this debt, I am going to need some help with networking my blog and advertising on my site. I admittedly don’t know where to start with this but there are people who do. There are also people who need writers for contract work and here I am, raising my hand, saying I’m up for it.

I know that everyone with a blog thinks they can make money with it and a few posts into blogging they quickly realize they most likely won’t. I’ve been doing this for years and have no illusions about what it would take. I also know that I have the talent, the determination and the desire to make it happen. I want to use the passion God gave me for writing and help my family dig out of debt so that we can live a better story together. So that we can dream big together. I want my boys, all three of them, to experience freedom of heart. I want to give them that gift, the gift of a good example.

Going to this seminar, I expect to have the fire of imagination and future planning lit. I need your help to do it.

Here is the video Don posted about the conference, check it out:

Living a Better Story Seminar from All Things Converge Podcast on Vimeo.

*UPDATE*: I am not even kidding that I received this email from my husband in response to this post:

You’re still not taking this as seriously as you should. No worries, I will prepare our family and let you enjoy the benefit of survival.

And then, this morning I receive this email at work:

                             Disaster Preparedness

 

                                1200-1300 

 

                    Director of the Naval Postgraduate School’s

                     Center for Homeland Defense and Security

 

                             ALL are INVITED. 

 

  Along with the presentation, there will be a table with preparedness materials for staff.

 

 

Holy crap. Between these conversations and the article today on CNN that high heels are bad for your feet, I am pretty sure we are going to be dealing with flesh eating zombies soon. And not the friendly kind.

The following conversation occured this morning while I was innocently blow drying my hair:

Husband (wanders in, coffee in hand): We need to have a disaster plan.

Me: um, okay? What’s up?

Husband: Well we need to be prepared as a family in the event of a disaster, you know a solar flare or nuclear fall out situation.

Me: ? Are you serious right now? You know I haven’t had any coffee yet, right? New rule, no talking about nuclear ANYTHING before I’ve had coffee.

Husband: I was just thinking that we need a plan, you know for food, water and the like. We don’t want to have to go to the store and face the anarchy that will be going on.

Me: ANARCHY? First amendment to rule, no talking about anarchy before coffee either. What have you been reading this morning? I thought you were upstairs doing your Bible study???? Were you reading Revelations or something? You know that after reading the Left Behind series I fully believe we will be raptured before all the bad stuff goes down – I mean LaHaye said so.

Husband (ignoring me completely): Well, we have the gun we just need food and a water filtration system. And a meeting point. Maybe the Big Sur Mountains?

Me: I am thinking of nothing but the movie Red Dawn. I can almost see myself hiding in the mountains with a can of beans, fighting the Soviet Army.

Husband: You aren’t taking me seriously. I’m going upstairs.

Me: WOLVERINES!

If you are a male, particularly a male family member of mine, no need to read further – this post is for the ladies only, do you feel me girls? Amen!

Okay so for roughly 22 years now, I have a certain predictable event happen every month. You would think that by now, I would know the signs, be able to ward off unsuspecting town folk from the tyrant queen storming around the castle for the week. However, every month inevitably I find myself in tears, in a rage or inside of a bag of potato chips wondering “what is wrong with me? should I see someone for this?”

Then POOF, two days later a certain Aunt Flow shows up and I’m all “oh yeah, PMS!” What? How do I not know the signs by know?

Two decades of experience with this hormonal matter should tell me that when any of the following happen, it is time to check a calendar and lock myself in my bedroom for the near term:

- the intense desire to put frosting on any/all immobile objects

- the sudden belief that ANYONE driving in front of me is missing a temporal lobe

- the brilliant idea to part my hair on the other side (just for kicks) and then cry uncontrollably at monster that suddenly appeared in the mirror

- crazy ideas about new outfit pairings in my closet ( you know what I’m saying here….its the “hey what if I put this plaid jacket with these green pants that never really fit right when I bought them” scenario ) only to once again be reduced to tears when the monster in the mirror mocks me

- random explosions of emotion at my husband for not spending enough time with me  that alternate evenly with angry “why don’t you just LEAVE ME ALONE FOR ONCE” statements

Any and all of these signs are harbingers of every girls monthly dilemma, it isn’t rocket science. So why does it catch me off guard every month? Will I ever learn? Maybe I should laminate the list above and put it on the refrigerator as a reminder, an intervention if you will.

I think that would be a great idea…up and until I am actually engaged in PMS and then I would read it, and promptly proclaim that the fridge just called me “fat.”

What’s a girl to do?

*UPDATE: Husband requested I change the title of this post, said it gives him bad mental images. I say…mission accomplished!

*UPDATE #2: New title – “Stop or I’ll Frost You”

*UPDATE #3: Did someone say frosting? That reminds me……

11 years ago today…..

Two very naive 22 year old’s set out on a journey. We had no idea how lovely and how hard it would be. We also had no idea that adding 3 children to the mix might complicate things a bit.

Marriage is challenging and beautiful all at the same time but I wouldn’t want to go through this life with anyone else. I love you Kevin, Happy Anniversary!