Hands to be proud of

 Mark and I have been self-employed for thirty years.  He welds some, but mostly he services and repairs big trucks that work in the oilfield and I keep the books for him.  He works long, usually exhausting hours.  Keeping all the trucks that depend on him to stay on the road is something he takes very seriously.  He could probably keep three or four full time guys busy if he wanted to, but he doesn't.  Bossing around help was something he tried and didn't care for.  We do have one great part time guy whom we can depend on, and that is all the employees we care to have.  When Mark comes in at night, his clothes are always covered in dirt, grease, and crude oil.  My homemade laundry soap does a better job of getting them clean than anything else I've ever tried.

We've never come up with any homemade or store bought soap that can get his hands clean though.  He's tried every industrial strength hand cleanser on the market.  He is always apologizing to me for his dirty hands.  Especially when we go somewhere, he will scrub and scrub with soap and a brush and I have even seen him soaking them in Clorox water trying to get the stains off.  I always tell him, "Mark, I am proud of those hands!  I don't see dirty hands, I see hard working hands ".  But even telling him that over and over, I know it is still something that bothers him.

A year ago, we were checking into a hospital for him to have a heart cath, which would ultimately lead to him having a triple by-pass.  We were in an office where a darling little Asian girl was taking down all of our information.  I cringed inside when she handed him the pen to sign some papers and then said "Oh!  Your hands are so dirty!'  He shifted in his seat a little and then explained, "I know, I try  to get them clean, but with the work I do, it just doesn't happen."  She quickly said, "Oh, no!  I didn't mean it in a bad way, I, uh, well, I uh, um, well,................ I find them attractive!"  I could have reached over and hugged her on the spot!   We all laughed as she explained that she just can't stand it when a man's hands are softer and whiter than her own.

 I haven't noticed him trying to flash his hands in young women's faces these days, but I don't think he apologizes for his dirty hands quite as often as he used to.  I'll always be grateful to her for explaining her first comment and helping him see I'm not the only one who doesn't see dirty hands, but rather, masculine, hardworking hands - hands to be proud of.

It begins!

Don't you love it when you get a surprise in the mail?  Today I opened up an envelope and inside was a note from daughter #3 with a little dark hair about 1/2" long taped to the top of the note.  I read; "I'm sending this back, I don't want it!  I repeat, I DO NOT want any part of your chin hairs!"  I'm thinking "Yikes, did I accidentally shed at her house or something?!  But as I read on, my guilt lifts and I start laughing hysterically.  She continues:  "I pulled this out of my chin today and thought you might like to see it!  It begins!  The note, complete with attached hair now hangs proudly on my refrigerator door.

Often I am around other woman my age or older and they complain about one chin hair they have to keep plucked.  ONE!  I mean REALLY!  If I only had to worry about one I would rejoice from the mountain tops.  I guarantee you my chin and upper lip would give any eighteen year old male a run for his money.  If I had to count them and come up with a number it would be much closer to one hundred than one.  The lip, I keep clipped short with one of those clipper things you see on TV, which is much less painful than a tweezer but does leave a definite stubble you cannot see but you can feel.  Some of the ones on my chin I can keep up with, but a lot of them I cannot see or I'm not coordinated enough to get the tweezers to work right in order to get them.  So, bless my husbands heart, I'll hand him a tweezers and lay my head in his lap while he's watching TV and he'll do his best to keep people from knowing he is married to the "bearded woman".

Why I was blessed with this abundance I don't know.  I have two older sisters, one eighteen years older than me and another one, sixteen years older who are absolutely beautiful.  I can only pray that I will look like them when I am over seventy years old.  I have heard them say they have a couple chin hairs so I didn't get my Sasquatch tendencies from them.  I know all four of my girls are hoping they take after their aunts and not their mother, so no wonder the hair that now resides in my kitchen struck panic in my daughter's heart!  So Stacie, here's to hoping this is your one and only, that it begins and ends on the same day.  And thanks for the laugh, everytime I open the Fridge now, I will get a chuckle!

Sorry 'bout that!

For a long period of time sports was not even a small part of my life.  Sports wasn't something my Dad watched, nor my husband, it wasn't something I was even remotely interested in.  Than in 1986 something happened that would eventually change that attitude for at least a decade of my life.  My first son was born followed eighteen months to the day by his younger brother.

  Looking back it almost seems like they were born with a ball in each hand.  They spent hours playing with each other.  One time I was standing in our living room, visiting with their oldest sister's mother-in-law as they played basketball all around and between us, shooting hoops at the little goal which was permanently affixed to our front door.  I grabbed them by the arms and said "Boy's, stop it!  That is so rude!", to which they answered, "But Mom, you're standing in the middle of the court"!

If you want to bring on instant nosatalgic tears from me, just drive by a little league baseball field, filled with little boys about seven or eight years old, playing their little hearts out.  If parents let it, this is when sports is at it's finest.  UNLESS they have been tarnished by overcompetitive parents, this age group of boys can be an absolute delight.  The lack of testosterone on the field or court let's it be just a game, just for fun, not the ultimate test of manhood!

I remember one incident that showed just how innocent sports can be at this age.  When our boys were in the Championship game of the season end tournament, we ended up playing the other team from our same home town.  The umpire's told our coaches that they were concerned about both teams being from the same small town so one of the rules would be that they couldn't call out the name of any of the members of the opposing team.  I know this rule was to keep them from making the "hey batter, batter, batter, batter - swing" chant from becoming personal.  So the coaches had a huddle with the boys and told them they knew this would be hard since the other team was made up of their friends, but during the game, not to use their names.

 My youngest son Kyle was the pitcher and at bat was one of his best friends Cole.  As often happens with this age group, Kyle hit Cole with the pitch.   Kyle immediately calls out "Oh, Cole, I'm sorry"!  You could see by his little body language that he realized he had committed the ultimate no-no, so he looked down at the ground, lowered his voice several octaves and said in the most macho voice he could muster "I mean, sorry 'bout that."  Even the umpire who'd given the rule had to hide a smile!  I don't remember who won the game, but I'll always remember when concern for his  friend outweighed concern for the win.

Beads, Basketball, and #2

When they hand you that precious little pink or blue bundle, I know the last thing you are thinking is "someday this beautiful baby is going to embarrass me beyond belief".  Trust me, it will happen!   Here are the two most memorably embarrassing moments caused by my children.

Due to the "delicate" nature of the first tale, the name will be incognito to protect the guilty party,  so I will lovingly refer to h_ _ as "it".  I had stopped at our very small town grocery store for just a minute and left the kids in the vehicle as I went in.  Yes, I know, huge no- no and I would never do it today no matter how small a town, but back then it was an accepted practice. Well, I ended up seeing someone I knew and started visiting.  Probably 10 minutes had passed before I got back to the kids and was promptly met with "MOM!!  So & So (who was probably about two and a half ) had to go #2 and we told it to wait but it hung it's hiney out the window and went on the ground."   I said "YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!"  I promptly got out to look and nope, they weren't kidding.  I then looked across the street to see a group of old farmers at the local implement company looking our way and laughing. With lightening speed, if I do say so myself, I got back into the Bronco and headed home, repeating to myself over and over again - "I will NEVER go back to that place as long as I live!!"

If the old farmers saw the above event, at least there was only a few of them.  Our next adventure was witnessed by 500 people or more.  It took place when youngest daughter Jamie was five or six. We drove about thirty miles to watch the high school basketball game between the town we lived in and the town I'd graduated from.  Jamie was sure she'd be bored so she gathered up a few little things into a purse so she'd have something to play with during the game.  The two towns have always been rivals and when we got there the only place we could find to sit was the front bleacher.  The cheerleaders were cheering, the starters had been introduced, the crowd was on their feet, the two players who jump at the ball to start the game were hunched into position, the ref held up the ball and...........Jamie opens up her little Tupperware container of tiny translucent pink beads, dozens of them, and they go rolling across the gym floor.  I gasp and stand up thinking how do I stop the game when thankfully one of the refs spotted the beads and blew the whistle.  Jamie threw herself behind me sobbing,  I  had one arm around Jamie trying to console her, while holding the little container out towards the court with my other hand as the three referee's and the basketball players from both towns ran around looking for little pink beads on the floor.  When they found one they would come and put them in the container I was holding.  Once they were all found, one of the ref's, bless his heart, took the time to come over, sit down beside Jamie, pat her on the leg and say "It's okay honey, it's all part of the game".  I don't think she heard him though, because she would not remove her head out from under my coat.  The ref got up and  they all took their positions again and got back to what they were doing five minutes earlier.  At half time, one of my old classmates teased me about trying to sabotage the game, but I assured him that was much too high a price to pay to win a ballgame!  My embarrassment was nothing compared to poor Jamie's.  It mortified her so badly she wouldn't even let us mention it until she was a very OLD teenager.  I just wonder what kind of situations her two little angels will get into that will make this childhood memory seem like small potatoes!

Full Circle

My daughter Stacie is married to her childhood sweetheart.  When I say childhood, I REALLY mean CHILDHOOD!  They started "going together" in the 6th grade, never dated anyone else, and got married while still in college at the age of 21.  Her husband Tyler was an All American offensive lineman so he is not what you would call a little bitty guy.  They have been blessed with two adorable little boys - Kollyn age four and Caleb who is almost two.  They are not exactly what you would call little bitty boys either!  They were both born the usual newborn size but they soon grew into AMAZING proportions for babies and toddlers.  At this time Kollyn weighs in at an impressive forty six pounds and Caleb tops the scale at thirty pounds.  Poor Stacie sometimes has problems with her back and hips and it's not hard to understand why!

But my story isn't about these two little football players in the making.  It's about the cliche "What goes around comes around."  Pa and I were at Stacie's house and Kollyn was playing a video game.  He set it down to play with something else and Caleb picked the controller up so he could "play".  Well, of course this made Kollyn realize that he still wanted to play that video game more than anything else he has ever wanted in his entire life!!  He grabbed, Caleb screamed, Mommy informed Kollyn that he had set it down, now it was Caleb's turn.  Kollyn stood there for a minute and as we went back to visiting we noticed Kollyn shutting the door on the entertainment center much to Caleb's distress.  When Stacie, somewhat exasperated, asked why he was doing that, Pa and I looked at each other and laughed.  We were both going back  approximately 27 years ago when then three year old Stacie was drinking out of a Pepsi bottle.  We heard her and her two year old sister Jamie squealing at one another.  We didn't think anything of it because quite frankly as any parent knows, that is something that becomes a constant background noise once you welcome # two into the fold.  We did finally glance over and saw Stacie standing with her arm straight out from her body pouring the Pepsi on the ground.  We hollered "Stacie, what are you doing?!"  and she calmly, like it was the most logical thing in the world said, "But Jamie was going to drink it!"  Made sense to her!  I guess in a lot of ways life does come around full circle.

Stress into laughter

As a family, we love to get together for different adventures as often as possible.  Numbering twenty seven it can be a challenge to get everyone's schedule's to mesh.  Such was the case tonight.  We decided since daughter Jamie, who lives four hours away was coming home this weekend, it would be a good time to go bowling together.   All were notified and the plan was made to hit the road about seven o'clock to the closest alley which was about 40 miles away.   The first sign of trouble came when Son-in-law Tyler called to reserve  lanes. He found out no lanes were available until 9:30!  Many more phone calls back and forth and finally a bowling alley was found  60+ miles away, so plans were put into place to go there.  In the mean time Jamie had gotten a late start and was still a good hour away.  Daughter Karen called and rightly pointed out that if we didn't get going we were barely going to arrive and get shoes on all the kiddo's (eight of them are four or younger) and it would be time for them to close.  So we decided that we would all head on up together and Pa would wait for Jamie and they would come up when she arrived.  One more call was made to Karen to let her know we were on our way.

 Needless to say, by this time with so many changes, wondering what to do and hungry people who had planned on eating at the first bowling alley, tempers were getting a little on edge and voices were getting a little short.  I hung up the phone only to have it ring immediately.  I answered it and quickly realized that  there was no one on the other end but I heard voices, one of which was Karen speaking to her hubby Ryan.  I hung up and loudly said to the occupants on the family bus "HERE'S A LITTLE TIP FOR YA, DON'T LET YOUR KIDS PLAY WITH THE PHONE WHILE YOU ARE TELLING YOUR HUSBAND HOW IRRITATED YOU ARE WITH YOUR MOTHER!"  Everyone burst out laughing but I wasn't seeing the humor in it just yet.  Once we  picked Karen and her family up, we realized in about four seconds that none of us wanted to travel that far and that late to bowl so we decided to head back to Stacie's and play games instead.  Once that decision was made the stress rolled off of us like dew melting on a hot summer day.  On the way we laughed about the conversation I had overheard and  irritated and irritating was the most used  of any in the word game we ended up playing.  We all laughed and laughed until we had tears running down our faces.  We all agreed that this was going to be another great memory and something we will laugh about for years to come.

That's how it is with this crazy family.  We can get mad at each other - in fact if you could have been a part of some of the dramatic events we have experienced with one another you might be amazed we speak to each other, let alone consider ourselves each others best friends.  But we do!  In fact all of the silly little fusses we've had over the years has only served to draw us closer.  It gives us history as a family.  We love, we worry, we cry, we pray, we rejoice, we squabble, we forgive, all as one.  But most of all we laugh together.  Long, loud, and often.  We can laugh at ourselves, as a group and as  individuals.  Don't think for a minute that we don't realize what a blessing that is.   How boring life would be if we didn't have enough passion for one another to get annoyed every now and then.   How much less we would have to laugh about. And laughter is my favorite shared activity with this crazy bunch!

My mamma

Last night I, along with grandson Kyson and granddaughter Kierstyn (also lovingly known as Wiggy) headed to my 97 year old mamma's house and we took her out for pizza and BINGO.  All the way down and all during eating I answered the kid's questions about how much money we might win but I kept telling them that most likely we wouldn't win a darn thing and that this was just to have fun.  I did BINGO once and won $10, but I quickly pointed out to the kids that all this meant is we got to play for half price, I was still $12 in the hole. (Sure didn't want to cause a gambling problem in the future)

 It's a little bit of a challenge playing BINGO with my mamma.   She is sharp as a tack and a joy to be around but she can't see very well anymore and therefore I have to keep an eye on her cards as well as my own.  In fact she probably misses more of the numbers than she catches, but we still declared mission accomplished - we had fun!

  As I get older, and she gets older, I realize how very precious these times with her are.  I realize how lucky I am to still have her and to have her so healthy and whole inside and out.  But more than that I realize how very precious she is.   I regret the times I took her for granted.  I wish I could relive my life and show her more appreciation than I did.  She has given me a legacy of faith, of love, of strength and of character.  Never  do you hear her say anything even remotely negative about anyone. (Except politicians)  I remember how this used to annoy me at her, I mean really!  Couldn't she see how those people were, and what fun was conversation if you couldn't  get in a few good digs at someone you didn't care for?  But now I know what a good, rare, and godly personality trait that is.  I hope and pray I am beginning to emulate it as I get older.  She is fun to be around and never one to feel sorry for herself.  She has accepted the changes that aging has brought to her body with nary a complaint.  What a role model she is for me!   I realize our time is short and I thank the Lord that he has pressed this realization home to me, so that I can enjoy this wonderful woman for as long as I am lucky enough to have her, to glean the wisdom she has inside and to learn how to live a life with no regrets.

The road well traveled.

As long as I can remember I have loved to write.  I have notebooks full of bible study thoughts and have written letters and prayers to the Lord for years.  You can pretty much chronicle my life by reading them. My yearly Christmas letters sometimes need extra postage because of all the pages I wrote.  I've kept a personal journal for years, recording such mundane facts like what time I got up, what time we went to bed, what I cooked for dinner and so on.  I've written long LONG letters to my kids when I knew they had a crisis going on in their lives or when they were exhibiting behavior I was not thrilled with and put it on their pillow.  I have a sneaking suspension that some of them, well for sure my oldest son, just tossed it in the trash without even opening the envelope, but I sure got a lot of things off my chest!  When I write a note to my husband, or the kids, or the UPS man it will always take up a full page.  When my family and I play Bolderdash, they always know which one is mine because they say "that one's Mom's, cause she always writes a novel."  My oldest daughter Kristi started a blog with her friend and so, knowing how much I love to write, especially about our family, she convinced me to start this.

 The fact is, with 54+ years on my body, 36+ years in my marriage, 6 children, and 13 grandchildren to my name I have walked down a lot of roads.  I have fallen in a lot of potholes and took a lot of dangerous curves way too fast!  I have even crashed more than once.  Along the way I learned that short cuts take you nowhere, there is a very important road map that you better check on a daily basis or you will end up lost, and slowing down to enjoy the ride is one of the best parts of the journey.  So, as random electrons fire in my head, bringing back a memory, a thought, or a lesson learned, I will now have a place to get them out of my brain and onto "paper" so to say.  If nothing else, it will give the kids a place to try and figure out why on earth their mother is the way she is.  So buckle up and we'll head out "on the road again"