Kids' Story

Kadie and I checked the kids out of school early today and took them to the Toy Story double feature. When Toy Story came out in 1995, Scooter had not quite been born and Skeeter was still a couple of years away. (Squealer was almost a decade away!) So watching the films today was the first time any of the kids had seen them on the big screen. I remembered enjoying the films, but not connecting to them in the same way I did this afternoon.

Both Toy Story and Toy Story 2 are each stories about the tremendous brevity of childhood. The key plot elements of both films involve the affections of children being transferred from childlike things to more grownup things. Apparently this will even be moreso the case in Toy Story 3 as Andy goes off to college.

As I watched our three kids watch the movie, complete with their matching 3-D glasses, I was reminded again of the tremendous blessing that each of them are. And how quickly the days pass.

...Summer Daze...

I’ve been watching a lot of baseball lately, due no doubt to the impressive pitching performance of the Rangers this season. Skeeter has been watching a lot with me and learning a bit about the game. And it can be a confusing game. Recently, after a Ranger scored from third, she asked “Was that a Death Run?” I was stunned for a few seconds before remembering a previous conversation. “No, it’s called a suicide squeeze.”

We took a five day vacation to San Antonio and traveled with two other couples. We had much fun, but I was outvoted on two significant issues. We didn’t have a single Mexican meal there and we didn’t go see the Alamo. It reminded me again why we normally vacation alone.

I signed up for extra classes this summer. The result was that I taught classes all summer and thus reduced my days off to about two weeks over the summer break. Part of the reason I got into teaching was to get summers off. Of course that was before kids’ college funds.

Scooter has had a time consuming job this summer and it’s wearing on her. She baby sat one of Squealer’s friends for eight hours every day all summer long and is worn out from chasing them all around. I’m secretly (and not so secretly) amused every time the Girl or Squealer says to her “I’m bored.”

Pecan Grove continues with Transition Team meetings on a weekly basis. It’s going well, I think, but slowly. Many conversations, many different points of view. We continue to pray for breakthroughs in some of these unresolved issues.

FPU is going well at Pecan Grove. Recently one guy (who’s in financial difficulty) roared out of the church parking lot in his 08 fire engine red Mustang. One of the coordinators for the class said in his slow southern drawl. “Dave’ll tell him to sell the car.” Indeed.

A triple wammy next week as Scooter starts High School, Skeeter Middle School, and Squealer begins the first grade. I took Scooter to her high school orientation (at my own alma mater) this week and found the rising nostalgia a bit overwhelming. I can’t believe my daughter is entering her freshman year of high school.

Facebook has taken over more of my life and crowding out a bit of blog time. Perhaps that will change as we start school on the 24th. We’ll see.

Best Friends

I was helping my brother-in-law Sully install some new venetian blinds this weekend. We were hard at work, measuring, drilling, and hanging, when his six year old daughter Grace walked into the room clutching a piece of paper.

“Daddy, I have a list of my bestest friends.”

“Mmmm-hmmm” Sully responded through lips pursed closed around a pair of screws.

She read carefully: “Here are my best friends: God, Jesus, Mommy, Daddy, Scooter, Skeeter, and Squealer.”

“Run that by me again, Pea?” Sully said, never taking his eyes off the window.

I said: “God, Jesus, Mommy, Daddy, Scooter, Skeeter, Squealer!” Grace replied with some degree of aggravation. Then she stomped out of the room.

As she left, Sully turned to me and said “Isn’t that just like a good Southern Baptist, leaving the Holy Spirit off a list of your best friends.”

Boundaries

For the last several weeks, we’ve been undertaking the laborious process of converting ancient VHS and miniDV tapes to DVDs. We’ve never done this before, so it’s been quite the challenge. The power supply on our ancient videocamera (purchased in 1995) no longer works, so I bought a replacement on Ebay for $15.00. A small price for videos, unseen for over a decade. So we’ve been enjoying a few hours each evening watching these videos and explaining to the kids who all the strangers in these videos are.

What does this have to do with Ministry Monday? One of the video tapes was an extended recording of Scooter’s second birthday. We had it at a local park in Waco and it was full of the normal chaos, screams and frivolity associated with such locations. One amusing side note to this party is that on two occasions, I forgot that the camera was on and the viewer gets vertigo from me carrying the camera at my side as I walked around the park. That’s the bad news. The good news is that the microphone was also on and so you could hear every conversation that I had with various family members.

But at the time, I was pastoring Lone Oak, and we invited several church members to the party. At one point in the party, you could hear me earnestly talking with this church member about some significant issue. I don’t recall exactly what it was regarding, but you can hear him expressing disagreement with the way I had handled something. Then you can hear me responding. It wasn’t so much an argument as it was a discussion over a difficult issue. Watching this video these eleven and a half years later, I am struck by one inescapable question:

WHY AM I DISCUSSING CHURCH ISSUES WITH A MEMBER AT MY OWN DAUGHTER’S SECOND BIRTHDAY PARTY?!?!?

(Sorry for all caps.) Looking at the tape through the lens of a decade’s experience, I am reminded of a desperate need for boundaries between pastor and church. If I could go back and have a conversation with Pastor Taran, I’d strongly suggest that he take a look at the boundaries he had set with his church. The line between church and family was too much a blur. I wish the younger Taran had said to the church what God said to the sea “This far you may come, but no further.” I don’t blame the man for the conversation, but I would like to wack my younger self across his forehead and say “What were you thinking?!”There is a lack of self awareness among many good meaning, Godly, well-spirited people in the church as to this issue of boundaries.

Pastors should set them early and often.

The House of the Sick

Squealer has been sick throughout this week. Influenza A. “That’s the most contagious kind!” the doctor’s assistant informed us in a chirpy voice. He’s been home all week, feeling pretty beat down. When Scooter arrived home Tuesday, he was lying on the couch with his eyes closed, but not asleep. Just feeling awful. Scooter said “It really doesn’t feel the same around here without Squealer running around destroying everything.”

Indeed.

But she’s right of course, the house of the sick doesn’t feel right for the whole family. Whenever one of us goes down, things are out of sync until they revive. I would expect that to be true for the parents, but its interesting to see that its true for the kids as well. There is a certain stability, a routine we fall into. When the family is firing on only four, instead of five cylinders, it’s not the same.

I’ve been reminded this week of one time when I was sick, around the age of five or six…exactly the age of Squealer right now. I had some severe illness that prevented me from holding down any liquid, and I remember being desperately thirsty. For some reason beyond my understanding, Mom and Dad wouldn’t give me any water. I couldn’t (or wouldn’t?) connect the dots between drinking liquid, and then ummm….undrinking it a few minutes later.

So I recall sneaking out of bed one night and beginning the process of crawling down the hall to the bathroom. I knew that a cup of cool, cool water awaited. But shortly before I reached the oasis, my father silently walked up behind me, scooped me up and carried me back to bed. He again patiently explained why I couldn’t have any water. I wonder how many of these evenings Squealer will remember. The way he's feeling, I hope not many.

Looking Ahead

My childhood was blessed in many directions. One memorable area of blessing was in family vacations. A few stand out.

Around the age of six my parents took us to California to visit some cousins and to see Disneyland. A few years later we visited Colorado and traveled the mountains to Ouray and Durango. Lastly, my junior year in college we took a trip to Washington DC. In between these larger trips we traveled on more regional excursions to various places in Texas and Arkansas.
And so we try to pass that blessing on to our own kids, hoping that they will enjoy well the full range of God’s Creation…or at least the part we can affordably reach. We’ve taken them on large trips to Colorado, Virginia, and Turkey and look forward to future trips.

This year we decided on a ski trip to New Mexico and made a couple of decisions that affected the trip. First, we decided to extend the kids’ Christmas vacation and to cut into their return to school. So we planned to ski the Saturday, Sunday, Monday of the weekend preceding the beginning of school. Although this cut into their return a bit, it guarantees fewer skiers. Despite my affinity for education, school attendance isn’t sacrosanct. This also allowed us to take our time getting out there. Since none of our kids have ever seen snow in any accumulation, we wanted to give them a chance to enjoy it before they skied it.

Our second decision was to go with another couple from church. Like me, Rob works for the state (although not at my institution) and Laura is a nurse like Kadie. They also have a little boy who is a couple of months older than Squealer as well as a two year old daughter. Frankly, they are among the few couples who could identify with the typical normal state of chaos surrounding our family. Our decision to travel with them cut our costs substantially.

Rob is an organizer and handled the lodging logistics throughout our trip. I, to put it mildly, am not. I did cook all the meals ahead of time so we wouldn’t get gouged by the locals. We rented a 15 passenger van and stuffed the nine members of our families into it.

We threw Squealer into ski school for 2 days and the girls for one. And they all took to it well. Kadie and I skipped ski school, but spent a day anyway remembering how to ski. It took two of full days for us to regain our skiing “skills,” which had lain dormant for twenty winters.

The second day we took the girls out and were amazed at how quickly they picked it up. Scooter took a few more chances and thus bit the dust snow more often. Skeeter, normally the risk taker of the two, was slow and steady and rarely fell down.

The third day we took Squealer out and worked with him. They teach the kids to either keep their skis in a “pizza” (a wedge) to slow down or to keep them “French fries” (parallel) to speed up. (I’m unsure what this says about the contemporary dietary status of most Americans that five year olds understand this language universally). But the effect is humorous.

As Squealer scooted down the slope, I followed behind him and constantly yelled “Pizza!” or “French Fries!” depending on his rate of speed. To an outsider it must’ve seemed like I was threatening him with a high-carb diet. Squealer invariably accelerated beyond his capacity to control his direction and I would have to shout at him to “Sit Down!!”which resulted in several spectacular crashes.

Squealer rarely does things halfway. He took to skiing quickly, but when he crashed, he did so with gusto. In one particularly tremendous show, he disappeared into a cloud of snow and pinwheeling skis as he lay motionless for a moment. Then he looked up at me and shouted “That was AWESOME!!” to the delight of the assembled skiers.

On the third day all five of us skied some blue slopes, definitely Squealer’s favorite. But still, it’s a sobering vision to see your five year old scooting past you at breakneck speed.

But the most beautiful memory of the trip was on a long green slope where the five of us were skiing by ourselves. Soon after we started, there began a gentle, but substantial snowfall. Flakes as large as nickels danced around us as we skied along our solitary path, looking at gorgeous evergreens graced with snow.

After a few minutes taking in this breathless beauty, Scooter stopped us and said “Daddy, it’s just like we’re inside a snowglobe!”

Looking ahead, I hope we’ve burned some family memories into their childhood.

I have a few pictures to inflict on you.







There’s nothing quite so strong as the bond between a boy and his tumbleweed. (Squealer at a rest area in the Texas panhandle).















Dalhart, Texas takes great pride in a large tile encrusted bovine that stands guard over highway 87 in front of a Valero gas station. When our kids saw it, Scooter immediately christened it Starbutt.
(I wonder if it's visible on Google Maps? Yep!)





Scooter (left) took some incredible pictures .

Looking Back

January is named of course, for the Roman god Janus, who had two faces , always gazing in two directions. So maybe January is a good time to look back and look ahead.


Looking Back


My grandmother died the Sunday after Christmas. She was 93 and led a full and generous life. I was asked to share a eulogy, which follows:

Today is a hard day, but today is a good day.


Today is a hard day, but today is a good day.

I thank you for coming today as we share some memories of Sylvia McGeorge, or as I knew her, Grandmother.

Some of the happiest summers of my childhood were spent in her house. I think what made those summers so happy is that they were so distinct and separate from the rest of my life. Her house was a place where the normal childhood rules didn’t apply.

Visiting grandmother was like visiting a different place, a better place.

For example, bedtimes evaporated as soon as my parents left the driveway. My brother and I could stay up as late as we wished, with no consequences to our actions.

Medicine was very different. Whenever I acquired a sore throat, grandmother’s remedy of choice was brought a combination of brandy and honey, a far cry from my teetotaling home. “Well, what do you think is in cough syrup?” she would say when pressed. (Of course, the result was an increase in sore throats whenever I spent some time with her.)

Next to her home, a magnolia tree grew that was as high as any sequoia. Kid limbs scrambled over tree limbs as we raced each other to the sky.


One of her “jobs” was to prepare for Wednesday night meals at First Baptist Church. In a move that OSHA would no doubt denounce, she let me open the huge cans of tomatoes with a table mounted can opener. I still remember as a six year old, lifting it as high as I could and then slamming it down on top of the cans and then turning it slowly around.


Visiting grandmother was like visiting a different place, a better place.


She had a couple of rocking chairs with a swing on the front porch of the house. For the only times in my life, I would spend summer evenings just rocking and swinging.

She was the first person I knew who owned a large freezer, which she kept well stocked with Popsicles. We could go get one whenever we wanted, and didn’t even have to ask. She also had an old fashioned coke machine with coke bottles. It was too big for me to slide the bottles down and then pull them through the top, to get them out. But she never tired of helping me to retrieve an icy cold beverage, not matter how close it was to bed time.

Grandmother also loved music. 45 Records were in abundance. Lawrence Welk and big band music of days gone by always accompanied me as I walked from room to room at grandmother’s house. There was no Time-Life record offer she could resist.



Mornings followed a predictable pattern. Captain Kangaroo was on in the morning, followed by the PBS duo of Sesame Street and the Electric Company. Then we transitioned to adult fare as Bob Barker always showed us that the Price is Right. But then there was a large gap in the day. Grandmother would always say, "Now its time for my stories”by which she meant The Guiding Light and As the World Turns (Or, as one of my cousins called it, "As the stomach turns"). During the soaps, we would go out and play, knowing that grandmother wouldn’t come looking for us until late afternoon. By then, more interesting things would be on as we resumed control of the TV at 3:00 when Gilligan’s Island came on.

Grandmother loved dominoes. I was too young to follow the complicated math involved in adding up to five, but from my earliest age, I was mesmerized by her ability to shuffle them on the special domino table she owned. No dealer in Vegas could match her manual dexterity. Their rhythmic clicking together is a sound I still recall to this day. She could turn and talk to me while she shuffled them without even looking at the table. When she felt like showing off, she would point and send me on an errand while she continued to shuffle the dominoes with her other hand.
Visiting grandmother was like going to a different place, a better place.

It was a place without room for corporal punishment. Although she did threaten to “blister our bottoms” (whatever that meant) I don’t ever recall being spanked by her. Her punishment of choice was to make us hug and kiss when we couldn’t get along with one another.

Perhaps best of all, grandmother’s home was a place where you got to see your own father get scolded from time to time by his mother. What kid wouldn’t want to see that?!

Visiting grandmother was like going to a different place, a better place.

Although she lived on East Avenue, some wag added an “F” to the the street sign so it read "Feast Avenue." But that was still appropriate, as Grandmother's house was a place where food was abundant. By the time I came along, she had been a caterer for decades.

She was an artist, and cake was her most savory medium. As she prepared her wedding cakes, she would have to level them (for proper stacking I suppose). After they came out of the oven, she would take a bread knife, turn it sideways, and shave off the top, ever so gently. Cake slices, a big around and as thin as plates. I would gather in the kitchen as she would stack these perfectly formed, slivers of heaven. With eyes the size of saucers I awaited them and then I did eat them. And lo, they were good. Very good.

She had a long table with multiple folding chairs. I recall receptions that seemed to seat hundreds (but probably more like 40 or 50). The aroma of food, the clinking of glass, and the hurried elegance of the wait staff as they did her bidding are etched into my earliest consciousness.

She fashioned tiny roses made out of white icing that she pressed into molds and stuck on wedding cakes. She would make sheets of these on wax paper, hundreds of them, and put them in the freezer until she needed them. I could fit about five of these into each of my hot little hands and pop them into my mouth to consume them in a few bites. The ensuing sugar rush would be sufficient to get me through even the slowest of summer days.

Visiting grandmother was like visiting another place, a better place.

Today is a hard day, but today is a good day.

The Bible shares about a very special grandmother. Timothy had a grandmother who was so remarkable that Paul mentioned her in one of his letters.

"When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also."

Paul succinctly identified the defining characteristic of good grandmothers: their influence on the generations to come. And like Lois, my grandmother passed on a legacy of faith to her children and her grandchildren.

Visiting grandmother was like visiting another place, a better place.

She didn’t have an easy life. She raised my father and aunt as a single mom during decades when that still carried with it the odor of scandal. But she picked through the difficult times and discussed them only when pressed.

My fondest memory of her is also one of the oldest. Grandmother purchased for me a sticker book, full of outdoor scenes. All the stickers were in the back and I had to search them out, lick the gluey side, and then stick them to their appropriate place in the book. I worked on it with all the focus a six year old could muster. On this particular day, grandmother was vacuuming the room while I busied myself.

One of the stickers was a bee. After carefully tearing it out from the back of the book, I accidentally dropped it on the shag carpet below. Having the attention span of a tsetse fly myself, I quickly went on to the next sticker. Several minutes later, my grandmother’s vacuum noisily inhaled my bee sticker while I continued to work. It was only a few minutes later that I realized what happened and I began to cry.

Really cry. In fact, I was in six year old, full liquid meltdown as I wept over my lost bee. Seeing my sorrow, she turned off the vacuum and then quickly learned the cause of my sadness. She assured me that it would be ok. Grandmother left the room and returned with the morning newspaper. She carefully spread out the pages, opened up the vacuum canister, and then dumped the contents of the vacuum onto the paper.

I can still see, with my six year old eyes, grandmother carefully working through the dust, dirt, and the hair as she sought the paper bee. After several minutes, she triumphantly held aloft the paper bee and returned it to me. Like the woman who searched for the lost coin, my grandmother's eyes twinkled as I stopped crying and joyously held my bee that had been lost.

And in this way, memory becomes metaphor.

Grandmother was always wading through the difficulties and the filth of this life to help and care for those she loved. I will miss her.

And now it’s her turn.

Now she is the one who has gone on to a different place, a better place.

Those of us who love her are impoverished by her absence, but were made far richer by her presence.

Today is a hard day, but today is a good day.

Several years ago she shared a poem that she wanted read at her funeral. It follows.

After Glow

I’d like the memory of me to be a happy one.
I’d like to leave an afterglow of smiles when life is done.
I’d like to leave an echo whispering softly down the ways,
of happy times and bright and sunny days.
I’d like the tears of those who grieve, to dry before the sun
of happy memories that I leave when my life is done.


I will miss you, Grandmother.






(Grandmother and Squealer, August 2003)

Family Road Trip!

We’re on the road with the family, doing some skiing in Angel Fire, New Mexico--our first extended vacation in about four years. After several days on the road, we arrived this afternoon and checked into our condo. We’re sharing space with a couple from our church who has a son Squealer’s age and they’ve booth kept the trip hopping.

The kids have never been skiing before, indeed they’ve seen snow only a few times. So we arrived in northern New Mexico yesterday so that they could play in the snow. After a day of that, we were all ready to arrive this afternoon.

We’re throwing all three of our kids into ski school tomorrow while Kadie and I try to relearn skiing ourselves. The only skiing we’ve ever done was almost twenty years ago on a BSU trip while we were still courting.

It should be interesting.

Christmas 2008

This was probably our busiest Christmas season yet, though I’m certain we will go for the record next year. We had a flurry of Christmas parties (two work parties, one Sunday School party), two church musicals (Children and Adult), assorted school musicals (one for Skeeter, two for Scooter), two family get togethers, and a partridge in a pear tree.

We spent time with my brother Bartolo who is wrapping up his dissertation and looking for a job (in a stellar job market) and his bride Bonita, who continues to encourage him at every turn. We also got to see my other brother Miguelito who is eying college next Fall.

After the family party with them, I had a shocking return to the real world with our notice of budget cuts. These cuts kicked our department’s tail and led to the release of several adjuncts. The number would’ve been greater, but several of our full time faculty offered to teach an extra class (called an “overload”) without receiving additional compensation. We then had to reconstruct the Spring schedule based on all of these changes. I made my last call to an adjunct on Christmas Adam.

We then turned our attention to Christmas Day lunch. We had a house full for our Christmas meal. My parents and Kadie’s sister and her family were coming over, but somehow that didn’t seem enough. I hope that hospitality ranks among the treasure of traits they’ve passed on to myself and my brothers. Growing up, Mom and Dad always had an open house for the holidays, often including others who had no options. We decided to practice hospitality by inviting four families from our university who were from foreign countries and didn’t really have any family in our area.

So we had one couple from New Zealand, one from Canada, one from Taiwan and one from Hungary. The accents (including my brother-in-law’s rural drawl) were fascinating to hear. Factor in all of the kids and we had around 30 people under our roof. Fortunately, the weather cooperated, so we kicked most of the children outdoors to the trampoline and soccer field (a Christmas gift).

Not all of the families are Christians, so perhaps we can build some relationships that might bear fruit down the line. A different, but still an interesting, Christmas. I hope that you enjoyed Christmas with your family.

To the Four Winds...

Life has (yet again) accelerated around our household. For the first time in thirteen years, each of our kids is in school. Scooter occupies the Alpha position in middle school as an eighth-grader, the queen of all she surveys. Peasant sixth graders cower in her presence. Skeeter is in the same position as a fifth grader in elementary school, at the pinnacle of the heap. At the other end of the food chain is Squealer, a small kindergartener who is still adjusting to this new (and exhilarating) world outside our household.

Having three kids at three different schools has stretched our meager planning and scheduling skills to the breaking point. Mornings begin early and race by. Scooter heads to the front yard at 6:59 am for her 7:00 bus stop. (Yes, I’m mostly over my first impression from a couple of years ago). After much prayer and anguish, we decided to let Squealer ride the bus. This concerned us, because with his diminutive size (and his giftedness in bothering people) we were concerned about him being tossed out one of the bus windows. But after an extended phone conversation with the bus driver (and the reality of his school being some distance from our home) we decided to give it a shot. He too must be at a bus stop for a 7:00 am pick up, about a mile from our house. Skeeter leaves the house at 7:30 via bike. Her school is .9 miles from our home and you must be 1 mile away to ride the bus. So despite the fact that she must cross a pretty major thoroughfare, we decided to take the plunge and let her ride. She loves the responsibility and freedom that a bike gives her.

So every morning, our three kids are scattered to the four winds. A bike, two buses and a multitude of prayers fan out across our community every morning. And we are reminded again that they are in His hands.

Exactly where they've been all along.

Partial Bovine Missiles...

Several years ago, we received a Leapfrog Fridge Magnetic Farm Animal set. This toy/learning device sticks to your refrigerator and is accompanied by several farm animals which also stick to your fridge. You put both halves of the animals in the barn and mash them and they moo, cluck, oink or whatever. Or you can switch a button and mash them and then they spell the name of the animal. Due to the incredible power of inertia (consistently the most powerful force in our household), this rural structure has remained on our refrigerator for years, even though Squealer has left toddlerhood far behind. Squealer had generally forgotten about them….until a few days ago. I was in the living room and I began to hear some pretty intense wailing coming from the kitchen.

Skeeter: “Waaah!”

I ran into the room where Skeeter wailed while Squealer looked around somewhat disinterestedly. “What happened here?”

Skeeter: “Squealer threw a cow at me! Waah!!!”

Squealer: “No I didn’t! She’s lying.”

Skeeter: Stopped crying, in shock and her little brother’s cool prevarication. “Yes you did, you hit me with that cow right there.” She pointed by the dishwasher and guiltily resting there was the purple butt end of the cow magnet.

Squealer, shaking his head insistently: “I didn’t hit you with the cow, I hit you with a part of the cow.”

I said “Squealer is that true, did you hit her with the cow—I mean part of the cow” I added when I saw him beginning to object.

“Yes sir.”

“Do we throw things?”

“No sir, but it was just a part of the cow.”

I struggled for a moment before amending my next question “Do we throw parts of cows?”

“No sir.”

“You still need to apologize to your sister.”

“Skeeter, I’m sorry I hit you in the face with a part of the cow” he gently said.

She sniffled patiently and replied “I forgive you Squealer, for hitting me in the face with a part of a cow.”

Overheard During Obama's Acceptance Speech

(The kids aren't really into politics, but because it is a memorable speech, I encouraged them to stay up and listen to Obama's acceptance speech).

Obama: "the same party that brought you two terms of George Bush and Dick Cheney will ask this country for a third. And we are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look like the last eight. On November 4th, we must stand up and say: "Eight is enough."

Scooter: "Oooooo?! Did you hear what he said about President Bush?"

Skeeter: "Was that a slam?"

Scooter: "Uhhhh...yeah"

Skeeter: "Well, I hope the President wasn't watching."

If you sprinkle...

(I hope the reader (use of the singular is intentional) will forgive a PG-13 digression from the recent run on Pastor Search Committee information.)

The past several weeks, the bathroom that each of the three kids share has smelled. It’s smelled like a men’s locker room. Actually it’s smelled more like a men’s restroom. Specifically, it’s smelled of urine. With a large crack running down the side of the toilet,Kadie and I resigned ourselves to getting a plumber to come out and repair the crack before the raw smell drives the kids crazy.

With that background, Scooter came to me a few days ago and said “Dad, Squealer tinkled on the bathroom seat. You should talk to him about it.”

I sat there silently for a moment and digested this information. Then I somewhat sheepishly replied (with hands held out in supplication):

“Scooter, who among us can possibly cast the first stone at that transgression? I mean, to expect any male in general and a five year old boy in particular to carefully raise the seat every time he...” But she quickly interrupted.

“No, Dad, you don’t understand. He had the seat up! “

My mind turned slowly as I processed this new information. It did not compute, so I inquired further. “But Scooter, how could he urinate on the bathroom seat if it’s up?”

“Dad, he peed on the bottom of the upraised seat!!!”

We were both a little surprised that she used the term “pee”. She’s normally sensitive to the appropriateness of her language. In her defense, however, her brother pushed her over the edge in this instance.

A quick conversation with Squealer revealed the truth of his big sister’s outburst. He had been raising the lid of the toilet, then urinating in a slow circle around its underside, like a meticulous firefighter extinguishing a ring of fire from the circus.

After an extensive conversation, he’s resolved not to repeat the behavior.

How I Spent My Spring Break

I spent it in bed and on the couch with a flu-like virus. Because fair reader, I don’t have the time, nor you the patience, for in depth reviews of the culture I’ve consumed over the last two weeks, I thought I’d share with you a brief summary and one thing I liked or disliked about each movie/book/TV show. Adding much richness to our movie watching experiences was the fact that DIRECT-TV offered free HBO/Cinemax for the weekend.

When one is both sick and tired of chicken noodle soup with saltines, what else is there to do but read, watch, and pray? Here’s how we spent some of our time…

Without further ado…

Two Books:
On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness I already reviewed it here.

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary -- written by the author of Krakatoa. He’s not really a historian, but Simon Winchester can spin a yarn. Just read the three page preface to the book and then decide not to read the rest. C’mon, I dare you. One of the interesting things about the book is it gives the history of the production of the Oxford English Dictionary, a mammoth undertaking that benefits us all even today.

Movies

Little Women (1994) This film was a hidden gem. I’d missed its theatrical release, but the cast overflows with fine actors from Winona Ryder, Kirsten Dunst, Claire Danes, and Susan Surandon to Christian Bale. A gripping story with much laughter and crying as we watched this one a couple of times (well, I watched it once. Kadie and the girls a few times). Kadie got this for Scooter’s Easter Basket.

Stuart Little A gift(?) for Squealer, I watched it for about 5 minutes before I could stand no more. I recall the book fondly as I read the masterpiece about childhood alienation.
Two things jumped out at me about the film: M. Night Shymalan wrote the thing and Hugh Laurie stars in it. But this film is a CGI mess. Almost the worst of the films we saw. Almost. Which brings us to…

The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl – Just a CGI disaster. Painful to watch and even more painful to try to discern a plot. Any goodwill built up for Robert Rodriguez in the great, I mean GREAT, family films of Spy Kids 1 and 2 is flushed away in this fluorescent colored dreck.

Raiders of the Lost Ark: The girls saw it for the first time, only on the condition that they close their eyes when Jones tells Marion to do so during the death angel scene at the end. They absolutely loved it. I cannot tell you how gratifying it is to hear them burst out laughing when Indy shoots the swordsman after he performs a variety of impressive sword maneuvers.

Flicka – A girl and her horse movie. Perfectly acceptable. Better than expected Tim McGraw performance. Maybe Skeeter’s favorite movie.

Superman Returns – I had pretty low expectations for this one, but they’ve been exceeded. I loved the opening credits, which were identical to the 1978 credits. The actor has his Christopher Reeve impression working well, particularly his Clark Kent nebbishness. Kevin Spacey does his best to chew the scenery, but can’t get me to forget Gene Hackman. And I miss Ned Bettey’s unctuousness “Mistah Luthoh”. One marked improvement is Kate Bosworth over Margot Kidder as Lois Lane. Even as a nine year old, I recall thinking how the movie might have improved had the Lois Lane-Superman flight over Manhattan ended somewhat less romantically and more “tragically”.

(And speaking of rebooted franchises, how did I miss this?! Must not get hopes up…)


Hot Fuzz – Clearly the Belle of the Ball among these films. I had no expectations other than the fact that Roeper and the other guy liked the film and said it was funny. It is a modern British film and is therefore profanity laced and has a few cheesy slasher moments….but my-o-my I laughed at this tale of a tough London cop who ends up in a small town that sounds a lot like Lone Oak. But for a different view, see a recent post at Mr Ginger’s pad. Yhaarp.

The Miracle Maker – A required Easter viewing around our house. Still in my mind the best visual depiction of the life of Christ, bar none. And it’s Claymation!!!!!

The Blues Brothers – I hadn’t watched this in years and I didn’t watch all of it again either. Simply not that funny.

Idiocracy – Very disappointing film from Mike Judge of Office Space fame. The film posits an entertaining (and easily defensible) premise that our society is getting more and more stupid each passing generation. But it depicts this in an idiotic way. I could stand about 15 minutes of it.

Radio Days – I hadn’t seen this Woody Allen treasure in a decade, but it has that right combination of charm and whimsy that makes it delightful. It’s a grow up version of A Christmas Story as Allen waxes nostalgic on the role that the medium of radio played in New York life in the 1930’s and 40’s.

The Dark Crystal “That is one weird puppet movie” was Scooter’s comment after it was over. (This comment has now, in my mind, become one of the greatest lines in our family’s lore.) I’d forgotten a lot of it, but I agree with her sentiments. Kadie picked this DVD out for Skeeter’s Easter basket. Not sure that Jim Henson was smoking when he contrived this plot.


TV Series
John Adams (3 volumes) – A great show on HBO, with high production values. The book on which this is based (McCullough’s John Adams) is one of the best biographies I’ve ever read. So I had high expectations and they were met. The high point of this series for me is that it accurately depicts the close love affair that John and his wife Abigail sustained for years often over great distances. Their personal letters may be the greatest romance literature in American history, simply a joy to read.


House (about 6 episodes) -- For another post

Returning to Reality

That was unpleasant.

Today was my first day back in the office after a vicious (and at times viscous) bout with a flu-like virus. I got sick last Tuesday (during Spring Break) and have spent more time indoors in the last week than I have in months. Coughing, congestion, mixed with a low grade fever and occasional nausea made this a Spring/Easter break to remember.

Of course it was passed around our family as well. Starting a few days ago we ended each day with our “Fever Contest” to see whose temperature was the highest. Each of us has had the same symptoms in lesser or greater degrees. The upside of our series of illnesses has been a lot of family time, many movies and books read. More about those in the coming days.

Land Shark

Like a round shark patiently gliding across the surface of our backyard lawn, our Christmas trampoline has now claimed a pair of victims.

Most of our wrestling matches have migrated out from the living room onto the trampoline and its benetted form. The bouncing/wrestling surface is surrounded by an eight foot high, eight pointed net (the kids refer to it as the Octagon) which keeps the activities inside, but injuries still abound.

I was the first to fall, both figuratively and literally. A few weeks ago I was practicing a flip. Although it maybe difficult to imagine my gyrating doughy physique (the first time Google’s ever encountered that particular phrase), Scooter and I are competing to see which one would be the first to complete a flip (the easy part) and then stick the landing (more difficult).

After completing another lazy rotation, Scooter offered some helpful advice. “Daddy, if you tuck your arms and legs, you’ll spin faster.” … What can I say, she was right. Unfortunately, I over rotated and slammed my face into the (padded) pole that supports the netting. The “net” effect is that it scrapped a layer of skin off my nose. (This picture was taken a few days later).


(Sorry for the sinister close up of the eyes.)

On Saturday, Skeeter, Squealer and I were jumping and I attempted to double bounce Skeeter, as I have done hundreds of times before. But this time, she rolled her little ankle and went down in a heap of agony. (Actually, because I double bounced her, she went up in a heap of agony. Then down.) Immediately her ankle began to swell and she now sports what looks like a half of a hard boiled egg attached to her ankle spur. A call to my sister-in-law, PTGirl…who’s a PT, and I got her an ankle brace and crutches.

Now Scooter, Kadie and Squealer are eyeing the trampoline with trepidation, knowing that they might be next…

Too Close to Home...

Texas Monthly is a great magazine about the Lone Star state. Two recent cover stories hit a little close to home, however.

In July of last year they had a cover story on a nurse who (allegedly) killed several patients in a small Texas hospital.

Last week, the March issue of 2008 arrived and the cover story? An article on a Baptist minister (who spent some time in Waco?!) who (allegedly) killed his wife.

Kadie (a nurse) and I (an alleged Baptist Minister) might each be sleeping with one open eye tonight.

(I have no idea how to tag this entry by the way.)

House Fever

Kadie and I almost bought a house yesterday. Well, to be more precise, we almost bid on a house yesterday. We found out about a house that was going up for auction with an opening bid of $50,000.00. We looked at the house and there were many things nice about it. It is 5,100 square feet, a veritable mansion. It’s in a great school district, in a fast growing area of town where property values are expected to continue to skyrocket. With Scooter reaching her teen years in a few months, she will be receiving her own room as we turn the original den area of our house into a fourth “bedroom.” But a real bedroom would be better (her new room is separated form the kitchen by only a flimsy folding door) so we were open to the idea of moving into a larger house.

But there were some problems with this house. First, since its going to auction, the previous owners obviously didn’t have the money to keep it up. It has been unoccupied for four of the previous six years. It needs new carpet and a lot of superficial (though not structural) work. In addition, it is a good 20 to 30 minutes from our places of work, unlike the 2 or 3 minute commute that we have now. The cost in gas and time boggles the mind. In addition, the home has 3 A/C units, all of which will likely need to be replaced soon (about 20K right there).

But, in what covers a multitude of superficial sins, it is large (cue the Olive Oyl song from Popeye). It would give the kids (not to mention the parents) plenty of room.

After some thought and prayer, we elected not even to bid on the house for a couple of reasons:

Given our pretty conservative financial sensibilities and the general slowdown in the housing market, the idea of floating two house notes while our current home sells is terrifying.

I am a home repair incompetent. We’d only be able to afford the house if we did much of the repair work ourselves. But given my own lack of ability in this area, we shouldn’t count on it.

So we decided to stay where we are and save money toward a remodel of our kitchen, and then our bedroom. We’ll save up the money over time and pay for it in cash. We also decided to try out a few small projects (tiling our utility room, changing out several light fixtures, etc) to develop some basic home repair skills.

(And in a final note, we had decided to bid no more than $80,000 for the house. I found out this morning that the final bid was $236,000).

Random Drivel (II)

Random Drivel

Scooter had a test with over fifty questions on the anatomy of an earthworm. She made a 92, God bless her. But why do they spend so much time on it?

Squealer has picked up a new word and I must say I’m proud. He savors it, grinning right before he deploys it in a conversation. The word is “miscreant.” I think he picked it up from one of the Ice Age movies. It is one of the few critical words I allow him to use against others, because usually they have no idea what he’s talking about.

Skeeter has signed up for additional studying for her state mandated exams. (Curse them). In addition to her normal school work, she then studies specifically for this test from 3:00 to 5:00. Strangely, she’s enjoying it.

Scooter is now taller than some of the ladies in our (adult) Sunday school class. I keep wondering where this young woman has appeared from???

I preached a sermon a few Sunday nights ago in church. It was called “The Proper Care and Feeding of Your New Pastor.” I enjoyed it because it is precisely the kind of sermon a pastor cannot preach about themselves. (I shared with them a pastoral pet peeve. When your kid is selling candy or discount cards from school, don’t let them hit up the pastor. It puts the pastor in a position of either telling your kid no (and looking like a jerk) or saying yes and having every other kid come up to them as well.)

Our trampoline has been very enjoyable lately. Each day, we’ll spend thirty or forty minutes as a family jumping on it at the same time. The kids are spry and fearless. Squealer weighs around thirty-five pounds and, like a flea, can jump 70 times his own height. Scooter and I are competing to see who can be the first to turn a complete flip and stick the landing.

Kadie continues to amaze me. She’s about as non-confrontational as they come, but she’s been on Lakewood’s personnel committee dealing with a very difficult situation. She volunteered to accompany the committee chairman to confront the recalcitrant staff member. They did and it has been a positive experience for the church.

We are almost to the point of buying three gallons of milk every time we hit the store. We drink a gallon a day. The two girls drink the most, but at $5.00 a gallon, it is getting expensive. I am looking into the price of a good, mid-sized cow.

Sunday, Sunday

Isn’t it supposed to be a day of rest?

Yesterday we had an 8:30am Sunday School Teacher’s Meeting, followed by Sunday School and Worship service. A quick lunch and trip home prepared us for returning at 4:30 for Praise Team Practice, evening worship, and then our end of the year stewardship committee meeting.

The family left after the evening service without me and by the time I got home the kids were in bed and Kadie was exhausted and heading bedward herself. Because today is a day off I wanted to spend with the family, I decided to go on in to work and get lectures together for Tuesday. (Fortunately, we live close to my office).

I got back home around 11:30pm and went to bed.

No real point to this entry other than the fact that we are all very busy!