Some People Call Me Mom

Haven’t You Heard?

So the other night Jon was making me risotto for a special dinner. As he popped the cork on the bottle of wine to make his wickedly awesome risotto, we were joking around and I was reminded of one of the stupidest things we’ve heard.

Jon and I were out with some friends to celebrate a birthday at one of the bestest restaurants in the world, The Melting Pot. I love that place. As we all sat around our table a 20ish something couple were seated near us. The restaurant wasn’t very busy and it was really easy to hear what was being said at the table next to us. I think it would have been harder to not hear what was being said. As the waiter brought the bottle of wine to their table that they ordered and unscrewed it, we heard the male part of the date say “there’s a cork shortage”.

There’s. A. Cork. Shortage.

Needless to say we four had a really hard time not laughing loud enough for them to hear. Even months later there would be discussion about the cork shortage and how it rocked our world…

Thoughts

I don’t tend to get political around here - I think it just gets ugly. I figure there is enough ugliness in the world, it doesn’t need to spill over onto my blog. Politics get me all riled up and stressed out so I have taken to avoiding them. I do on occasion read my political sites and whatever Drudge is talking about. That’s about it.

To be completely honest I dislike both Obama and McCain. I tell Jon, pretty much whenever we talk politics, that I wish we could just wipe ‘em all out and start fresh. I don’t like feeling like I’m going to have to vote for the lesser of 2 evils.

Anyhoodle. I read Peggy Noonan today. She speaks quite a bit to the furor over Governor Sarah Palin. A couple of things she wrote really struck a chord for me. (I have been disappointed in the way the mainstream media have handled the brouhaha about her daughter Bristol and her son Trig.) Noonan talks of the press living in a bubble and being surrounded by bubbleheads.

And when you forget you’re a Bubblehead you get in trouble, you misjudge things. For one thing, you assume evangelical Christians will be appalled and left agitated by the circumstances of Mrs. Palin’s daughter. But modern American evangelicals are among the last people who’d judge her harshly. It is the left that is about to go crazy with Puritan judgments; it is the right that is about to show what mellow looks like. Religious conservatives know something’s wrong with us, that man’s a mess. They are not left dazed by the latest applications of this fact. “This just in – there’s a lot of sinning going on out there” is not a headline they’d understand to be news.

So the media’s going to wait for the Christian right to rise up and condemn Mrs. Palin, and they’re not going to do it because it’s not their way, and in any case her problems are their problems. Christians lived through the second half of the 20th century, and the first years of the 21st. They weren’t immune from the culture, they just eventually broke from it, or came to hold themselves in some ways apart from it. I think the media will explain the lack of condemnation as “Republican loyalty” and “talking points.” But that’s not what it will be.

I really hope that what she says about the Christian right is what happens. Whether we are conservative or liberal - who are we to judge?

I am now done with my slightly political post. Back to talking about 3 year olds, and Arizona, and Arrested Development.

The Opposite Of Having Power

It has been a busy long weekend around here.

Friday was a flurry of power outages, missed school and a bbq. The power was out for much of Thursday night. It flickered on again around, well, I don’t know - maybe 1am or it could have been 4am. I was doing my best to sleep so I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to the time. The next morning was a giant mess of - school is canceled. school is half day. school is a full day (which we found out after we had rearranged our day to work in our mandatory fun day activity - the bbq).

Saturday was a youth activity day. We had about 10 middle/high school students in our house after they hiked Ramsey Canyon. Yet another bbq was involved. The highlight for me was Liam approaching the mother of one of our students. He unbuttoned, unzipped and happily told her all about his new Spiderman boxer briefs. Luckily for us she is a wonderful, gracious mother of 4 and she took it all in stride as I dove across the counter to yank his zipper back up.

Sunday was busy with Chapel, lunch with one of our Chaplains and his family, and youth group. We watched Facing the Giants and let me tell you - the most nonsensical questions were flying around… We have a great group though, and overall they are a joy to be around. We had a late dinner with one of our students and I think tested the limits of late night activities for 3 and 5 year olds…

Monday was a trip to Tucson and the mall. We had an enjoyable trip and as a result Lachlan no longer sleeps with an open sleeping bag on his bed as his comforter. We found just the right thing for his bed for $20. Yay for Labor Day sales!

Today was our just the 2 of us date day. We packed the kids off to school and had a babysitter for Liam (he was thrilled). After running a couple of errands in town we drove out to Bisbee. We checked out all the funky stores and wandered through the antique stores without a care as to who had an eye on the kids, what breakable stuff was nearby or scrambling for a bathroom. It was heaven! We had a thoroughly enjoyable, leisurely lunch at the Copper Queen Hotel.

Before that happened though, we ran into a little trouble:

As I glanced over to my left I noticed there was something in the dish near me. It was Mr. Scorpion. I was okay until Jon blew on him. And he moved. At that point I was less than okay. He was a very unhappy, stuck Mr. Scorpion. All I can guess is that he dropped off the ceiling and landed there. In honor of my first Arizona scorpion we took a picture to mark the occasion.

(I was a little jumpy from there on out as we looked at other shops. If there was something up on a shelf that I couldn’t see I made Jon check it for me.)

I am loving this day date thing.

When we go out on evening dates it’s like: I’m tired, I’ve been with kids all day - I have nothing else to talk about, there is a feeling like I need to get home… I dunno. It probably doesn’t make much sense, but that’s how I feel.

We had a really great time and have decided to make this at least a monthly thing. It was such a great feeling to go out and just be husband and wife - not dad and mom. We were able to go where we wanted, enjoy holding each others hands (as opposed to a child’s sticky fingers) and not be on alert at all times - if that makes any sense.

The Kissing Bandit

Does this look like the face of a little boy who would go around kissing little girls in his class?

(’cause it is)

A call from the teacher, a discussion about kissing etiquette (save it for family man! you’re only 5!), and a few tears later we are hoping to have seen the last of the kissing bandit.

I love this kid.