I’m still here, but Daphne is at a stage where she needs constant interaction.  This makes sitting at the computer and typing nearly impossible.  I sat down and had a little talk with myself about how she is only this age once and I need to soak in the times that she wants to sit on my lap and shut the dryer door for me while I’m in the middle of doing laundry and sit on the counter next to me while I cook.  But the pep talk didn’t work and I continued to get frustrated over the fact that I couldn’t sit by myself and type one line of an email before a certain Baby Chickadee was sitting on my lap and commandeering the keyboard.  Then I prayed about it and my heart was changed.  Now Daphne and I giggle while she pours canned peas over the eggs that I’m frying on the stove.  Messy yes, but pretty hilarious.  And Daphne was awfully proud of herself for helping Mama cook.

I do still write for the Gazette most every week.  They pay me.  And aside from Christmas break and a few sick days, every week I write for them.  Last week I wrote about my time at the gym: The conscious effort to politely ignore.  The week before I wrote about my new reading plan with my husband: Yes, I’d love to analyze the particulars with you.

So I’m still around, just not on the computer as much as I once was.  Daphne and I are eating eggs and spilling peas on the counter and laughing the whole time.

In Saturday’s column I mentioned that somewhere an easy solution exists to our morning troubles but right now the answer continues to allude [edit: elude me.  why did nobody yell at me over this?  sometimes you're allowed to call me out.] me.  For the past two school mornings I’ve let them watch the clock; they know what time breakfast needs to be over and what time we need to walk out the door.  Friday we were early to school but today they were late.  My husband is worried that they’ll get used to being late and it will no longer be an issue, but right now I don’t care.  I’m tackling one obstacle at a time and the current obstacle is trying not to gripe at my children while they’re griping at each other.  I just want everyone to be serene on the way out the door.  Shiny and happy would be extra nice.

Here’s Saturday’s column, where I tell you about my solution–that really can only happen once in a very rare while–to the morning frustrations: playing hooky.

I have never been an activist.  About six or nine months ago my sister showed me information that Hershey’s unabashedly uses child labor to harvest its cocoa pods in Western Africa.  While other chocolate companies are fazing out this practice, Hershey’s refuses to do the same.  And so I stopped buying Hershey’s products (no Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, no Cadbury’s Easter Eggs, no Kit Kats).  I figured that I might as well use the rest of the Hershey’s Cocoa Powder sitting in my kitchen cabinet since I’d already bought it, but the first time I made a mocha at home I could not get the image out of my head of sweet childrens’ hands on the cocoa pods.  I poured that mocha down the drain.  Later I found out that most of those children have been stolen from their homes and work 12-hour days for no wages.  NO WAGES.  It’s not just that seven-year-olds are working instead of learning at school, but they’ve been forced into slave-labor conditions.  Their parents get paid when they are returned home, but if they’ve been stolen from their homes, their parents do not get paid.  The kidnappers do.  And that’s assuming they get to put down their machetes (their means of cutting cocoa pods from the trees) and leave the cocoa farms.  That knowledge makes it much easier to forgo Hershey’s products.  A tiny bit of the activist gene in me was ignited.

You can see a little bit of the BBC documentary that explains it here:

Then last week I read an article about the practices of a research company that Pepsi contracts with and now I’m boycotting Pepsi.  You can read my thoughts on it in my column for Saturday’s edition of the Gazette.

Also, some of the articles I read can be found here:

Aborted Baby Cells Used as Research Base for Flavoring

Are Aborted Fetus Cells Helping to Make Your Diet Pepsi Sweeter?

Pro-life groups call for Pepsi boycott over aborted fetal cell lines

List of Products from Corporations that Use Senomyx

In today’s column I celebrate my son.

My sweet little man when he was two days old:

Beautiful little baby.

And my handsome boy at age seven:

He is a joy.

Two weeks ago I completed my first-ever 5k.  Hubby and I are currently on the lookout for more races to run.

The poem that I referenced in my column:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any–lifted from the no
of all nothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

–e.e. cummings

I think Mia is an awesome little artist.

Back when I wrote about my once-love for reading Hubby read my column and then chuckled.  “Why are you trying to push people away from reading classic lit?”

Discouraging people from reading Emily Brontë was not really my goal, her novel just happened to be a good example of a book that frustrated me, and–I daresay–wasted my time.  Even if it is a classic.

In the months since I wrote that column I’ve come across people I respect that have Wuthering Heights listed as their favorite book.  Which begs the question: what did I miss?

Yesterday afternoon I watched the 2009 BBC version of the movie on Netflix.  Unwilling to read the book again I hoped the movie would shed new light on it.  As the movie was also a PBS Masterpiece, Laura Linney appeared on screen to introduce it.  Tidbits of information: when the book was originally published it offended society.  The anti-heroes of Catherine and Heathcliff were off-putting and so the book got pushed aside and nearly forgotten.  But modern (understand: more open-minded and educated) readers appreciate its story and literary devices and the book has not been out of print since (some date.  I can’t remember exactly.)  We were supposed to laugh and say, “Oh, ha ha ha, look at those simple-minded prudes!  They could not appreciate that beautiful piece of literature because it offended their social standards!”

(Dear Amanda, do not read this next paragraph.  You are still welcome to read my copy of this book because it is a quick read and I know it’s on your list of important books to read.  But this next paragraph will spoil some points of the story for you.)

But I am one of those prudes.  Why am I going to enjoy reading about two selfish and contemptible people who die in the midst of their suffering, as they lash out and attempt to destroy the lives of those around them?  WHY WOULD I WANT TO READ SUCH A BOOK?  And why is it a classic?

Frustrated, yet knowing I’m right in my critique, I searched online this morning to find out why people like it.  Apparently the lit-crowd now appreciates it’s cyclical story line and useful literary devices.  I get that.  But it doesn’t make me like the book.

If you’re going to read a classic novel then read Great Expectations or The Scarlet Letter.  If the hero of the book is going to be flawed, can’t they at least learn something and strive to be a better person?  Why read something just to be sad?

If you need a sobering book the read Reading Lolita in Tehran or study up on the child slave trade in Africa.  Don’t waste your time on fictional people who are sad just to be sad.

I need to run outside.  The race Hubby and I have been training for is outside, of course, but I’ve been running inside on a treadmill (mostly) or on the track at the Andover Y (rarely).  Just one time outside in all these weeks.  I know good and well that running on pavement is going to be much different than running on a smooth stationary machine.

But I don’t want to run outside.  During the race it will be fine because everybody will be concentrating on their own stride and their own breathing, or just trying to find a path around the slow girl (me), but if I run in my neighborhood people will have the chance to critique my form as they sit on their front porch.  Logically, I know most people will give me a passing glance and quickly go back to reading their book or picking their nose or whathaveyou, but the fear of being laughed at is still there.

It’d help to block out the people on their porches if I could just run with music in my ear, but I tell you, those earphone cords drive me crazy.  They fall down the back of my shirt or I rip them out before realizing what’s happening when they dangle in front of me.  I suppose if I went to the Tom Cruise School of Running I wouldn’t have that problem, but who wants to run like this? (Specifically starting at 1:14 of the video. The rigidly straight hands, unbending elbows, perfect posture. That man would not accidentally grab the cords of his earphones. His form is too scarily-rigid-perfect for that.)

(Also, Hubby and I laugh with delight every time we see Tom Cruise run in a movie. That scarily rigid perfection is too much for us. And apparently for other peeps, too. Google “Tom Cruise running” and there are a TON of sites dedicated to this. I love the internet.)

Maybe tonight I’ll go for it.  Running outside that is, not using the Tom Cruise Running Form.  I just need all you Augusta peeps to promise that you won’t giggle at the blonde girl running on State Street.

When we moved to Augusta four years ago I never imagined I’d be in the place I am.  I remember thinking I’d look for a MOPS group and I prayed God would lead me to close and valuable friendships with other women who loved Him.  Quickly He set both of those in motion.  But soon after He nudged me, saying, “I’ve given you what you asked for.  Now do for Me what I need.”

I didn’t picture myself as a blogger.  I certainly never imagined myself as a newspaper columnist.  In all my life, in all the imaginings of my someday career–lawyer, teacher, child psychologist–columnist never floated across my radar.

And yet here I am.  A blogger with a pretty good readership, a columnist whose piece gets read by a thousand people every week.

Four years ago I did not imagine this.

My column that comes out on Saturday is out there.  Kent, the publisher of the Gazette, told me all those moons ago that I could write about anything I chose.  And so this week I chose to write about God and my very human thoughts of Him.

My fear is always that I will come across preachy and condescending.  I’m always re-reading and re-wording and trying so very hard to not push others away because of an unintended patronizing attitude on my part.  But I want others to know God.  I want them to know His saving grace, the love that gets me through my days.

Beth Moore once talked in one of her studies about how sometimes she wants to pull the car over and grab a stranger on the sidewalk.  “Do you know Jesus?  Do you have any idea how much He loves you and desires to be a part of your life?”

That’s how I feel.  I just want to grab people by the arms and shake them until they see the Lord as I do: an awesome, powerful Creator who is madly in love with us.

Last week in my column I wrote about my loneliness.  This week I wrote about my fascination with the Creator who named all the stars in the sky and yet still finds me interesting enough to desire a relationship with me.

It is too much.  He is too much.  His glory is more than I can fathom, His love more than I can bear.  I do not deserve it.

I think one of the verses of my life will always be, “Who am I, and what is my family, that You have brought me this far?“

Reasons I’m glad G and Little Missy are in all-day school (because I’m really not, so I’m trying to convince myself that I am):

• First off, I get to eliminate a good deal of their papers and toys without them ever noticing.
• When I pick up the house in the morning it will stay clean ALL DAY because that sweet baby can’t make messes as big or as often as the older two.
• Conversely, if I don’t pick up the house and someone drops by, I can’t blame it on the older two.
• I can go to the Bake Shoppe and chat with girlfriends for an hour after drop-off.
• I can watch whatever I want on Netflix.  Here come some BBC miniseries!

Reasons I’m not happy:

• They are so silly and I love to hear their giggles and noise.

Dear Lord, I place my sweet babies in Your hands.  Please guide them and let them feel Your comfort, the comfort that is better than I can give, throughout the day.  Draw them into friendships with children who love You and who will seek You out in the years to come.  I give You control over these blessing babies You have intrusted me with.  In Jesus’ holy name I pray, Amen.