BSF

Last spring, I contacted the class administrator for the BSF class here.  I'd missed the welcome class by one week. 

Not that I probably would've been able to find someone to babysit three kids during the day.

So, if I wanted to do BSF again this year, I had to go to the fall welcome class.

Taylor agreed to babysit the boys, since there's no childcare the first week.

I made sure, after she didn't show up to babysit the last time she said she would, that I texted her two days before to remind her.

So I drove off to BSF, Bible and address in hand. 

And as I drove, I decided I'd just turn around and not go.

"You don't need one more day during the week that you have to go somewhere"
"You'll feel like a dork coming into a group after they've all had a week to meet each other, do introductions, get to know each other a bit"
"There won't be room in the kid's program"
"If you do get into a group, it'll be all young moms that you won't learn anything from"
"Joel will just cause problems"
"It'll just be old women there anyway"
"The kid's program is nothing more than playtime; the boys can play at home"
"You won't make any friends; why bother?"
"Did you really learn that much from Genesis?  You don't need to study Matthew"

How well Satan knows me. 

He knows just what words to say, just where to poke, exactly what sour-little-nothings will make me chicken out, change my mind, decide not to.

But, being me, I thought those were all valid reasons.  I hadn't yet discerned that I was not the speaker of those words.

The only reason I didn't turn around was because I figured Taylor would be mad that I made her drag her rump out of bed so early to babysit, and then have me show up thirty minutes later saying I'd changed my mind.

All the greeters were Linda-P.-friendly.  Ok, maybe not quite that friendly.

There was a huge group of newbies in the welcome class.

There were a lot of old women, but plenty of younger people too.

During the welcome class, I sat next to a lady with a three-month-old, and I got to hold him while she filled out her paperwork.

(I don't want another baby.  I don't want another baby.  I don't....yes I do.  But I don't want another kid.  Just some babies)

My new leader called me the next day.

Even though they said the kid's program was pretty full, there was room for both boys.

My group had three other people who couldn't be there the first day, so I won't be the only one feeling like an outsider because I wasn't there the first week.

The group has both younger moms and women who have high-school-aged and older kids, so I won't be the "old" one in a group of 20-somethings who just happen to have the same-aged kids as me.

So even if some of the other thoughts and doubts are valid, who cares?  If I don't make friends, so what?  If all I get out of the year is a better understanding of Matthew, a chance to sing a few hymns, and a few leads on a new church, that's an improvement, and, I guess, a good reason to have one more thing to do each week.

Cookies for Breakfast

Daniel is not the world's best eater.  He enjoys a very short list of foods, and just because he liked it yesterday does not mean he will eat it today.

Breakfast, for example: he likes cereal.  Rice Krispies mixed with Kix is the current meal of choice. 

With school starting, I've started making breakfast instead of just letting the kids have cereal.

On that topic, I'll add in some other thoughts: for several months- like, 9- I've done a dinner menu plan.  Otherwise, how the heck are you supposed to know what's for dinner??  And now that school has started and I have lunches to pack, snacks to pack, dinners and preschool and soccer practice and psychologist appointments and book club to juggle, I've switched to planning every meal.  I have a week-at-a-time menu that includes all three meals and snacks.  The other day I said something about checking the menu to see what was for dinner, and I was told I was altogether too organized.  Seriously?  Because I plan what to eat instead of paying $2.00 a meal for the girls to have hot lunch every day and looking in the fridge at 5:00 to see if anything inspiring appears for dinner?  Or, as was this person's plan, ask all my facebook friends what they're having and just copy one of their meals, assuming I have all of the ingredients on hand.  How else would I have a clue what to buy at the grocery store if I didn't have some idea of what was for dinner; buying a cartload of groceries and winging it would ensure that 1) I keep Subway and McDonalds in business, and 2) my menu would be full of frozen, chemical-laden foods.  But whatevs.

So, making breakfast.  We've had lots of oatmeal, eggs and toast, and smoothies.  Cereal is reserved for weekends.  But Daniel has not been enjoying my newfound Martha-ness.

I've tried making him a serving of whatever the rest of the clan is having, setting it at his place, and, when he yells for his krispy kix, telling him I'll get it in a minute and then leaving the kitchen.  For a couple of days, he'd eat whatever I'd made while he was waiting for me to make his cereal. 

But he quickly caught on.

So the other day when I made smoothies that had chocolate protein powder in them,  I told him it was a chocolate milkshake.  The smoothie disappeared quickly.

EUREKA!!  Simply call things something dessert-sounding!

Yesterday I made Honey Baked Oatmeal.  It smelled amazing; didn't taste as great to me, but the kids all loved it. 

When Daniel got up, I asked him if he wanted an oatmeal cookie for breakfast.  He gobbled it up and asked for more cookies.

This morning, he wanted more oatmeal; luckily, there were leftovers.  He again ate his bowl and got more.

The problem: he will at some point tell people I feed him cookies for breakfast.  Or milkshakes. 

Parenting dilemma #571- lie to your children about what you're feeding them so they eat it, or call it by the actual name knowing they'll turn up their nose.

The Smell of Memories

I had another sleep study last night.  After I was hooked up to all 687 wires, the tech left the room to make sure they were all reading correctly, and as I sat there, I caught a whiff of something familiar.

I don't know what the smell was, but it took me instantly back to mom's hospital room- the first neuro room she was in, not the second or, worse yet, the third room upstairs. 

I've spent my fair share of time in hospitals: one angiogram, four children, multitudes of weekly nonstress tests, one opened incision, one hysterectomy.  Plenty of hours to smell plenty of hospital scents, but not once have I had anything evoke such a sense of being right back there with her.

Could've been a disinfectant in the bathroom.  Might've been the adhesive from the EKG leads.  Or perhaps it was just the plethora of hospital tubing and wires.

And, of course, the more I sniffed to try to smell it again, the more I got used to it and couldn't smell it any more.

I only caught the scent two or three times, but that was enough.

Supposedly, smell is the sense most closely linked to memory.  It certainly didn't take more than a slight hint of that scent for me to be right back in that chair, sitting by her bed.

And the strangest part of all, to me, was that when I realized what the smell reminded me of, I smiled.

Six weeks.  It seemed like a lifetime then.  So many nights of sleeping on couches, chairs, floors.  Wakeful hours in the middle of the night when Bryn would wander into the waiting room to switch places when she was falling asleep.  Hours sitting in an uncomfortable chair by the side of mom's bed, thinking, reading, praying, pondering, hoping, crying.

I'd like to go back and actually smile at her when she opened her eyes and asked what day it was.  I'd like to not sigh when she asked how long she'd been there and what happened.  I wish I could simply smile at her and hold her hand and answer her questions, not wondering if she was ever going to get better or if, when she woke up the next hour, she'd ask anything other than the same set of questions she asked every hour upon waking.

The waiting room couch wouldn't seem so hard, the boredom of sitting in the same room hour after hour wouldn't seem as tedious, knowing that I should be enjoying the last few moments we would have together as "all of us". 

It has taken a decade to get to the point of smiling, but I can think about that time and wish I could go back and just smile.