Ships Passing in the Night

[From this point on, I'm going to call my husband, "Mac." It's not a very clever blog name, but I'm not feeling very clever.]

The typical weekday schedule for our family looks like this:

• 7:00 Photobaby wakes up. I change her diaper and drop her in bed with Mac.
• 7:45 - 12:30 I'm at work, while Mac takes care of Photobaby.
• 12:30 - 5:00 Photobaby is at the babysitter's, Mac heads to work, I'm still at work.
• 5:00 - 7:00 I take care of Photobaby.
• Midnight or later - Mac gets home.

So, not only do I not see my baby girl enough during the week, I don't see my husband at all! I love that his evening shift lets him spend some great time with Photobaby (and it cuts down our childcare costs), but this week, I'm weary of this schedule. The weariness (and resulting grouchiness) will pass, but for now, I'm a little sick of it.

On a lighter note, I did find out that the phrase "ships passing in the night" comes from a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem.

Does Anyone Have Any Ideas?

I'm planning a trip to the great white north (Minneapolis, as well as a detour to small-town Wisconsin). Does anyone out there - anyone at all? - have any ideas about what to do in this town?

(Yes, this is a shameless stunt to get comments from hobbitsister and melilot, but I really am going to MN later this year!)

Get Your Nose Out of That Book!

I heard that a lot growing up. And now, even though I'm adult with my own child, I still hear it. Of course, now it's just my mom's voice in my head, reminding me that the dishes aren't going to do themselves and I can read later!

I love to read. And I love to read lots of different types of books. Scary mysteries, fluffy romances, the occasional "book club" book, and more.

I'll admit, my reading habit can get a little out of control. Chores fall by the wayside and bedtimes get ignored when I'm in the middle of a good book. I recently caught up on all my magazines - I had about 8 of them stacked up on my desk. I spend at least an hour a day - okay, sometimes more - reading various articles online about advertising and PR trends, the real estate market, and pop culture. And today after work, I stopped by the library and picked up the books I'd reserved...all 20 of them.

So when someone told me today that she loves to read, and she'd just finished reading her first "for-fun" book in 10 years, I didn't really know what to say. I don't doubt that she loves to read. But I just can't imagine not reading for fun for 10 years! (Granted, I'd get caught up on my scrapbooking, have a sparkling clean house, might even exercise, but still!)

My question for you is: Do you love to read? What's your favorite kind of book to read? What's the best book you've ever read?

From This Day Forward

Last weekend, I played photographer at my friend's wedding. It was beautiful. She was beautiful. The occasion was beautiful.

See, this is my friend's second marriage. Her first husband - who was also my husband's and my friend - cheated on her and left her. We met them at church.

It shouldn't matter, that church part. But it did, even though I've read that the percentage of Christian marriages that end in divorce is actually higher than the national average. It still doesn't seem like it should be so. And this was the first "couple friends" we'd known who got divorced.

My friend was devastated. But God was so faithful to her, blessing her and showing her so much grace. One of those blessings was reconnecting with a friend from college. The friend she married last weekend.

It's been amazing to watch God work. I'm still sad to think about what happened with her first marriage. I believe that God created marriage to last and that's what we all commit to when we say "I do." I don't understand how what happened, happened. And I still mourn the loss of our friend, her husband. I don't think divorce is okay, but my friend was left without a choice. But no matter what I understand or think or see, I know that God's plan is bigger than my small, human mind can comprehend, and His mercy and grace are neverending.

And my friend had a beautiful wedding. I pray she also has a beautiful marriage.

Funny Line

"Go home before I pummel you."

"Huh? I thought you're a Christian?"

"You're right. First I'll smite you, then I'll pummel you."

Ha. I'm watching the very cheesy and not well-written "The Secret Life of an American Teenager." The show's awful, but I thought that conversation was funny. Especially considering how they're portraying Christians in the first place. It was nice to see a Christian be funny and not just preachy.

Poor Photobaby...

Yesterday, we spent the afternoon at my brother-in-law's house for a BBQ. Photobaby was cranky because she didn't take a good morning nap and then skipped her afternoon nap in favor of being fawned over by her cousins. So, we ended up leaving early. Of course, that girl fell asleep in the car, so we drove around looking at houses we can never afford to give her some much-needed time to snooze. When we headed home, I was determined to keep her happy until 6:30, when I'd put her to bed (early - because she was soooo tired).

That plan came to a halt at 6:15, when I realized that I'd left Photobaby's formula at my brother-in-law's house. Our last can. We had two partial cans (I'm not even sure how that happened), so I'd combined them. So all of our formula was 30 minutes away.

I called my husband in and asked him to go get food for our poor, tired, hungry baby. What I meant was, "Please go to the Hy-Vee grocery store five minutes down the road and buy a can of formula." What he heard was, "Please drive 30 minutes to your brother's house and get our formula and bring it home."

Hmm.

After I'd done a song and dance for 45 minutes, trying to keep Photobaby from having a full-blown meltdown, I tried to call him. He didn't answer. Which of course made me certain he'd had a car wreck between our house and the store.

Thankfully - for all of us - he called back as soon as he got service (his brother lives outside our cell service area), and we realized that we'd completely misunderstood each other.

Poor Photobaby! She went to bed LATE instead of EARLY, and she has two parents who don't even speak the same language!

Let's Go To The Movies!

I've seen four movies in the past few weeks, and I thought I'd share some random thoughts about them.

Fool's Gold - It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. How's that for faint praise? Seriously, I wasn't excited about seeing this movie, but I couldn't find anything else to rent that night. And hey, I liked Kate Hudson and Matthew McCaughney's other movie (I'll admit, I've seen it more times than I can count - but can you blame me? It's cute, they're cute, and it's on TV all the time!). So I rented the dumb movie about pretty people. And it turns out, I liked it, too. It's about treasure hunting - and I like treasure hunting movies. I also saw National Treasure 2 a while back, and liked it, too. (No, I'm not obsessed with treasure. I just like the history and mystery of it!)

Definitely, Maybe - This movie (like at least three of these flicks) didn't get great reviews. But I thought it was good. It was definitely a girl movie - all about romance. But I liked the way it realistically portratyed a young man being disillusioned by his career. I feel like that's happened to me - not because of lying politicians, like in the movie - but because of unmet expectations with the "real" world. The main character graduates college wanting to be president. He goes on to work for the Clinton campaign and then grow depressed years later as the Clinton scandal(s) break around the same time his love life tanks. I just thought it was refreshing to something more realistic than the typical young person has corner office and wild success even though he or she just got out of school.

Indiana Jones the 4th - My husband, my brother, my sister-in-law and I went to see this over the weekend. I didn't have huge expectations, but I did want to see it in the theater. I don't see a lot of movies in the theater (too expensive!), but I thought this one warranted it. And, we went in the morning so it was just $5 a person! Anyway - we grew up watching the original Indiana Jones movies with our parents. This is probably where my love of movie treasure hunters comes from. (For the record, I also enjoy Michael Douglas and Noah Wyle in this same role.) So, based on the many times we'd laughed so hard watching Harrison Ford and Sean Connery, my brother and I were really looking forward to this movie. So were the spouses, of course, but I kind of think we were the most excited. I had read a lot of reviews, as I tend to do. I'm pretty sure the other three had not. Because they were pretty disappointed by the movie. I thought it was good - the typical Indiana Jones stuff and the Shia LaBeouf character were hilarious to me. And my thought is that even though I don't doubt the reality of religious artifacts like the ark of the covenant and the Holy Grail, some people might find them as probable as aliens. So I don't think anything Indiana Jones could throw at us, any explanation for a crystal skull or any other mysterious relic, could be too crazy for me. After all, it's just a movie. About treasure. Right?

Vantage Point - I saw this movie last night and re-read a review this morning. I wasn't surprised to see a 1-star review and a 2-star review. It wasn't great. But how about these harsh words: 'There's no point to any of this. No insights on terrorism, no commentary about foreign policy, no human drama. 'Vantage Point' is a rotten action flick dressed up in artifice and pretension." Ouch! I did think this movie might have more substance. I don't need some big political statement...and I didn't get it. Or any statement, really. I thought the idea behind the movie - watching an event from several different viewpoints - was interesting. But I have to admit, it got old. And the ending was kind of satisfying. I guess. It wasn't what I suspected, that's for sure, but an unexpected ending isn't always a good thing!

So, in summary, none of these movies was terrible. Fool's Gold was better than I expected, and Vantage Point was worse than I expected. Indiana Jones was about what I thought it would be, and Definitely Maybe was a pleasant surprise. There you have it.

Am I Seeing Things?

So, I don't really think I'm hallucinating. But I seem to have seen a lot of groundhogs lately. By the way, in case you're wondering, groundhogs are the same thing as woodchucks. (The things you can learn while looking for a good image!)

Anyway, my office building is in an old farmhouse on about 10 acres, and a couple times a week, I see a groundhog in the yard as I'm driving up to the parking lot. But nobody else in my office ever mentions seeing a groundhog. And wouldn't you think that's something to talk about?

Then today, I was sitting at a stop light, on an exit ramp from the highway, and I saw some movement in the grass on the side of the road. What else would it be but another groundhog?! Right there by the highway! A groundhog!

And, now that I'm thinking about it, I saw one on my way home from work (in someone's backyard) a few weeks ago.

Is this weird? Do you guys ever see groundhogs? Is there a reason - like too much rain or not enough sunshine or something - that I would see more groundhogs this year than ever before in my life?

Because I'm starting to feel a little bit like Ally McBeal when she kept seeing all those dancing babies!

What Might Have Been

I have a tendency to think too much. To obsess. To overanalyze.

Lately I’ve been thinking about choose your own ending books. Did you read those when you were younger? I went through a phase when I loved them. Of course, I read them with my fingers stuck in all the choice pages, so at the end of the story, I could go back and see what would have happened if I’d make another choice.

In some ways, I think I’ve led my life this same way. My life has taken lots of turns, but most of the time, I keep one finger on the page of that choice, just in case I want to go back and try another path. (Case in point: leaving my dream job to go to grad school, going to grad school for one semester, quitting grad school, going back to my dream job, deciding I don’t love my dream job after all, and moving on to yet another job…)

The thing is, in real life (as opposed to book life), you can’t go back. We don’t get do-overs. So this has led me to spend a lot of time – probably too much time – thinking about “what might’ve been.”

When I was in high school, the Little Texas song, “What Might Have Been,” always made me think of boys. Two boys in particular who never realized that I was the love of their lives. But they should have, of course. So for several years, I would think of them whenever I heard this song.

That’s been so long ago, and today it’s just a pretty song. But I still have this tendency to look back. And that’s not really a good thing. (Just ask Lot’s wife!)

However, today when I heard this song, it hit me a bit differently. It made me think of what might have happened to me if I had never experienced the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ.

What might have been…if I hadn’t been blessed to be raised in a Christian home.
What might have been…if I hadn’t had Godly teachers and role models in my church family.
What might have been…if I hadn’t gotten connected with a body of believers in college.
What might have been…if I hadn’t found a new church home as an adult.

I would have been lost! I was lost, but thanks only to the grace of God, I live a blessed life with Him.

And yet…and yet, I still have moments of regret and wishing for a do-over. Sometimes it’s the same old, same old – wishing I could go back in time, make a different choice, live a better life. But other times, when I’m less focused on things that I can’t change, things I probably shouldn’t change even if I could, I still want to undo things I’ve done.

But – and here’s where my ramblings come full circle – again because of God’s grace, He does undo our mistakes, our sins. He wipes them away, like they never happened in the first place. Amazing.

And that brings me to another song, one that means something to me every time I hear it. But when I heard it today right after “What Might Have Been,” it just blew me away, thinking about God’s goodness. The song is by Rush of Fools, and it’s called, “Undo.” My favorite lyrics:

To label me a hypocrite would be

Only scratching the surface of who I've been known to be

And He loves me anyway. He loves you anyway.

Amazing.

Help Me Make it Through the Day...

At one of my former jobs, a co-worker and friend of mine was an avid KU fan. So in order to make sure everyone around her knew this – even the diehard MU fans – she had a stuffed jayhawk on her desk. As a joke, another co-worker kidnapped her jayhawk and left a ransom note, asking for a 3-lb. bag of M&Ms.

This particular office prank did not go over well.

Some jokes do, though. On that same co-worker’s last day at our office, another friend dressed up in a clown suit and hid behind her desk. That might be a little funny, but it got a lot funnier when we realized that the departing colleague really meant it when she joked about being afraid of clowns. Fortunately, she took that joke a little better. How could you not, when one of your friends is walking around the office in full clown dress?

It’s pranks like this – and games like Buzzword Bingo – that help us make it through the monotonous or particularly stressful times at work.

One of my favorite illustrations of this is from an episode of The Office. It shows the Dunder Mifflin crew in the meeting room, listening to Michael (the boss) drone on about, well, I’m not sure what but it was clearly not interesting. Meanwhile, we see the employees looking very interested in something just beyond their boss’s talking head – the television. The television has gone to a screen saver of sorts, showing a multicolored DVD logo bouncing from one side of the TV to another. As we watch them watch the TV, we learn that they have created an office game of it – waiting for that wondrous day when the DVD logo actually makes its way into the corner instead of just missing it and bouncing off the edge of the screen.

As much as I love The Office, this episode has stuck in my mind for some reason like none other. I think it’s because it captures office life so well. (If you’re really intrigued by the DVD Logo Game, you can learn more here.)

What office/work games do you play to make it through the day?