This year, our Christmas wasn’t so hot.  If you’ve been poking around these bloggy parts for long, you well know that the whole house thing pretty much has a big, fat dark cloud permanently over my head.  Christmas just kind of intensified that.  No tree of our own.  Our ornaments in storage.  Having spent a good part of the year prepping my mother-in-law for us leaving her house on Christmas Eve to wake up in our own home Christmas morning just to have HH call her two days before to tell her that we would, indeed, be staying through Christmas morning.  It all made me feel pretty yucky.  My goal, though, was not to complain.  It was not lost on me that all of this house stuff was put on us at a time when I was to dwell on Mary and her plight to give birth.  She rode one hundred miles to Bethlehem.  On a donkey. She ended up giving birth, with no epidural, in a barn (or cave, if you will). A stable full of cow poop, no doubt. 

Celebrating the anniversary of that birth from the second floor of my parents’ home, filled to the brim with chocolate-covered everything– in comparison, not so bad.

Then, it seemed in an ironic twist that the Advent theme for our worship service was HOME.  The word found me most Sunday mornings flip flopping between tears of thankfulness and weariness.  “Jesus is your home”, Bro. Don said more than once… words I mumbled to myself each time I would start to feel overwhelmed by the house situation.

I made peace with the holiday.  Kind of.  It’s more like I called a truce.  The ups and downs were getting to me, so in the spirit of  “it can’t get any worse”, I decided to just get over myself, count my many blessings, and get on with it.

Then, I saw this year’s Santa picture:

Yeah, it’s really blurry.  Yeah, I’ve already “Picnik”ed the heck out of it.

Then, my prone-to-febrile-seizures- little boy awoke at 2:00 A.M., Christmas Eve morning burning up with fever.  A fever that didn’t break for over 48 hours.

This short-lived smile was courtesy of the Batcave.  The blurry photo, courtesy of my phone, which, surprisingly takes better pictures than our real camera.

So, yeah, it did get worse.  I think it’s safe to say that our Christmas was kind of stinky.  Maybe one day we’ll laugh about it.  (Personally, though, I think that day is WAY. FAR. OFF.)  We have been blessed in that our problems, though monsterous and all-encompassing to us now, are temporary.  Tomorrow is a brand new day.  A brand new year.   A brand new decade. Good things will happen in 2010.  We will become homeowners.  Sure, maybe it won’t be the house we’ve prayed for and over for the past four months, but we will buy a home this year. 

Of course, we do still have to issue before us of the blurry pictures and not appropriately capturing the memories of 2010 for all of posterity.  That’s why I hope 2010 will bring this:

It’s already in my Amazon shopping cart, by the way.

Yeah, 2010 will be better.

Sunday night storms
Broke my teapot
No power for 4 or 5 hours
Tree branch down
Cracked windshield
Flat tire
No internet for 9 days
And counting
1 stomach bug on Monday (me)
Emptied one can of Lysol
1 more stomach bug on Wednesday into Thursday (Wog)
Finished off another can of Lysol
Broke my pepper mill
Another stomach bug yesterday/today (HH)
Night spent on my parents’ couch with 2 kids

Next week will be better.  Right?!

Have you ever felt someone lose respect for you.  Like physically?  What about a room full of people?   Well it happened to me several weeks ago when I, in a total whatintheheckwereyouthinking moment, announced to my Sunday School class that I had just finished the Twilight series and was currently watching the movie every stinkin’ night while I rocketh the Bug-girl to sleep.  And that I thought the vampires were hot.  And that I painted my nails black for three months after watching The Craft back in college.

Yeah, once I start, there’s really no way to stop the flow of randomness from my mouth.

This also may explain why I don’t really have many friends.

All that to say, like a few other cool chicks I won’t name (but will certainly link to) I bigfatpuffyheart Twilight.  The books.  The movie (while not cinematic genius- the cast is spot-on and, well, hunky).  The soundtrack.  Love.  It.  All.

My new fave thing– TwiMamas.  It’s all you need to feed your Twilight addiction (what, I’m the only one addicted?) — pics, news, contests, even links to Etsy shops that sell Twilight themed stuff.  (Feel free to get me this for my birthday!)

My other fave — my new candy and my Sunday School bff who, while doesn’t have one iota of respect for my choice in literature, thinks I deserve cool candy.

Oh, and if anyone in my Sunday School class asks, I’m totally reading C.S. Lewis now.

Even back in college when I used to write short stories and poetry (the cool kind that didn’t rhyme), I never fancied myself a writer.  It was more of an emotion dump for me.  Fortunately (and yet, strangely enough, unfortunately), I haven’t been dumped in eons so I don’t really get the out the old notebook for a daily or even weekly dose of alliteration. 

These days find me with feelings of pride over a dinner that’s turned out to be both delicious and healthy, elation that Bug is walking all over the place, nervousness about potty-training Wog, frustration with not being able to find time to do a simple exercise DVD, ticked off ( -edness) because Wog woke Bug up from yet another nap, hope that maybe we’ll be homeowners soon,  and sadness that I missed One Tree Hill yet again. 

So, I blog. 

Because, really, who wants to hear a haiku about pee on my couch? 

**chirp chirp**

That’s what I thought.

I certainly don’t want to make fun of the swineflu.  I imagine it’s a scary thing to have it or for your kids to have it.  What I am tempted to make fun of, though, is all the hype.

I was half amused and half angry yesterday when a caller on a morning radio show, who described himself as a “medical professional”,  proceeded to tell us the super duper how to keep yourself safe precautions to take:  wash your hands for at least 20 seconds, use a teaspoon of antibacterial gel several times throughout the day, and minimize your contact with sick people.

Ummm, hold on!  Let me get a pen so I can write that down.

Then, said “medical professional quoted his “reports” that this swineflu epidemic will end up affecting 90% of the population.  90%.  Seriously?

If 90% of the population are not washing their hands after they french-kiss as many sick folks as possible, we have some much deeper issues to deal with.

Of course, that’s only one side of it.  I have two little ones, one of whom hasn’t been vaccinated against the flu.  I don’t really want to treat the whole thing so casually.  To be honest, there’s a small part of me that wants to board my whole family inside the house until the whole thing passes.  But isn’t that how the whole thing starts anyway… a bunch of pigs wallerin’ in their dirty little spaces?

I digress…

The point of this whole swineflu post was really just a lame excuse to present you with the single best invention I’ve ever seen in my entire life.   Seriously.  The best.  Ever.

Ladies & Gentlemen….

THE BACONE

Anyone game for heading to the next Baconcamp.?   Or perhaps there’s a serious need for Baconcamp-Birmingham.

Wow!  It’s been a while since my last post.  It seems like yesterday that I boxed up my spices (which, by the way, is working wonderfully).  Christmas was a blur.  A good blur.  But still a blur.  We had a wonderful time with our family. 

I took down my tree on the 26th.  I usually like to milk every ounce of enjoyment out of my $40 tree and leave it up through New Year’s Day.  This year, however, I felt the need to get it down quickly, sweep up the annoying little thingies off the floor (fronds?  leaves?), and resume life.  For weeks now, and for whatever reason,  there has been a little voice in my head saying, “Come on, Bee.  Let’s get this show on the road.”  2009 cannot get here quickly enough. 

At first, for me, the ringing in of 2009 meant hope.  Change.  Progression.  But, while I was busy wrapping presents, things shifted.  Reality set in.  Some of the things I was looking so forward to are not going to happen (and I’ve got approximately 39 hours to get over that).  And, while I want nothing more than to take a good month or two to sulk and wallow in the “why-me” of it all.  I don’t have the time for it because, hel-loh-oh, 2009 is coming.  And a Bug is getting bigger by the day.  And a Wog is getting smarter by the minute. 

Lots to ‘tend to, my friends.  Lots to ‘tend to.

I’m not enjoying my life right now. Is it ok to say that?!

Having a new baby has stressed me and stretched me more than I’d ever imagined.  I am fully aware than many folks parent two children every day.  Some, even three, four, or five kids. Some, even without the aids of anti-psychotic medications.  But, I have come to a creeping realization that I am not cut out for this.  That is not to say that I do not love my kids or love being a mom. I adore both of my children more than anything.  Being their mom is a more amazing role than I could have ever dreamed (dreamt?) for myself.  I am richly blessed.  That being said, the crying, the feeding, the spit up, the changing, the snot… I’m drowning in it.  And it took a weekend away from all of that to realize just how much I’m losing myself.

HH and I spent the weekend at our collegiate alma mater’s homecoming festivities.  Festivities that for the past ten years have involved loading up and heading to a small college town a few hours away and acting like we’re still college students.  It’s been fun and a much needed yearly escape from normal life.  This year was different, though.  It could have been the band that we heard on Friday night.  They were fourteen.  No, they didn’t look fourteen (they looked twelve if you ask me), they were fourteen.  It could have been the young campus bookstore employee that “yes ma’am”ed me three times.  It could have that all I really wanted to do while I was there was sleep without interruption.  Or maybe it was just that the only time I felt really normal was at the game when I spent thirty minutes with my friend, J, talking about our children’s behavior issues.  I’m pretty sure that it had nothing to do with the two young ladies that joined the group of us for dinner after the game who, despite having each bore a child, had tiny waists, awesome racks, and train cases FULL of MAC eyeshadows.  Or maybe that had something to do with it.  By the way, am I the only one who had no idea that “selling shoes” was a euphemism for exotic dancing?  Just checking.

Whatever the exact cause, I felt all out of sorts.  As HH kindly put it to me, so much in my life has changed in the two years since the last time I ventured to our college town… kids, career, church, etc.  And, while it’s obvious he is a closeted Dr. Phil watcher, he had a point.  I guess it is pretty normal to feel wonky when you leave the element that is home to revisit a place where you spent so many years being someone so different, especially when you are still struggling to find yourself in the place you are every day.  (Trust me when I tell you that thought makes complete sense in my head and I amm therefore, deeming it too philisophically deep to properly translate into sentence form.)

Having the Bug has thrown me into a tailspin.  I enjoy her coos and her smiles.  And Woggie’s “terrible twos” are speckled with moments that make my heart want to burst, like when he sings his ABC’s or when he reaches for my hand so we can say the blessing. Those are moments that I love and I know I will miss.  Those are moments when I want to stop time and just nuzzle squishy cheeks or squeeze little hands. Those are moments when I don’t want time to go by any faster.  I do, however, realize that this stage of motherhood is not where my gifts lie. I have been putting too much stress on myself to be supermom and feeling too much guilt for not loving every minute of my day.

I think I now kind of have my head wrapped around how I’ve been feeling for a few months.  Now, I can work on feeling like myself again, fully realizing that the myself that I am may not be the myself that I remember (ok, enough with the deep stuff).  The first thing I need to do is admit some things:
1.  I am having a hard time being a mom of two.
2.  And that is ok.
3.  This is just a season of my life.
4.  And a season only lasts for a short time.
(I’ll be rereading #2 and #4 until I am 100% believing it!)
(Oh, and I know that all of you moms to more than two are totally laughing me for #1.)

The next thing I have to do is make adjustments to my life and my attitude to not only get us through this season, but to find the joy in it.  I know it’s there.  I read your blogs.

Let’s all take some time to absorb what we’ve learned today, shall we?  We’ll revisit the adjustments later.