So I drew up Epiguy who has exacidoptysis (spitting out acid) and anamyomegaly (excessive enlargement of the muscles) and other like conditions. After a week of finding medical descriptions somewhat upsetting, I sat there coloring in a superhero and I thought, “I like crayons. This is fun. Why don’t I do this more often?”

It reminded me of Ana in Stranger Than Fiction who quit law school to save the world with cookies. And as the girl who spent large portions of childhood recreationally reading the Medical Book and the Doctor’s Guide to Home Remedies, I’m now having a bit of identity crisis…

Walgreens Register Rewards program (disposition 3; attack varies from 1 to 7) vs. Raquel (disp. 7; attack 5, +1d thrifty-wise). Again, a win, adding stuff to my gear with no loss of resources.

I am such a geek!

I’ve been having a difficult time with life lately–refer to my last blog post. This morning during church I cried my way through a (very helpful) sermon on assurance, once again making mental notes *not* to wear eye makeup on days when I’m feeling emotional. Why I always forget this I don’t know… After church, and after finally convincing Margary that really, she’d spend quite enough time going to the bathroom, and we could go talk to people now, I took a deep breath and headed off to see how this whole socializing experience would go with the way I was feeling.

Next thing I know I’m having a serious conversation about happy music, Seth is playing with a large plastic dinosaur and making me laugh at the geekness of it all (and how much of the geekness I totally get!) and I’m reminded almost in passing that the best plots are the ones you can’t figure out until the end (regarding my recent status message that my life has a superb cast, but I can’t figure out the plot). I’m pretty that last one is actually jaw-droppingly momentous in my life at the moment, so I tuck it away for later.

Pretty soon I’m piling food on my plate and arguing that Snickers ’salad’, excellent though it may be, does not count as salad, sparking the suggestion that maybe if added M&Ms so it would have something green…

I can’t handle the agonies of desicion making at this point in time, so instead of trying to figure out who to sit with, I head for an empty table in the classic ’see who likes me enough to sit with me’ maneuver. I have a brief twinge of guilt for neglecting to track down some return visitors that I should probably be joining to make them feel welcome, but within moments they’ve come over to sit with me, so it all works out. Pretty soon Gabrielle, Colton and Samuel E have also joined us and we’re once again hashing out the question of whether Gabrielle or I is scarier. We established that Gabrielle is more willing to inflict pain in a social context, but got sidetracked before we figured out how this fits in with the fact that she’s actually nicer (perhaps less cold…) than I am. Even pulling pitiful puppy dog eyes and saying ‘please’ didn’t convince anyone to admit I was scary… Sigh.

And so here I am, still clueless as to what the plot actually is, but with a cast like this, does it even matter? Seth reminded me earlier this week, in very similar context, that I am a control freak. I want to know what’s going on, and how all the storylines that I brush up against fit together in the end. But it’s not the end yet.

Today was that scene in the movie that’s a lot of fun to watch, but doesn’t seem to tie into the plot a whole lot. Call it character development. Except, in really good movies, doesn’t it usually happen that two scenes later someone mentions some throw-away line from that fun ‘pointless’ scene that ties in to this thing over here, and whole thing turns out to be crucial? Like, maybe, this devoloping theme that I really need to stop being a control freak and trying to figure out what’s going to happen next, and just play the next scene. Hmm…

We got rained out.

That’s right, the plans we’d made for being home got rained out. It was just as well, though, because it was a very quiet and pleasant day. I spent most of the afternoon playing Plants vs. Zombies (which deserves its very own post) while various portions of the children watched. Seth even stopped by for a while and talked strategy. Seth and Crystal sat on the porch and talked and Hope spent much of the day in her happy place. We ate dinner on the porch which was only a little wet and then lit some of the worlds most pathetic fireworks. We cleaned up, the kids took baths, I played some more Plants vs. Zombies, and then we went to watch the fireworks.

We discovered last year that you can see the big firework display put on down by the river by Peoria and East Peoria from our corner. The cloud cover made for some fascinating and beautiful effects. Sometimes the fireworks would go so high they’d explode in the clouds and come raining down. I held first Noah and then Justice on my shoulders not so much because they couldn’t see, but because I wanted someone to enjoy the fireworks with. I can’t imagine watching fireworks by myself. In my experience it’s always been a time a group can all enjoy together. One year I was in Disney World the whole week leading up to the Fourth of July. In honor of Independence Day, and because it was Disney World, they had fireworks every night. My aunt, my sister and I were standing in line waiting for a shuttle one night when the fireworks started. An entire crowd of complete strangers started “Oooh”ing and “Ahhhh”ing in unison mostly on purpose. Fireworks are amazing unifier of people.

It was a very pleasant day. Nothing spectacular, but a quiet day of being a family together. Happy Independence Day.

The Justice Dance

There’s a different vibe around the house when I’m the only female home. Nothing I can quite put my finger on, but I am very aware of being outnumbered. And I think I kinda like it.

I’ve got no issue with little girls; I used to be one, you know. But there is something about young boys that’s fun. They’ve got an energy about them that can be infuriating and revitalizing at the same time. Our conversations go more towards superheroes, monsters and dirt. Not that they are simple; the boys are every bit as complex as their sisters are. If anything their egos are touchier. But they interact with me differently than Arianna and I think it’s simply because she’s a girl interacting with a woman and they are boys interacting with a woman.

So I’m looking back on my day spent outnumbered by boys and a thought wanders into my head. I could do this. I could be that mom with seven boys and be really happy when I wasn’t wanting to kill them. I could run the house that has bizarre rules about when you are and aren’t allowed to pummel your brother into the ground and where you have to patiently explain that yes, this roof is fine for climbing on, but that roof is probably not a good idea because it slopes rather dangerously. I can ooh and aah over rocks, dirt and bugs and I haven’t had a heart attack yet over some of the stunts the boys have pulled. This probably means I’ll end up with all girls who want me to teach them embroidery.

I wish I could write about the sky. The sky touches me in a way that bypasses concious thought. It’s like guitar music or dance or the smell of campfire. It reaches past what I think about it and makes me feel.

I fell in love with the sky when I moved out here. See, there’s just not as much of it in Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania there’s lot of land. It rises and falls, it rolls and the horizon is just a nice idea. When I moved out here, out to the prairie, I started understanding the sky.

There is so much of it. It’s too big to put your arms around and too wide to fit into a mold. The sky can be blue like my nephew’s eyes or gray like a bad mood. It can be so clear you could almost see into Heaven or so full of clouds that you just want to go get a ladder tall enough and go build a house on them.

The only other thing I know that touches me like the sky is my lake. My lake. Not just any lake. I’ve been to the Atlantic ocean and it was nice, but it was everyone’s. I stood on that beach and felt the crowd. But there’s a spot I liked to go to where the lake could be mine. You feel the wind after its had time to dance over a large distance. The sun reigns supreme where there is no shade and the water moves like a mother quieting her child. And that is where you can see the horizon.

At the horizon water and sky meet and kiss. Some days the line between Heaven and Earth blurs at the horizon. If I swim long enough and hard enough I could cross that line and be in the sky swimming over the ground. I’d swim with the stars as they dance over the water. I’d drink the moon’s water and finally feel refreshed. And with all the constellations hanging in the sky maybe I wouldn’t feel lonely.

But see, I can’t talk about the sky unless I start with something else. I can’t just launch into the sky. My feet are stuck on the ground and I can flap my arms all I want but the sky remains ever out of my reach.

And then my Google Talk tells me that Raquel is online. Hooray! Huzzah! Much joyousness and yellings. “Hi there!” I say, all excitement. She responds with an equal number of exclamation points. And then I stare at the screen and wrack my brain for the next thing to say. I didn’t really have much to burble about and she was no doubt getting caught up on the Internet world that had been missing her so. I’m just really bad at this.

The next conversation had much more substance. It was greatly helped by my new acquisition of a game called Plants vs. Zombies, but that requires a blog post all its own. So, Raquel is still gone and I’ve survived so far. Tune in next time….

You’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with the ABC’s of YOU. At the end, choose 26 people to be tagged. You have to tag me so really you just need 25 more people. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you – but not in a creepy stalker kind of way.

A – Age: 23

B – Bed size: Twin

C – Chore you hate: Like Jessica, cleaning bathtubs is near the top of list for me.

D – Dog’s name: The family dog is named Einstein.

E – Essential start your day item: Computer to check my e-mail.

F – Favorite color: Blues, purples, silver and black.

G – Gold or Silver: Silver

H – Height: 5′ 2″ (I think)

I – Instruments you play(ed): I used to play the recorder, but I’m out of practice, and I was never more than passable.

J – Job title: Single Live-in Aunt

K – Kid(s): None of my own; six neices and nephews I live with, six more in another state, and six children down the street who call me Aunt Raquel.

L – Living arrangements: I live with my sister and her husband and their six children. We like to call it a homeschool mom apprenticeship.

M – Mom’s name: Laura

N – Nicknames: I used to get called Rocky. Currently the closest I have to nickname is the name Raqpunzel that I use on a couple of websites.

O – Overnight hospital stay other than birth: Well, I was born in an Amish midwife’s house, so the *only* time I’ve stayed overnight in the hospital is after my appendectomy last fall.

P – Pet Peeve: People who insist on doing something they already know is wrong/bad/stupid. And way too many others.

Q – Quote from a movie:“Had a slight weapons malfunction, but everything’s perfectly alright now. We’re fine, we’re all fine, here, now, thank you. How are you?”

R – Right or left handed: Right

S – Siblings: 3 sisters: Donna, Theresa and Merrianna

T – Time you wake up: Um, I’m just gonna say it varies, and it’s usually later than it should be.

U- Underwater: plants!

V – Vegetable you dislike: Well, it used to be lima beans, but I’m not sure I hate them as much as I used to…

W – Ways you run late: Not allowing enough time for making sure that six children have everything they need to be ready to go.

X – X-rays you’ve had: Teeth, by actual x-ray, plus a CT scan for appendicitis, and a CT scan and numerous internal sonograms for the cyst.

Y – Yummy food you make: Pizza. And doughnuts.

Z – Zoo favorite: Um, I’m pretty sure there are animals…