Month: January 2009

  • Maybe It’s a Blessing?

    I’ve somehow gotten myself sick, the illness that makes you sleep poorly with visions of chicken pox, baking cookies, and endless driving cavorting through you restless head.  It’s the kind of disease that makes you want to be mean and curl up and cry all at the same time. Of course, you have to sneeze through all of it with a feeble cough like a dainty consumption patient sniffing ragweed.

    I’m not alone in my contagion. Hunter and Wit have head colds, and Gockle has some weird illness which is like a cold, but he just randomly throws up every now and again.  But, there is no fever, little dampening of spirits, and he seems to be able to eat. 

    Tomorrow starts school again, which will be quite a challenge since we’ve been sleeping in until ten or twelve on some days.  But, perhaps these illnesses are a blessing. I have a perfect excuse for everyone to go to bed early and to take it pretty easy tomorrow. And, I have yellow cake, hot tea, a soft mattress, hot water with bubbles, lots of books, my magic pajamas and robe, and a snow cone machine.

    Are you a sickie, too? What’s making you feel cozy?

  • January 3rd

    Some dates stick out in your mind. September 11. December 7. July 4.  It only takes an instant–a wrong turn of a car wheel, the test results called in, a last breath–to change a date from ordinary into laden with meaning.

    January 3rd is just a day to me, just an ordinary day. And for that, I am praising God!

    Now, January 1 was more memorable. This year we had 119 people for the New Year’s Eve party and 18 people slept over. (Word of my Jiffy Mix pancakes must be getting out.)   With that many people, there were a lot of mini-parties going on. There was the “stand in the kitchen and talk” group. (Photo courtesy the panorama feature on my new Christmas camera, which turned out to be defective and had to be mailed back to Kodak.)




    The “women playing games” group. (Of which I was a part and have no pictures. So here’s some of the food instead.)

    The “college students chatting and collapsing” group.





    And there was a group of teens having a fine time in the basement playing dress up…




    And seeing who could hold him/herself horizontal on a pole in the basement for the longest
    time, among other things.





    A few seconds before it was time for the ball to drop, people tried to gather around the two televisions and mostly succeeded.



    When the Texas Hold Em’ game finally ended around 4:40 and the last car full left, kids started to collapse in the living room.  I read them all some bedtime stories (Tales of Beedle the Bard)…

     


    And then kicked the boys into the basement where nine of them got to smash onto three mattresses and the girls upstairs onto the various couches, chairs, and carpeted floors. I got up to bed around 5:20, but falling asleep was difficult. (So much caffeine!)


    I was surprised to see all the boys troop out of the basement promptly at 9:30 eagerly searching for pancakes. Those that stayed long enough got hotdogs and sauerkraut for lunch because, as my mom once answered when I asked her why we ate sauerkraut and pork on New Year’s Day, “If you don’t, you will die.”

    Happy 2009!