hello

Apparently I'm due for a new post.

I can promise you without equivocation, though, that if each time you came here looking for mindless drivel you went instead to Stuff Christians Like, your lives would be enriched.

Thank you for your prayers, though, and your not-so-subtle prompting (in the case of my darling oldest daughter). I think having my hubby actually leave his first ever comment since I wrote my first post in January 2005 was the shocking event that finally motivated me. I'm not even going to attempt to bring you up to date. If my life has not been interesting enough even to myself, I am quite certain no one would be entertained in the least in the retelling of it.

It hasn't just been a blog writing drought. I haven't read anything, either, even from my favorites. So if Pioneer Woman is pregnant or if BooMama has dyed her hair blue, I wouldn't know. It's been a pretty comprehensive computer avoidance on the whole. Weird. And unexplainable, so I won't try.

Danny is done with school. He graduates this Thursday. He's so happy. Susannah was asking me what my favorite day of the year is and I really have to say that for me each year, it's the last day of school. It is just so freeing -- so exhilarating. The thought of a whole summer ahead to sleep in and laze around eating popsicles with no schedule and no demands. Christmas is fun, but Christmas is work, and expectations and shopping. The other kids still have two more weeks, which seems unbearable at this point. I don't think kids should have to be in school in June.

My mom has found her purpose in life -- sweeping our driveway. She's a sweeping zealot. This time of year we have all kinds of stuff falling from our abundant tree population, but by golly it doesn't have a chance to accumulate with my mom and her mighty broom. She keeps a running "whew, whew, whew, whew.." going while she's sweeping. And of course we praise her up and down and thank her profusely. Then she beams.

Her Fox News watching has subsided a little. I think her desire to be with the rest of the family is outweighing her drive to keep up with the most fair and balanced reporting ever. Last night she sat on the couch in our living room and laughed and laughed to Zoey 101. All by herself.

She used to enjoy American Idol. It made Susannah so mad when she would say every time about Simon,"Awww...He shouldn't say that. That's mean." And each and every time Susannah would say, "He's just being honest, Grandma. That's his job. Sometimes he says nice things." And then Susannah would roll her eyes at me and make an exasperated, infuriated face. It was funny to me that Susannah's response was just as predictable as Grandma's comments.

So let me ask you this -- if you had a 73-year-old mother with Alzheimers, who had a tentative grasp on the real world at best, and it was the season finale of the 4th season of Lost, the most complicated, puzzling show ever viewed, and she had never seen even one episode before -- would you think it was A Grand Plan to let her watch with you? Yeah, that's what I thought, too. But she insisted, and was on the verge of getting all feisty and "you're certainly not MY boss"-ish. So we had no choice. We warned her that it would be confusing and troubling, and that we wouldn't be able to explain it.

"Whose baby is that?" "Why is he doing THAT?" " Are those the good guys?" "Well that's weird." "What is she talking about?" "Why would they want to go back to the island?" "How did she get electricity? I thought she was on a raft." "Is he a bad guy?"

And once or twice when I let out with an anguished "NOOOOOO!!!" (at events transpiring onscreen) she said, "Well, I don't think it's really happening. I think it's just fiction."

Whew.