Billy Goats Gruff

Once there were three little kids walking along a beautiful trail. They happened upon an old bridge and needed to cross it to the field of tiny daisies.
Trip-trip, trip-trip, trip-trip, skipped the first. She reached the middle when a booming voice echoed, “Whose that tripping over my bridge!”

She stopped, her eyes wide and looked back at daddy, and then she giggled.

“I’m going to come and gobble you up!” hollered the voice as the skipping turned into fleeing footsteps almost drowned out in squeals.

Then came the second. She came along with a STOMP, STOMP, STOMP. And when she reached the middle the booming voice echoed, “Whose that stomping over my bridge!”

She stopped and then rapidly stomped her feet even harder shaking dirt from the bridge making the voice cough, “I’m going to come and gobble *cough* you up!”

“Oh, no you won’t, I’ll gobble you up!” she replied.

“Not if I gobble you first!” and with an evil laugh a hand shot up and snatched at her ankle sending her shrieking for safety.

Finally the third walked onto the bridge with a steady clomp, clomp, clomp. She knew what was coming.

“Whose that clomping over my bridge?”

“Is that you mom?”

“No, it’s a mean old troll and I’m coming up to gobble you up!”

“Nu-uh.”

“I’m not?”

“Nope.”

As her footsteps disappear and I begin to dislodge myself a ferocious whomping of feet sound upon my bridge.

“Oh,my,” says the troll, somewhat surprised. “Who is that whomping on my bridge!”

“It is I, the daddy billy goat, and I eat trolls!”

So, down the trail I was chased by my hubby billy goat and his kids 3.

Rafter Tag

I clung to the wire side of the corncrib as my foot slipped out the square hole and felt my body weight pull on my hands as my feet dangled. I didn’t screech or cry out, I was used to this; it was exciting. I loved to feel the wind whip around me as I climbed up the open sides of the corncrib. My foot found another hole and I continued to scale the wire wall until I reached the rafters above.

The corncrib was really just a frame of a building with wire in place of walls. It had a full roof over the rafters, and down on the ground the rabbit hutches were housed. Some one a long time before had hauled some boards up to the rafters forming a makeshift platform. It was a great hangout, high above the ground and with no walls the view was beautiful, if a bit cool and drafty.

I could sit on the platforms and look out over the duck pond at the barn. I scanned over blueberry bushes and fields, woods and marsh. I could daydream for hours up there in quiet solitude. There were days though, when my brothers and I would find ourselves up there growing bored. One day we developed a new game, and rightly named it rafter tag.

In our hours on the platforms we slowly began to venture out onto the rafters themselves. We discovered that while standing on a rafter we could reach our hands up above our heads and cling onto the beams in the roof. Using the beam above us for balance we would shuffle along the rafters. Slowly this evolved into games of tag.

Paul tapped me on my shoulder, “you’re it!” and off he shuffled. I took in the position of my two brothers and quickly shuffled after Kimball. Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, nab.
“Hah! Gotcha!”
“Whoa! Watch it, don’t tag to hard,” as I shuffled off in the opposite direction. It’s a wonder any of us are still alive to tell the story, I know my mom never would have let us up there if she knew what we were up to. So, do you know what your kids are up to? Heh. 🙂

What Jacob Taught Me

I have learned a lot from all of my children, but I can be a slow learner. A lot of the lessons I was being taught I don’t think I really learned until Jacob was born. His birthday is in 2 1/2 weeks. It seems almost impossible that he is nearly one. I played with all the kids today and gave them lots of hugs, but my hubby and I went on a date this evening and I didn’t get to snuggle Jacob to sleep.

When we got home I went in his room. “You’ll wake him,” he said, and I shrugged. I didn’t care, I needed to hold my boy. And I thought about what Jacob taught me:

• Jacob taught me to enjoy the moment
• He taught me not to take the baby stages for granted
• He taught me that the house will wait, but babies won’t
• He taught me to love with all your heart those closest to you because we don’t how long it might last
• He taught me that miracles really do happen everyday
• He taught me that by experiencing sorrow we can know true joy
• He taught me to turn fear into faith
• He taught me that God loves us and has an intricate plan for us
• He taught me the awsome power of prayer
• Jacob taught me that nothing is easy but it is definitely worth it
• He taught me patience
• He taught me that being a mom is the most excruciating and wonderful thing in the world
• He showed me intensity in emotion that I never knew existed
• He taught me that it is ok to cry
• He showed me strength I didn’t know any of us had

I could list many more and I am sure I will learn much more in the years to come. Though I learned through Jacob and our experience, the lessons came from a loving Heavenly Father.

Jacob has his heart cath this coming Friday. They will thread a cathetar through his femoral artery starting in his groin up to his heart to get an inside look. They want to be sure that everything is on track. It will just be a day procedure, with a slight chance of an overnight stay, but unlikely. While we are confident that all will go well and we will get a good report, we appreciate any prayers sent our way. 🙂

Personality Tests 101

Well, I suppose I’ll post it. I found it on Karen’s blog and I was also intrigued by the change when she did the test as she was as a child. So I tried that too. While not everything fits, I was surprised (it’s just two questions after all), though I do find that a lot of my childhood things still linger very strongly.

So, here is me now:

The Adventurer

you chose AX – your Enneagram type is SEVEN. “I am happy and open to new things” Adventurers are energetic, lively, and optimistic. They want to contribute to the world.How to Get Along with Me Give me Companionship, affection, and freedom. Engage with me in stimulating conversation and laughter. Appreciate my grand visions and listen to my stories. Don’t try to change my style. Accept me the way I am. Be responsible for youself. I dislike clingy or needy people. Don’t tell me what to do. What I Like About Being a Seven being optimistic and not letting life’s troubles get me down being spontaneous and free-spirited being outspoken and outrageous. It’s part of the fun. being generous and trying to make the world a better place having the guts to take risks and to try exciting adventures having such varied interests and abilities What’s Hard About Being a Seven not having enough time to do all the things I want not completing things I start not being able to profit from the benefits that come from specializing; not making a commitment to a career having a tendency to be ungrounded; getting lost in plans or fantasies feeling confined when I’m in a one-to-one relationship Sevens as Children Often are action oriented and adventuresome drum up excitement prefer being with other children to being alone finesse their way around adults dream of the freedom they’ll have when they grow up Sevens as Parents are often enthusiastic and generous want their children to be exposed to many adventures in life may be too busy with their own activities to be attentive And here is me then: The Romantic you chose BY – your Enneagram type is FOUR. “I am unique” Romantics have sensitive feelings and are warm and perceptive. How to Get Along with Me Give me plenty of compliments. They mean a lot to me. Be a supportive friend or partner. Help me to learn to love and value myself. Respect me for my special gifts of intuition and vision. Though I don’t always want to be cheered up when I’m feeling melancholy, I sometimes like to have someone lighten me up a little. Don’t tell me I’m too sensitive or that I’m overreacting! What I Like About Being a Four my ability to find meaning in life and to experience feeling at a deep level my ability to establish warm connections with people admiring what is noble, truthful, and beautiful in life my creativity, intuition, and sense of humor being unique and being seen as unique by others having aesthetic sensibilities being able to easily pick up the feelings of people around me What’s Hard About Being a Four experiencing dark moods of emptiness and despair feelings of self-hatred and shame; believing I don’t deserve to be loved feeling guilty when I disappoint people feeling hurt or attacked when someone misundertands me expecting too much from myself and life fearing being abandoned obsessing over resentments longing for what I don’t have Fours as Children Often have active imaginations: play creatively alone or organize playmates in original games are very sensitive feel that they don’t fit in believe they are missing something that other people have attach themselves to idealized teachers, heroes, artists, etc. become antiauthoritarian or rebellious when criticized or not understood feel lonely or abandoned (perhaps as a result of a death or their parents’ divorce) Fours as Parents help their children become who they really are support their children’s creativity and originality are good at helping their children get in touch with their feelings are sometimes overly critical or overly protective are usually very good with children if not too self-absorbed Renee Baron & Elizabeth Wagele The Enneagram Made Easy Discover the 9 Types of People HarperSanFrancisco, 1994, 161 pages

Ambush!!

When I turned 13 I distinctly remember a card from my sister and brother-in-law. I don’t really remember what it looked like or most of what it said, just one comment made by Reed: “Teen on the loose! Watch out, she’ll shellac you to the wall with hairspray!”

I would like to blame my lack of posting on being attacked by the newest teenager, but I can’t, and while I would like to claim some honorable excuse such as nursing sick children, or cleaning the house (which I did do, actually) I’m afraid it would be less than truthful.

See, I’ve got a new toy . . . A laminator. Just the $25 special at Wal-Mart, but it works great. I purchased some heavy laminating pouches (the weight they have at kinkos and lazerquick, nice and durable) from a co-conspirator. I have turned into a crazed laminating fiend; plastic coating anything that dares cross my path. But it doesn’t stop there, oh no, I like to admire the objects in their laminated glory and feel the stiffness and slickness of their synthetic beauty. Oh, yes this is a disease, there should be groups for this. I have become . . .THE LAMINATOR
So, Reed, you don’t need to worry about hairspray anymore, but lamination, well . . . . muahahaha . . .

Oh, and you may ask why I happen to be writing today, should that be the case? Well, I have run out of laminating sheets . . . *sniff* Withdrawl can be tough . . .

Warrant

Weekly Anamnesis #12

Like Karen, when I read this week’s topic I immediately thought of a police warrant; which made me remember . . . .

“I can’t remember it! I have looked all through the book and I can’t find the blasted thing anywhere,” I said in frustration as I slammed the book onto the table.

My best friend, Julie, shook her head in dismay, “I can’t find it either. We have to think of something.”

We were sophomores in high school and were working on a math project that would make or break our grades. We needed to build a kind of sphere using different geometric shapes. We needed to figure the angle of an octagon and couldn’t find the formula anywhere. We were desperate. I lifted my head and looked out her front window, and there it was. It was like the heavens opened and a beam of light shown upon it illuminating my mind. . . Well, maybe not, but it did give me an idea.

“We’ll measure the stop sign!” I cried.
“We’ll what?” Julie asked incredulous.
“We’ll take our protractor and go outside and measure the stop sign.”
“What if someone sees us?”
“We’ll go in disguise!” I was feeling more brilliant by the minute.
Julie knew well my wild dorky schemes and rather reluctantly asked, “Disguised as what?”
“We’ll dress up like spies. Do you have trench coats, sunglasses, and hats?”

Julie started laughing, which always reminded me of a chipmunk and procured the necessary items. We donned our spy gear and snuck out the front door. We quietly tiptoed across the street and reached our destination: THE STOP SIGN.

“Dang!” I said.
“What?”
“It’s too high, we need a step ladder.”

Julie groaned and we scurried back inside to obtain the underground step ladder with highly enhanced function and set out in our dangerous cloak-and-dagger pursuit across the street.

“What if we are caught?” Julie asked.
“What?”
“What if a police officer or someone drives by and catches us.”
I shrugged as if it was all so obvious as I said, “We’ll simply state that we are undercover spies on a covert operation to gather secrets for the KGB.”
“Ummm, yeah,” and the chipmunk giggle surfaced again.

I climbed the step ladder with such stealth that it amazed even my self. Protractor in hand, I furtively gathered the classified information.

“Got it!”

As we turned to run back to the house we realized that our operation had been compromised: Julie’s brother had a CAMERA!!!! In horror we ran back to the house but not before we were caught on film.

Oh, and measuring the octagon really didn’t work after all. I suppose we warranted that. We finally found the formula and did it the right way . . .

Plans

We had planned to go to the mountain today. Even with the sudden cold weather we had hopes of taking the children sledding. We thought we might not be able to go, so we planned something else just in case. Plans are made to be broken, they say.

Paul carried Dorothy out of church yesterday with a sudden onset of a 102.5 fever. They called him into primary because she was shaking in her chair. And the never ending rocketing commet took a 4 hour nap and went to bed at night without batting an eye. She was over it by this afternoon. Now Emily has a fever or 102. So, we stayed home today and watched “Wallace and Grommit.”

Two down, two to go (let’s just hope Paul and I don’t get it). And I, I am going stir crazy and want to go hunting pirates, but there are none to be found . . . all are suffering from sea sickness upon the Jolly Roger. 🙂

Of Water and Pipes and Such

The building was built in 1910 with narrow dimly lit hallways. The carpet was dark green and new and the walls had a fresh coat of paint. The plumbing was original to the building and the elevator was original as well, though put in later than 1910 I believe. It was an old elevator where you haul the heavy door open and slide the heavy metal screen to the side. It would jerk and shimmy all the way up or down. Every time I set foot in that elevator I wanted to break into dance like in the movie, “thoroughly Modern Millie.” It was located in downtown Portland two blocks away from the university with a funky little love shop in the basement, which I think is a cafe now. It was the first apartment complex we managed and Elizabeth was a baby. We had one of the larger two bedroom apartments which was still tiny. The closets were abnormally large and one was converted into the baby’s bedroom. The main room was hardwood and the kitchen barely had enough room to stand in. We couldn’t even cook a full size pizza in the oven and never could get the fridge open all the way. We would send Elizabeth to my mother’s while we scraped the paint, not knowing if it was lead based or not. That building held a lot of adventure. Great friends, druggies, fights, and water problems. Paul learned a lot about water problems in the six months we were there.

We had been at our new apartment complex for over 5 months now and were getting ready for baby number two. The apartments had been sold to a new owner and things were not going well. This complex had water issues too, but not quite as bad. We desperately needed a new water faucet in our bathroom sink and after pleading with the maintenance man (my hubby) my wish was granted.

I planted myself, and my oversized tummy, on the floor and chatted with Paul as he worked. I was uncomfortable, 8 1/2 months pregnant, and felt like I had a giant oversized beach ball shoved under my shirt. Paul was nearly done, tightening down the last little bit when the water shutoff snapped. A jet of water propelled itself into his chest slamming him against the door and making me jump. He battle the stream back and held the water at bay with his hand.

“I need to you to go shut off the water. It is out in front of the first building, down in the ground,” he tells me.

So off I scamper (? yeah, uh huh, hee hee) through the parking lot, barefoot and pregnant at the fastest waddle-run I can manage. Oh, it was pouring down rain too. I get to the shutoff and it really was down in the ground. The cover was easy enough to move but then a problem arose. How do I get around my beach ball to get all the way down into the ground to turn the water off? I’m not quite sure how I managed it, I just know I must provided an interesting sight: hugely pregnant woman with butt in air (that’s for you Fourth Frett – hee hee) and my arm disappearing into the mud and muck.

We got the problem fixed and we moved a month later, on the same day that Dot was born . . .

Curse of the Brussell Sprout (or Mystery of the Pea)

We had a huge garden growing up, an acre maybe? I just remember it being huge. When we would talk about having a rock party, it wasn’t the kind with wild blasting music, dancing, and strobe light. It was derocking the garden. Walking through with wagons and pails plucking rocks out of the dirt in the early spring so Dad could till it and get it ready for planting. And oh the weeding. Mounds and mounds of weeds were pulled. I would ride in the wagon on top of the mounds of weeds out to the compost pile where we dumped them. Dad grew a number of things in the garden. I loved walking between the rows of corn that seemed to reach way into the sky. Unfortunately the one thing that he could get to grow the best apparently was brussell sprouts. Now, I hope I don’t offend any of you brussell sprout lovers (I am so sorry for you, hee hee), but my dad did not have a sense of smell or taste and thus did not realize how truly terrible these things were. Even my mother couldn’t handle them.

I remember my dad getting upset because his garden just wasn’t producing all the vegetables he thought it should be. The peas were the worst, the plants were always bare! He could never explain it. It didn’t look like animals were getting at them, the plants were virtually untouched, just no pods. But the brussel sprouts always did well and produced like crazy.

One day dad was in the hayloft and stuffed behind some bales of hay he found two paper bags. They were chocked full, up to the brim, with empty pea pods.

We didn’t have nearly as many brussel sprouts after that and the pea plants mysteriously began to produce again . . .

I never knew!!

I saw this on Hazel’s Blog and couldn’t resist:

Ten Top Trivia Tips about GoofyJ!

1. It is bad luck to walk under GoofyJ.
2. GoofyJ can last longer without water than a camel can.
3. Americans discard enough GoofyJ to rebuild their entire commercial air fleet every 3 months!
4. The Vikings believed that the Northern lights were caused by GoofyJ as she rode out to collect warriors slain in battle!
5. During World War II, Americans tried to train GoofyJ to drop bombs.
6. In Japan it is considered rude to talk with GoofyJ in your mouth.
7. If you break GoofyJ, you will get seven years of bad luck.
8. GoofyJ is the sacred animal of Thailand!
9. The fingerprints of GoofyJ are virtually indistinguishable from those of humans, so much so that they could be confused at a crime scene.
10. If you toss GoofyJ 10000 times, she will not land heads 5000 times, but more like 4950, because her head weighs more and thus ends up on the bottom.

I am interested in – do tell me aboutherhimitthem

Some extra funny points: I have always had a hard time drinking enough water, I really do have viking ancestors, as I have posted recently I have been to Japan, and I certainly hope I am not tossed 10,000 times because if I am I will surely break and would hate to cause anyone bad luck! Hee Hee

I had way too much fun plugging in names and Paul and I dissolved into riotous laughter on many occasion, I think my favorite was in one when I typed in Julia, it said “The average human spends about 30 days during their life in Julia.” Man, how I wish that were true, no more of this 9 months thing!!! hee hee hee

(oh, and they’re even funnier when you read them out loud . . . it helps you realize just how ridiculous you are . . . oops, did I say you?, gee, I should have said they . . . . )