posting about not posting

Super exciting, I know.

But the weather's been nice.

And I have been playing in the dirt.

With my boys.

And there haven't been any naps.

Except for Sweets. He's a good sleeper.

So?

I've got nothing.

Except beds and beds full of tomatoes and other things.

And a pretty yard.

The End.

a tribute to a missing woman

We here at the dayton time have been feeling a certain emptiness deep in our souls. Or soles. There's a bit of je ne sequoia or something along those lines that causes us to wander around in the dark, bumping into things and feeling sorry for our multiple broken toes.

We find ourselves questioning everything... Cereal for breakfast? Do I really want to drink coffee today? Is the sky blue? How long will the former President be in hiding?

The most important question is this:

WHERE THE BLOODY HELL IS THE STEENK?

I just don't know what to tell the children when they ask Mama, where is the crazy lady with the hair who used to look in our windows and blow us kisses and wink lasciviously at Daddy?

How do you answer such a difficult question?

To ease their troubled minds, The Mister and I hosted the BRINGING STEENKY BACK dance party. I did my best to conjure up The Steenk's Infamous Dancing Face. It made my children smile through their tears.











If anyone has seen Steenky Bee, please email bringingsteenkyback@gmail.com . Hopefully we will be able to pinpoint her location and begin to stalk her accordingly. Be sure to check back here for updates.

And HB is carrying me in that last picture. I know you are wondering.

so i went to a conference this weekend

I spent Friday night and Saturday at the Women of Faith conference in Rochester, NY, and you would know that if you follow me on Twitter so I win this contest I'm in right now to have the most followers on Twitter hint hint. Yes. Click the link, and follow me and mah babeh on the twitters. I will send you pickles if that's what it takes.

I don't usually talk about my beliefs as they pertain to God and God-ish sorts of things. I'm not the evangelist sort of Christian who talks about it much, or beats people about head, neck, chest and knees with a Bible. I have never felt comfortable being around people who like to talk to the random person in the grocery store parking lot about Jesus. Not that there's anything wrong with that... it's just not me. I prefer to live my life according to my beliefs, and to talk about it when the subject arises.

That said, if you ever want to question me about what or why? You should. Really. Here or in an email. Because I wear my big girl pants every day, and I am okay talking about them.

So I went to this conference, where the theme was A Grand New Day. There was talk about things that haven't gone well, loss, grieving, addiction... it was a real upper there for a while. But then a woman got up on the stage and spoke about how the Bible is full of stories about people who just didn't have their shit together. Or their stuff. They also didn't have their stuff together, or their acts together... I'm a classy dame, I tell you.

And the moral of her stories was this: God is knows we are not perfect, and He loves us just the same. There is nothing we can do to cause Him to love us more, just as there is nothing we can do to cause Him to love us any less.

I have heard this said before, but for some reason, it sounded different this weekend.

When I got home, I told The Mister I got two things from the conference:

1. I should find my birth mother.
2. I should write a book.

And yes, I know what the book is going to be about.

And no, I have no idea how to write a book.

But I am going to research both. I'll keep you posted.

emailing it in friday: dear jenny

dear jenny,

i apologize in advance for the lack of capital letters. my left shift key doesn't work and i'm too uncoordinated to use the right one.

four short people is a lot of short people. not too many, just a lot. and did kindergarten morph yours into materialistic little so-and-so's? because my daughter? materialistic. and also a little so-and-so. meh.

i took my team to the tattoo parlor last week when i got my nose pierced. elliott was in the sling when the nice lady crammed a cork up my nose and poked a sharp stick through it. oddly enough, it didn't really hurt, it just smarted and made my eyes water. in that moment, i was even more astounded by the supersensitive body parts people get pierced than i usually am.

but the weirdest thing of all was the excessive amount of taxidermied animals lining the ceiling. it was like somebody sat at the off ramp of noah's ark and picked off every other animal. there was one of everything. well, not an elephant. okay, maybe not one of *everything* but there were a ton of critters there. alright, not a *ton* either, but you get my point i'm sure. the kids liked the sample tattoos on the walls. wee man said, mama, why does that mermaid lady have stars instead of nipples? are they tattoos?

yep. something like that.

and in my defense, i had taken them to the zoo for the entire day before i took them to the tattoo parlor, and the trip to the tattoo parlor was much shorter than the visit to the zoo. so i'm really not a terrible mom, just one with questionable motivation some days.

let me know how you are. hopefully my shift key will be fixed soon so i can send you a proper email.

xo

pd

why i'm going to the pediatrician's office in my pajamas

first, i would like to address the not-actually-helpful hints some of you cough*churchpunkmom*cough tossed my way about Using The Right Pinky Shift Key.   which is what i used to type the whole Using The Right Pinky Shift Key both times i just typed it.  it's just awkward, alright?  about as awkward as actually typing awkward was each of the three times i typed it, and it just keeps getting awkwarder.  even more awkwarder than the word awkwarder.

moving on to my second item, why i'm going to the pediatrician's office...

because elliott has this raspy little voice when he cries that sounds just awful.  and also? the boogers.  the boogers have been visiting his nasal area for more than 10 days, and they are thick and yellowish-greenish, kind of like what a mountain dew milk shake might look like if anyone was ever gross enough to make and consume such a thing.  the thought of a mountain dew milkshake is actually more grosser than the boogers right now, as the boogers and i have a special bond.  and that bond is called THEY ALSO ARE ON MY CLOTHING.  

item the third... in my pajamas.

i wore a skirt yesterday because my bashed-to-hell knee couldn't handle wearing pants.  and walking around with no pants is not super conducive to chasing a certain 2.5 year-old boy down the street, and also wearing no pants is considered, well, an invitation to, ummm, well, if you need me to tell you, maybe i shouldn't explain it to you.

side note: why is it that any word ending in IN i add an extra G at the end? probably because i'm not from the south?

anyway.  jeans hurt my knee.  and maybe you're right, maybe i'm being a big baby, but my knee freaking hurts and it is unpleasant.  also i cannot kneel down on the ground to retrieve items that have been thrown in my general direction because it hurts and also my knee doesn't bend that much.  and no, i'm still not going to post a picture.

so, yes, it's way late in the afternoon as i type this, and i'm still in my comfy pink pajama pants and The Mister's nasty old supersoftie black T-shirt with paint (dry) all over it.  i was cleaning today, and making peanut butter, and carrying people back to time out, and holding my little Raspy-utan because he just wants to be held and can you blame him?  and i've been trying to do a good job twittering today, because, hello! i want to win the Hotslings/Miracle Blanket game. and i had to wash diapers today, and also i had to take down the play tent in the living room because certain short boys who can walk were being ridiculous and i'm mean, so when i went to toss the pieces and parts of the play tent in the pack and play, because i'm, you know, busy, and that was a good place to stick it, i found a nasty, wet, poop-filled elliott diaper, sitting there, in its cover, creating a stink.  eeeeeeewwwwwwwww.  i feel confident that i was not the person who put the diaper there, on the baby's comfycozy sheepskin (i just typed sheepsking) to rot, because i am quite fond of this new invention they have for wet cloth diapers and it is called a WETBAG.  and the idea behind the glorious invention called the wetbag is that you put the used diapers in it.  you know, SO THEY CAN GET WASHED WITH THE REST OF THE NASTY DIAPERS.  

also? i forgot to eat lunch. thank the good Lord that wee man and i made the single most amazing cake i have ever eaten in my life.  because cake, and cake alone have been sustaining me today.  also coffee.  and skittles.  don't ask.

oh... and all of you who commented that you were laughing at the story of me falling on my head and breaking myself? you're great.  i like comments, and i love to make you laugh.  seriously.  there wasn't an ounce of snark or sass in that statement.  

now please excuse me while i go eat more cake.

i only get hurt on tuesdays

today started out pretty normally.

but before i get into it, i apologize for the completely inappropriate lack of capital letters and punctuation other than periods.  the left shift key on my keyboard isn't working and i don't know how to use the one on the right.  so there.

the baby slept well, hb slept well, wee man and miss o slept well, the mister slept well.  i slept on the edge of the bed, carefully poised to neither fall off the bed into the co-sleeper nor roll to my right on to hb.  who has claimed my bed for his own.  meh.

miss o got on the bus, no muss, no fuss.

i got a little work done, and even showered.  because my scalp had this itch thing going on and it was fifteen kinds of wrong and nasty.  possibly sixteen kinds, but i was so grossed out i stopped counting.  or ninety kinds.  so. ick.

we went to the playground, i had some adult conversation... no, not adult-themed conversation, just a conversation with another adult.  wee man can do the monkey bars pretty much by himself.  and hb can jump off things onto my head.  it's awesome.  and elliott... well, he can sleep in the hotslings like a champion.

we went to the grocery store and i bought reese's pb cups and skittles in the bulk bags.  for myself.  the children are under the impression that i am going to share but that belief just adds them to the growing numbers of misguided youth in america.

we stopped to see the mister at work.  that was nice.  he told me i was the hot wife.  i was having good hair today.  because i washed it.  that always helps.  and also it was about 80 percent humidity, so my hair was about 80 percent curly.  yes, the correlation is that spot on.

we got home.  whilst i took elliott in the house, i heard the garbage truck.  a certain person cough-mister-dayton-cough did not pull the waste management container out to the street.  of course, i'm just calling it a waste management container because it manages our waste, not because it's necessarily the company who fetches our waste. cough-yes-it-cough-is-cough. i ran up the stairs in the house to fetch the stinky bag of overnight pee slings, ran down the stairs and out the front door.  i ran down the sidewalk.

except i didn't run down the sidewalk.

my left ankle bitch-slapped me by rolling in a certain direction that is unnatural, and i flew, headfirst, down the sidewalk.  oh yes, yes i did.

and the garbage man saw me.

and so did the two guys putting siding on our neighbor's house.

and so did my kids.

it was awesome except for the part where, you know, i couldn't stand up, and my head was resting on a bag full of stinky vile diapers, and the only pair of jeans that really fits me had a two holes in the knee and were covered in blood, and also the huge gross open wounds on my right knee.

go ahead and thank me for not posting a picture.  because those suckers are oozing the yuck.

i'm walking around a little because i don't know how to sit down, and also i'm in this twittering contest and i'm in the lead right now with the number of followers and i think that's cool and the mac laptop in our possession is crap and i can't tweet from the sofa.  

what... you didn't know i was in a twitter contest sponsored by hotslings and miracle blanket... well hop your little self on to twitter and sign in or sign up and follow me, i'm @Mom_17 .

i like winning things.  and there's good things to win in this game.  so go follow me, please, pretty please.

also i'm walking around because i told a friend i'd make a bunch of bread for her this week and i don't know how to back out of things.  also i can't really back out of the bread making because it was half made when my ankle hated on me.

it feels like it's on fire right now. 

at least i'll be cozy warm in bed tonight.

certain tragedy often causes us to fight.

In light of the tragic murder of Dr. Tiller in Kansas, I am re-posting just read the whole thing, from October, 2008.  This post provoked interesting comments the first time around, also quite a lot of email (some pleasant, some not actually pleasant).  Be advised that I will delete nasty troll-ish comments faster than you can flip me off.

****************************

Abortion.

Are you making the cringe face now? Because truth be told? I am. The word itself makes me terribly uncomfortable. The procedure? I can't even think about what that is like. Mostly because I don't know. And also, because I don't want to know.

This isn't the post where I defend abortion. I will not defend abortion. This? This is the post where I say abortion isn't the problem.

Abortion is one symptom of a culture that has ceased to care. A culture so self-centered and wanting and lacking in kindness that people are without hope. And without support. And without a soft place to fall.

Think I've missed the mark? Look around. Bigger, better, more, more, moremoremoremoremore. 90-hour work weeks, unbelieveable amounts of debt both personal and national, predatory advertising geared toward children. People do not have the time to rest. There is no time! Not enough! Not a minute for real, tangible relationships, just a quick comment here, an IM there, txtmsgs. It's a race. A race for everything.

A race where the winner drops dead of exhaustion and the losers walk away alone, and with nothing.

This is the society in which we live. A society that makes it too easy to drop off the radar. A society that can't seem to find the answers to the problems that appear when person after person becomes lost and alone.

It's sad.

Abortion makes me sad. The procedure itself breaks my heart. I was born a just after Roe v. Wade made abortion a right. I was born to a 16 year old child whose only contact with the birth father was at the time of conception. That's a lot to think about, no? If there was anyone in the mid-to-late 1970's who was a 'good candidate' to have an abortion, it was my birth mother. Lucky for me, it seems she chose to hide her pregnancy instead of ending it.

Overturning Roe v. Wade will not make abortion to go away. It will make a bad situation worse. It will alienate, stigmatize, and cause suffering of the worst kind: Suffering alone and in silence.

Abortion is one end result of a flawed system.

• Sex education. Teaching children ALL the ways not to get pregnant. Let's be real: aside from the power-motivated sex crime, people really like having sex, and they are going to have sex. This includes children. Providing contraceptives will not cause children who aren't having sex to have sex. It will protect the ones that are.
• The media should chill the hell out with all the sex they are selling to children. It's enough, already. And parents?
• Parents need to get a grip. What are your children watching on television? What sort of trashy dolls are your daughters playing with? What sort of conversation goes on inside your home? Be the parent. Not the friend. People don't have babies to increase their social circle. They get hobbies and join clubs. You aren't going to be more credible in your child's eyes if you try to be a pal. You are going to be credible by being a hard-ass with open and loving arms. It will suck for a while, but you'll survive.
• Organizations who are opposed to abortion should put their fingers away, roll up their sleeves, and get to work supporting pregnant women. All pregnant women. There is so much intimidation and condemnation from the Right-To-Life crowd, but there's not much said about the Right-to-Lifers trying to change anything but legislation.

And the people who intimidate and condemn in the name of Jesus? Grieve me to the core of my being. Because the Jesus I know and serve was not about that. The Jesus I know hung out with the people who were pointed at. He spent time with the people who were alone and needy. He loved. He cared.

Those WWJD bracelets/bumper stickers/random paraphernalia have infiltrated our society, yet the asking of the question, "What WOULD Jesus Do?" doesn't seem to happen often enough to make me believe that asking the question is the point. I don't know exactly what Jesus would do, except maybe cry for all the broken people living in our world. But I do know this:

In His last moments, as he hung on the cross dying, the criminal hanging next to Him realized Jesus was God, and asked to be forgiven for the things he had done wrong in his life. He was forgiven. And, if you believe what the scripture has to say, he was welcomed into Heaven. There was no finger pointing, no inquisition, no judgement. Despite all he had done, he was loved.

There is a serious lack of love going on in this nation. There are too many people looking to advance agendas, and there is too little consideration for others. Maybe, just maybe, if we put our fingers away, and got down to the business of protecting and educating and setting people up for success and learning how to care about each other, our nation would be as great as we know it can be.