Grab your hankies

Fair warning. The story I’m about to share might make you grab a box of tissue.

I spent Sunday morning wrestling the Demon Baby and the Jealous Toddler, trying to keep them from crawling around the pews and screaming, “Mommy, GO!” at the top of their lungs. :angry: At the end of Mass, I was a bit of a wreck, mentally chastizing my husband for leaving me to deal with the minions alone while he drove his father back to Raleigh.

In the parking lot, I saw a familiar face, a woman I’d met a few Sundays before. She has a daughter in my son’s religious education class. When she saw us, she said to her daughter, “Look, there’s your friend!” I smiled and took my son over to say hello.

Darling Son was sulking since I’d given him the Evil Eye during Mass, threatening bodily disaster if he continued swinging on other people’s arms during the Our Father prayer. He wouldn’t say hello, so I apologized on his behalf. I offered a friendly grin and said, “He’s just mad because he got into trouble at church. These guys can be a real handful.”

The woman gave a half-smile and said, “I only have my daughter.” I remarked that she was lucky because two children were a real adventure. I added, “I wish my husband were here so we could divide and conquer.”

A wistful smile crossed her face. “I wish my husband were here, too. He was killed a few weeks ago.”

Stunned doesn’t begin to describe how I felt for her. I didn’t know what to say except, “I’m so sorry to hear it. ” Tears welled up in her eyes and she said, “This holiday is going to be really hard.” Looking down at her daughter, she remarked, “Today is her fourth birthday.”

I just about started bawling with her. How do you tell a four-year-old that her daddy won’t be there to celebrate her birthday? That he won’t be there to see her on the school bus to kindgergarten, or later walk her down the aisle? How do you explain that?

The woman said, “Now I’m glad I just have her. I don’t know know what I’d do if I had two children.” I replied, “At least you have a part of your husband with you always.”

After we left, I talked to my son in the car and asked him to be very kind to the girl. “She lost her daddy,” I explained. “He’s gone to heaven.”

“Don’t worry, Mommy,” he said with a smile. “I’ll go find him for her.”

***
And on another note, by popular request, here’s the Derby Pie recipe:
1 single baked pie crust (you can bake at 450 for 9-11 minutes. Prick the crust generously to avoid bubbles).
3 eggs
1 c. brown sugar
1/4 c. flour
1/4 c. melted butter or margarine
2 tablespoons bourbon
1/2 tsp. vanilla
3/4 c. semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 c. chopped pecans
Topping:
1/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 c. whipping cream
2 tablespoons powdered sugar
2 teaspoons bourbon

In a mixing bowl beat eggs until well-blended. Add brown sugar, 1/4 cup flour, butter, 2 tablespoons bourbon and vanilla; beat until blended. Stir in 3/4 c. chocolate chips and pecans. Pour into cooled baked crust. Bake at 350 F for 25-30 minutes or until filling is set. Cool. In a small saucepan over low heat, melt 1/4 c. chocolate chips, stirring constantly until smooth. Drizzle over pie. Refrigerate until serving time. Just before serving, beat whipping cream with powdered sugar and 2 teaspoons bourbon until stiff peaks form. Top tart with whipped cream. Garnish with chocolate dipped nuts, if desired.

**Michelle’s note: I prefer serving the pie warm from the oven. You can top it with the bourbon whipped cream while it’s warm. It tastes just like a warm chocolate chip cookie. :woot: :hungry:

Shop ‘Til You Drop

Yesterday, I did something I’ve never done before. Yes, folks, I went to Black Friday. :confused2:

Even though I love the Christmas holidays, I few Christmas shopping as akin to slicing off my arm with a butter knife. It may be that since I have 10 nieces and nephew to shop for, my family, grandparents, and so on–I just feel exhausted at the end of it. I feel like I can’t enjoy Christmas and relax because of that axe hanging over my head. So this year, I decided that I would get it over with, and literally shop until I finished all of it.

I woke up at 5:20 a.m. and drove to the shopping center. At 5:45, the parking lots were FULL. Okay, so I was expecting crowds, but I didn’t believe most people were capable at getting up that early. Clearly, I was wrong. But here are some tips I learned from the front lines:

1. Get your shopping cart in the parking lot. There aren’t any in the store because the 429 people who got there before you have swiped all of them.

2. Bring a list. Know what you’re looking for and have a plan of attack. Shopping on Black Friday is like maneuvering a battle field. There are SALES, people, and you have to move swiftly to get the good deals (Note: I bought both Harry Potter movies for $5.88 each). :woot:

3. Befriend the people in front of you and behind you in line. You’re going to be there a while, so you might as well be friendly. And, as I learned, when you see something you forgot, they’ll save your place in line while you run and snatch it.

4. Do NOT bring small children. Or any children. They don’t have the capacity to wait in line longer than four minutes. If you are wise enough to get up at 5:20 to escape the house, it’s fine to let your husband wake the little darlings, change diapers, and dress them in clothes that are out of season and two sizes too small because he forgot to check the dresser for appropriate clothes (what? Could that have happened? Naaahhhh….:rotfl:)

5. Walk everywhere. Once you have found a coveted parking spot within a five mile radius of Toys R Us, do not under any circumstances believe that you can find another one. It ain’t gonna happen. Today is a day for exercise, frigid air, and the triumphant feeling that you are DONE with shopping!

Let’s just hope my husband doesn’t see the VISA bill. :shark:

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

My father-in-law came up to visit with the grandchildren and he’s enjoying having them crawl all over him and ask, “Can I have a doughnut, Grandpa?” The children are currently on a sugar high, prancing around and singing the theme song from Star Wars. :starwars: While most kids might sing “If You’re Happy and You Know It” or “Row, Row Your Boat,” my darling son is singing John Williams. Ooookay. :drunk:

Tuesday, I was picking up the children from daycare when I asked casually how their walk went (someone thought it would be fun to take a bunch of three-year-olds, walking in the rain. I’m not sure what dope they were smoking. Yes! Let’s allow children to splash in puddles and then sit around in wet clothing all day! :woot:)

The aide replied that they had decided not to do the walk since they were busy getting ready for tomorrow. “What’s going on tomorrow?” I asked innocently.

“Oh, it’s just our Thanksgiving feast, that’s all.”

“What Thanksgiving feast?”

The aide shoots me a puzzled look. “You’re signed up for it.”

“I am?” (I’m thinking–huh? Who signed me up? What am I supposed to bring?)

“Yes, you’re bringing thirty ears of corn on the cob.”
:confused:

Um, who came up with that one?? The other children are signed up for apple pie, baked potatoes, cranberry salad, and someone put me down for 30 ears of corn? Corn, that I might add, is NOT in season? :help: I asked when I was supposed to bring the corn and was informed that the lunch was at 11:00 a.m. Uh…I’m teaching a class then!

“Oh, that’s okay,” she said. “You can just send it in during the morning and we’ll heat it up.”

In what? A lobster pot?? Even if I did half ears of corn, it would be a huge whomping pot of corn. Yes, let’s drag two toddlers into daycare while toting a pot of boiling corn!

I politely informed her that I would not be sending in corn, since I had no prior notice. I sent in two pumpkin pies, which were devoured by the kids. But all I could think was–who came up with corn??

At our house, we’re pretty traditional. Turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans, rolls, and cranberry sauce are the staples. For pies, we have lemon meringue, pumpkin, and one other of my choice. This year I made Derby pie (imagine chocolate chip cookie dough laced with bourbon and poured into a pie shell). Mmmm. :hungry:

What dishes do you make on Thanksgiving that you enjoy sharing with family and friends?

Update and News Flash!

Bless the editor who I’m working with. :worthy: She apparently sensed a disturbance in the Force :starwars: and realized that the waiting is getting very hard for me.

When I saw the e-mail from her, I nearly had a heart attack. E-mails are usually not good news at this stage. But God love her, she wrote to say that she’s swamped and although she’s eager to read the book, she hasn’t gotten to it yet. :popcorn:

Now wasn’t that nice of her to e-mail and take me off my tenterhooks? Hopefully she’ll get a chance to read it soon and maybe I’ll have some news to share. But, in the meantime, must write more. Perhaps staring at my mushroom might help.

In the mail…

I’m mailing my GH entry tomorrow. :woot: Let the fun begin.

I enjoyed a nice weekend with family, letting the children be spoiled by aunts, uncles, and grandparents. I love family weekends, especially when I’m not cooking and I don’t have to clean my house. Wonderful, wonderful.

In other news, I have discovered a strange species of mushroom growing in my yard.

Hmm. It seems a bit inspiring, don’t you think? :confused2:

Mothers are born suckers

My Dot Moms column is up for anyone who wants to read about my adventures in toilet training. :loser:

I had a moment of forgetfulness yesterday. My daughter demanded to use the toilet, and like a good sucker, I let her sit on the potty. The phone rang. I went to go answer it and was so distracted by the call, when the baby wandered in, I forgot that she wasn’t wearing a diaper. I snapped her jumper back up, completely missing the important diaper. She then proceeded to climb up in my lap, roll around on my bed, and then wander back to her room. After I finished the call, I realized what a moron I was. Yes, of course she had an accident. It’s the best way of getting Mom’s attention, isn’t it? :woot:

I’ve noticed that children will fling themselves into the path of forbidden things (e.g. playing with electrical cords, reaching up to the stove, etc.) just for attention. Oh, they KNOW they aren’t supposed to touch those things. But it’s a sure-fire way to make Mom stop in her tracks, fling herself across the room, and grab the aforementioned baby out of the jaws of death. They just know.

In other news, I survived the tutoring yesterday. I did, however, kick five of them out before we even started because 1) They weren’t my students and 2) They weren’t on the list of kids with permission for the program. Now normally I would never turn aside a student who wanted extra help. Problem is, I’ve had kids show up who wanted to socialize with their buddies and I’ve also had kids show up whose parents didn’t want them home alone after school. Once I narrowed it down to the kids who were supposed to be there (9 of them), it went pretty well. I kept them BUSY. Even still, some of the more behaviorally-challenged minions tried to push buttons before I squished them into oblivion. :boxing:

Anyway, that was my day. I managed to edit my way up to page 205 last night. I’m making steady progress of 30+ pages a day, which is good. :shimmy:

Curses! Foiled again.

For whatever reason, I have not yet won the Megamillions Lottery. Somebody else took the 315 million, dagnabbit. Must console myself with chocolate.

Today after school, I have to endure an hour of tutoring the minions of Satan. :kneel: I hope to heaven they’re better than last time. They are NOT getting candy, either. Who me? Hold grudges from the last time when they were whining and disobedient? Naaaahhhh….

I’ve recruited some peer tutors to help me, and hopefully we can divide and conquer. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind tutoring kids who genuinely need help and are trying hard. I love those kids and would happily give up time for them. It’s the evil ones who are flunking because they don’t care, they don’t want to try, and they’d rather be a behavior problem than learn, that I’d like to string up from the nearest tree. :angry:

In other news, I’m revised up through page 178 of my GH book. I had a moment of panic last night when I re-read the first chapter and the little voices inside my head whispered, “It’s not very good, is it?” I promptly opened an earlier draft, convinced myself that I had it right the first time…and later decided that the rewritten version was stronger. It was the demons of self-doubt again. I go through this all the time. On a brighter note, I discovered a few places in the book that I know are rock-solid. The kind where I lose myself in the story and just sigh, thinking, “Wow. Did I actually write that? Very cool.” :flying:

So tonight, it’s more revising and hopefully I’ll survive the day without any casualties. :shark:

A Little Bit of This, a Little Bit of That

I have bus duty this week. You can always tell the ages of the students by the way they walk. Sixth graders run like crazed Labradors on speed, hauling their way to the bus because BY GOD, THEY MIGHT MISS IT!! :confused2:

The seventh graders walk at a fairly normal pace. The eighth graders are still in the hallways five minutes after the bell has rung, and then they saunter outside in groups of 6-8. It would take a cattle prod to get them to move faster, I swear. :whip: It isn’t until the bus ignitions fire up that they finally decide to mosey on.

I had to laugh because I encountered a seventh-grade boy in the hallways just before bus duty. He has Teen Living as an elective, and they are doing the Baby project where they have to carry a rubber infant doll around for so many days. It cries and behaves similar to a real baby, and they have to feed it and so on. The boy had a look of desperation on his face. He begged me for help because he couldn’t juggle getting his books into his bookbag and the baby simultaneously. “Could you hold him for me, please?”
I said sure, and he was careful to inform me that I had to hold the doll exactly like a baby (he even demonstrated), because otherwise it would cry. I nodded, telling him that I thought I could manage since I had two children of my own. He looked doubtful. :rotfl:

I think that’s a great activity for kids, though it’s no comparison to the real thing. Sometimes I feel like a war veteran, having faced some of the worst enemies life can throw you. I’ve seen a 104 degree temperature and taken my 2-year-old to the emergency room with pneumonia. I’ve watched my eldest strew the contents of his diaper across his bed and somehow he made it to his next birthday (only just!). My stories don’t compare to some mothers, though. I can’t imagine the pain of losing a child, nor do I want to.

But I think it’s made me a better teacher. I can understand a parent’s perspective now when I meet with them in a conference. And I feel lucky sometimes, to have known so many students and to have been a brief part of their lives.

A fresh start

I’ve been going over one of my completed manuscripts, preparing it for the Golden Heart contest. I actually do enjoy revisions when the manuscript has had time to simmer and stew. Right now I’m hacking away at chapter 4, shaping it to fit the new synopsis. Hopefully I can get the revisions finished by next week (cue the hysterical laughter) :rotfl: before I send it off to the contest.

We’re still working on the shed, putting up the roof trusses today. I am enjoying the nail gun (and I also learned that there are brands of nail guns that DO shoot nails without having to be pressed in, unlike the nail gun we’re using). Always good to know.

I took the Demon Baby to church today. It was an experience. Do you remember those days when you would see parents with young children, and the children were crawling around on the pews, coloring, eating snacks, and in general bringing chaos in their wake? I used to think, “That will never be me. MY children will never behave like that.” :loser:

Riiight. You have a choice–either leave the children at home or bring them and face the possibility that they may turn into Mr. Hyde without warning and require an exorcism (lucky me, I’m Catholic). Last Sunday, my daughter slept during the entire Mass. Today she made a bed for herself on the pew and was thrilled to discover that she could slide around on the polished wood. She would propel herself across the pew, grinning and saying, “Wheee!”

Each time I would haul her into my arms in a death grip, she would squirm and whimper and fuss, making far more noise than the aforementioned “Whee! ” Choose your battles, right? I tried coloring but then she discovered that she could color orange crayon upon her white tights. Not a good idea.

I tried giving her the hymnal, but she ripped a page right out. :shocked: So, at last, I gave up and let her slide around (hoping she’d fall asleep). :sleepy2: Again, no luck. Because the elderly couple behind her thought she was charming. She started to flirt with them and play peekaboo.

My son is old enough to attend the preschool religious education classes, which are great because they occur during Mass. In the meantime, it’s one more Sunday of wrestling a toddler. It reminds me of this commercial

All I want for Christmas is a book contract….

As we start drawing into the holiday season, I’m starting to think about what to buy the kids for Christmas. They truly don’t need much. My son’s toy box is overflowing and I’ve already given half of his toys to his sister (the ones he’s outgrown anyway). Last year he got a tricycle and a light saber, which he adored.

He’s really into Star Wars, :starwars: but he doesn’t really play with the action figure I bought him last Christmas as a stocking stuffer. A friend gave him a 30 piece floor puzzle of nursery rhymes, and he LOVED it. I bought him another one on Ebay, and I may look for some little puzzles in the meantime.

But when I asked him what he wanted Santa Claus to bring him, he thought a moment. “Um…a candy stick.”

“A candy stick? Don’t you want any puzzles or toys or books?”

He thought a moment and shook his head slowly. “No, just a candy stick.”

“What kind of candy stick?”

“A big one.” :hungry:

I love the simplicity of his request and the fact that he’s sincere. He’s not greedy and I’m sure that whatever we end up with will be all right by him.

My daughter is too young to understand Christmas, so I imagine she will want to play with the wrapping paper.:thumbsup:

But there’s one thing that SHOULD be outlawed among toys (and you parents will know what I mean). Those horrible little plastic ties that secure the toys to the boxes. Last year, I think I untied about thirty-six of them….ON EVERY TOY!! :angry: I was about ready to start looking for small explosives to free the toys from their boxes. And in the meantime, the frantic toddler is DYING to play with his toy :hissyfit: and you can’t get it open fast enough.

What are you planning to get your kids for Christmas?