I'm trying to think of a way to appropriately commemorate something that happened yesterday. It was my first experience and I know I'll want to mark it on the calendar and celebrate accordingly every year. It's these little moments as we raise our children that whisper softly to us about the joy that we feel when we look at our little ones.

I got my first phone call from the principal about my child's behavior. Please hold your applause. I am deeply moved. *bows*

So the Boy made it through all of Kindergarten and one day of First Grade before doing what we all naturally want to do.... Hit the annoying kid next to us in the head with our lunchbox. As I bask in the glow of my stellar parenting skills, I silently thank the good Lord that we bought him a soft sided lunchbox. I was at a Deacon's meeting last night at church, and as we had our umpteenth go-round with an endless argument, I found myself wishing I had brought my son's lunchbox with me. Being a grown-up can be so tedious sometimes, always having to restrain ourselves and be the bigger person. I really think that a good brawl would have moved the meeting along rather quickly. But alas, I not only had to behave like a lady, I had to take the minutes of the entire train wreck. Don't get me wrong, there are many things I enjoy about being Deacon in my church, and they are truly a wonderful group of people. But no one knows how to beat the dead horse longer than a Presbyterian committee.

But I digress.... The Man and I had a discussion with the Boy about inappropriate behavior, Christian manners and beat-downs. Neither of us is admitting that we find it funny, at least not to each other.

This past weekend was one for the books at Casa de Chaos. On Friday night we witnessed the renewal of wedding vows by our closest friends. It was really quite touching, and the Barnacle was really enthusiastic about it. The woman sitting in front of us must have agreed with him, as she kept turning around to look at him with an eye borrowed from Hot Wheels 3. Mercifully, the Princess volunteered to take him down the hall, and we got to watch the end in silence. At that point I was wearing a variety of cereals that he had managed to leave behind, bless his wee heart. Did I mention he can now announce, "I poooooooo!", and is cutting four teeth? All at once?

Saturday we picked up speed as we ran errands, did chores and schtuff. Dropped the kids off at my in-laws who were taking them to a grange fair. Later in the day we went to a barbecue hosted by one of the gals from my Bible study. We had a lovely time but the sheer volume of small children in the back yard created quite the hullabaloo. Small people everywhere, with all variety of snack and drink and wreckage to pick up behind them.

Sunday was church and then home for the Princess' 9th birthday party. More wild shriekings, with lots of kids running around throwing water balloons at my brother and each other, jumping in and out of the pool with water guns, and all the grandparents hiding from the aquatic fun in the house. Much fanfare was beheld as she opened her gifts, including two new WebKinz and the brand new, just came out, 'Mom, can you believe it?!' CD of the Camp Rock soundtrack. I'm already hearing the songs in my sleep.

Have I mentioned how happy I was when Monday finally arrived?

Where did my blog list go?? It's there when I go to edit the template, but I can't see it on the page. I'm annoyed because that's how I go read other blogs. Foo.

Well I'm off to the camper in a few hours, and I'm only taking the Boy. The Princess is away at church camp until tomorrow and the Barnacle is staying home with the Man. It's the de-barnacling of the Barnacle you could say. It will be the first time that he and I are apart for more than a few hours, so we'll see how he does.

We have some new pets here, six little fish. I asked the Man what kind they are. "Cheap starter fish." he replied. They are teeny and greyish and that's the extent of our knowledge apparently. The Boy named them (not sure how the Princess was so gracious about this) and now they are called Nemo, The Boy, and Hot Wheels 1 through 4.

We had talked every once in a while about getting fish for the kids but nothing ever came of it. Then out of nowhere, the Man gleefully arrived home a week or so ago with a tank, rocks, filter, plants, fish food, plastic castle and so forth. We had new neighbors move in up the street and they put the whole kit and caboodle at the curb the first day. Guess they were tired of it or their fishies were lost in transit. Either way, we are shameless curb shoppers in this family, so home it came to be cleaned and refilled, much to the joy of our children. The only thing we needed to replace was the lid for the tank, as it was cracked.

The first night the fish were with us the Man and I were watching tv and I discovered something fantastic. The sound of the water falling into the tank from the filter could not be drowned out enough by the tv to prevent my body from constantly needing to pee. The Man promised to fix the lid or replace it. The next night the cracked lid was temporarily taped and in place and I could relax without any pressing bathroom needs. It was sometime later in our evening that we heard a loud noise come from the kitchen. The Man had just been walking into the room when one very wet and FREAKING OUT kitty came flying across the kitchen counter, crashed into the fridge and tore up the stairs. Apparently sitting his fat rump on the cracked lid was not a good idea, and he got a closer view than he had planned.

The fish won't talk about the incident but I have a feeling that Hot Wheels 3 is holding a grudge. He keeps giving the cat a fish-eye. (I know, worst pun ever, hahahaha)

ThrillScore.com - The husband of a gal in my Bible study is the creator of this web site. You can search or browse for all the roller coasters, thrill rides, family rides, and water rides you've ridden, and add them to your ride list. You can even search or browse by amusement park. Your score goes up as you add new rides that you've experienced, and you can win prizes as you reach certain milestones. Very fun for all you thrill seekers out there! I'll be waiting for you at the end with my funnel cake.

3-D Logic - This is a fun little game that you will either love or hate. It has 30 levels, but they don't necessarily get harder each time. They seem to throw in an easy one here and there just to keep you guessing.

The "Blog" of "Unnecessary” Quotation Marks - Misinterpreting bad punctuation since 2005

Tara at Deal Seeking Mom tagged me and in order to avoid housework this morning I will play along. Here are the rules when you get tagged:

1. Link back to the person who tagged you
2. Mention the rules on your blog
3. Tell about 6 unspectacular quirks of yours
4. Tag 6 following bloggers by linking them
5. Leave a comment on each of the tagged blogger’s blogs letting them know they've been tagged.

My Unspectacular Quirks
1. I can do this weird flippy thing with my left thumb. It's like a double joint effect of some kind that people see and say, "Ewww..."
2. Since Tara confessed her love for NKOTB, I will admit that I still have my Hanson CD. And I still love it. So there!
3. I do not like water ice or frozen slushy drinks of any kind. I find them weird and they hurt my teeth.
4. I hate Starbucks. (Although I don't think it's a quirk, I'm sure the Starbucks fans all just gasped.)
5. I can draw on my face with my (gold) wedding ring. If you're a woman reading this, odds are that you can do it too. Odds are also that you are now going to the bathroom to try.
6. I'm a huge Garth Brooks fan and have every single album he has ever made, including the box sets. I guess that's not so quirky? But I do have a pencil drawn portrait of him hanging in my office, so maybe that is.

Trish at Beneath the Couch Cushions
Amy at Life with My Boys
Kat at ScaredyKaterpillarsNoMore
Stephani at her Cake Blog
Shannon at Run the Earth, Watch the Sky
Jenn at Ivy Six Pack

Tara mentioned the Driveway Incident and because I delight in embarrassing my children, here's the story!
When I was expecting the Boy I joined a message board for moms due in March of 2002. We all became very close, and are still in touch today in fact. We coordinated some trips so some of us were able to meet in person after our babies were born. This was the first time that me, Kimmy and Tara were meeting in person and it was a really great time.
I was potty-training my nearly 3 year old Princess at that time. I had told her that if she had an emergency and was outside, that it was ok to pee in the yard. The adults were all sitting on the front porch while the Princess and Kimmy's daughter ran around together. Somehow, the 'emergency' part did not seem to register with her, and every time I turned around, she was peeing in the grass or the driveway. I'm sure there were several stern talks about the use of the potty indoors but they fell on deaf toddler ears.
This issue faded from my mind however, as I was gabbing with my fellow March moms and taking care of the Boy. So I didn't immediately react when the Princess dropped trou in the middle of the white stone driveway. I groaned and said something to the Man about her peeing outside yet again. At which point Tara said, "Umm... I don't think she's peeing."
That's right. My blonde-haired, blue-eyed, cherubic little Princess turned red-faced and grunting as she pooped in the driveway of a woman I had just met. I didn't know whether to die from embarrassment or laughter. Thankfully the Man went and cleaned it up. He didn't seem to mind until he noticed that I was taking pictures. He'll thank me someday though, when I whip out those pictures on Prom Night.

I knew it would happen. I'm already so over the title of the blog. Feh. (No, it's not a word. Say it out loud for yourself, and draw out the H and you will get the feeling I'm trying to convey here.) I will leave it alone for now, but I can't promise anything. I get tired of things very quickly; not sure why? I like change I suppose.
Life is good but not very bloggy lately. And by bloggy I just mean that my kids haven't really done anything amusing or illegal for me to write about. My daughter did humble me recently however. The other day she was telling me that she wanted something from the fridge but couldn't find it. I said 'Oh it's in bottom drawer,' and I opened it up, bent down and picked it out. She then said, 'I can't believe you can bend like that!' I could feel something bad coming but felt obliged to ask anyway, 'What do you mean, why shouldn't I be able to bend like that?' She raised an eyebrow and replied, 'Because you're old!' To which I replied, 'DUDE I'M 34, I AM NOT OLD!'
I nearly forgot... The Boy 'lost' his first tooth over the weekend. It's the second tooth to leave his mouth, but the first one to come out naturally. The first one he knocked out last year when he tipped himself unceremoniously out of a toybox and face-first into a chair. Now he has a splendid gap in his mouth, as the second tooth was directly below the gap from the first one. The Man pointed out that he can now fit a drinking straw in through his teeth. So now we must do this at every meal, until we giggle ourselves senseless and snort milk from our wee nose. It makes family meals more interesting, no doubt.

So apparently I am having some sort of berserk hormonal crisis? As I said a few days ago, I recently weaned my youngest child. I didn't go through any kind of crazy changes with my previous baby, so I'm not sure what the deal is this time around. But I've been super weepy and ridiculous. It's not endearing. It's also an easy road from there to STEW. My ability to stew is legendary in our house, as I pile on the issues and insist on being upset about every single thing in the universe that bothers me at one time. But after 36 hours of this I finally got smart and asked for help. I talked to the Man, who consoled me. I knew I wouldn't be able to talk to my sponsor since she would be at work, so I wrote her a long blathery email instead to at least let her know what was going on with me. I have a long history of not asking for help, and assuming that no one would want to help me, or that I 'need' to do things on my own. So I have to force myself to do these things.

In the meantime, I thought about everything I have in my 'kit'. Alcoholics have a kit, you get it in your welcome packet at orientation. Ok, so that's a lie, but that doesn't make it less effective.
(I know, I'm wondering why they used a Disney font for this graphic too. How odd.)
What we have are things that we can do to get through life's curve balls. The number one thing that will help an alcoholic get through a hard day or a craving is to go help another alcoholic. That's why service is so key to our recovery. I didn't have anyone I could go help today however, so I thought about the list of people I still have to make amends to. I've been dragging my feet about making amends, mostly because I know many of the ones I have left to do will be painful. I knew that I needed to just go for it though, so I wrote an email to an old friend, asking her to call me.
I wrote out a list of things I needed to apologize for, times that I was a horrible friend, things I said and did. By the time she called my stomach was in a knot, but I was ready with my list. We talked for a while, catching up, before I got up my courage to tell her why I had wanted to talk to her. I started talking and just went on and on, afraid of stopping for fear of losing my gumption. She very gently stopped me at some point though, and said that it was ok; that she knew I needed to do this for my recovery but that she did not need an apology. I'm getting all vaclempt thinking about it now. We had a really good conversation. We have both missed our friendship and I'm having her over for dinner very soon. I feel really blessed to have this chance to start fresh. And I am thankful for a program of recovery that gives me a clear way to straighten out my own head, by making amends for who I used to be, and always working to become a better person.

On another note, tomorrow the Man and I are going to say our goodbyes to a dear man who is dying of cancer. He's a lovely gentleman that we go to church with, and it's so heartbreaking to let him go. So maybe my tears this week aren't all about my hormones, or my youngest child leaving babyhood. First Thessalonians 4:13 tells us not to be sorrowful like those who have no hope, for we know where we are going. I am very grieved, but I know that he will soon be free from pain and suffering, and amongst my own sorrow, I can be truly happy for him.

Picnik.com - "Picnik makes your photos fabulous with easy to use yet powerful editing tools. Tweak to your heart’s content, then get creative with oodles of effects, fonts, shapes, and frames."
This is an excellent free photo editing web site. It has TONS of creative photo options. You can try it out without registering. If you decide to join, it doesn't cost a thing. Here's an old pic of the Boy that I did a little editing to. Nothing major, just black & white and then softened the edges, but it gives it such a sweet dreamy quality...

I seriously love this site so much that I'm not done talking about it! And it's the only thing I'm listing in this post of This & That!

Ok, so amongst it's many effect options, it has one called Cinema Scope that gives your photos a movie quality. You can add text, frames or clip art too. (Click the pic to see it full size - you can see the photo effect better that way.)

Some random things I think about that don't fit into any category... and for some reason I think other people need to know them.

The tragic death of Bob Crane bothers me. I grew up watching Hogan's Heroes. His murder was mysterious and haunting. Did he die as a result of the tawdry life he led? And why should this bother me? It's much like the death of Phil Hartman at the hands of his own wife. I was gobsmacked when that happened, and I wasn't even a fan. It was just so shocking.

I only eat blueberries fresh. Baked into anything they taste fake to me.

I have a weird squinky toe. It tucks under the others a bit. I could recognize each of my children as newborns only by their feet, as they each have that same toe.

The rhododendron that replaced last year's dead rhododendron is now also dying. I think the yard is rebelling in that spot.

Trader Joe's raspberry tea is fantastic.

I finally got around to making the new banner. I'm pretty sure I will be unhappy with it within an hour but right now all is delightful.
I took the Princess today to get a prescription from our family doctor for Valium. After many unhappy visits to the orthodontist, I'm finally giving in to my 'last resort'. She just can't seem to cope with them doing work in her mouth, and given the extent of the work she needs done, it just makes sense at this point to get her something that will help her relax about it. She has to have an RPE put in and eventually braces, and she was barely able to cope with them using cheek retractors to hold her mouth open for pictures. She was supposed to start this process a year ago but after a total core meltdown in the chair we gave up. I'm not only resorting to pharmaceutical help for her, I'm also bribing her and blackmailing her. If she does well after each visit she will get to pick out the ice cream treat of her liking. And if she does not get this work done, she will not be allowed to go to camp with her church friends. I hate to hold that over her but don't really see any choice at this point. I feel badly for the poor kid but at the same time I wish she would just get over it? (BAD BAD MAMA) I don't know how she got so delicate, it's certainly not from my sturdy side of the family.
Not too much else going on here to blog about. I got out my bike to start riding again but only got one ride in before the blessed heat wave began. I weaned the Barnacle last week which was very bittersweet for me. The Man is working a lot, summer is hot and sticky, the days are long and filled with bickering children, and I am in love with the life that I have been given. When we all cuddle up on the couch to read together each night I have my whole world in my lap, and nothing else could be as sweet.

I just got home from a meeting and it was wonderful. So many hands up that we ran out of time and there were still more wanting to share. It's funny, I had some things I wanted to share about, but another gal got her hand up first and beat me to it, saying pretty much everything I wanted to talk about, haha! That'll teach me to hesitate!
Our topic was loneliness, which is an excellent one for any alcoholic. For me, drinking was my ticket out of loneliness, or so I thought. I was lonely in high school, even though I had a few friends, I didn't feel like I had anyone I really could trust in a meaningful way. I only had one boyfriend for a short time during those years, so I felt the loneliness of being single very deeply. I felt unacceptable, unlovable, unwanted. Some of this was based on reality, but much was also based on my own perceptions.
When I went to college, I was determined to 'fit in' no matter what, and alcohol became my way to do that. It did work for a long time, giving me the illusion of acceptance and friendships. But what had saved me from loneliness was only destined to bring me back to it, as my alcoholism grew and I began to self-destruct and alienate the people around me. I tried harder and harder, while drinking more and more, until I was utterly alone. My friends didn't have much to say to me. A man that I cared deeply for graduated and moved to another state. I would lay in my bed, playing the soundtrack to The Highlander, crying into my pillow, night after night. How utterly pathetic and self-indulgent. I could have reached out and talked to someone. I could have tried to make friends, by actually listening to other people and hearing what THEY had to say. But loneliness became my crutch, my way of excusing my behavior. I could sit on my pity pot as long as I wanted, because after all, everyone had rejected me.
Fast forward to my sobriety. For a long time I would come to the rooms and still feel lonely. I would see other women around me who had obvious bonds with one another, but couldn't make those bonds myself. I chose for a long time to come right when the meeting started, and leave right when it ended, and then feel sorry for myself because no one even noticed me. Ridiculous! It's a good thing that ultimately I let God have the final say, because He had quite the wake up call in store for me. The truth was that all those years I CHOSE to be lonely. I CHOSE to be alone. I could have done the hard work required to be a friend. I could have spoken up in meetings, stayed late to talk to other people, gotten phone numbers so I would have someone to talk to. I deceived myself for a long time into thinking that I was unacceptable to other people. I wanted to believe that, because it was safer than taking the chance, putting myself out there, and risking being rejected. What a sorry way to live.
I go to meetings early now. I try to get my hand up once in a while. (still working on that one!) I talk to other people after the meeting. I have the numbers of other alcoholics in my phone. I open myself up to others and am willing to take that risk because I finally learned that it's ok to be vulnerable to people who care about me. I know I may get hurt at times, but it's better to feel the pain once in a while, than bear the pain of loneliness all the time.

The Stigma of Being Sober - Like it or not, everyone has pre-conceived ideas about everyone else, and alcoholics may well be near the top of the heap when it comes to being misunderstood.

Deal Seeking Mom - My friend Tara recently added me as a friend on Facebook, and I was pleasantly surprised to see the link on her page to a blog she keeps. LOTS of good deals and info there!

How to Irritate People - Airplane Sketch - Because John Kleese will never fail to make me laugh.

Prompt: Open your eyes, look around, and describe the colors that strike you.

Squinting my eyes, I could almost imagine that the inky clouds on the horizon were really sweeping mountain ranges. The grey of the parking lot faded from my view, as I imagined hiking off into the unknown, beneath a canopy of greens and browns, velvety moss under my feet. The air is cool and damp, a white mist of early falling dew to greet me. Murky shades of brown and tan line the crunchy path, leading me high up the hills. I pause by a great wall of charcoal grey rock, sticking my fingers in the cracks to feel the trickle of clear water. It holds bits of bright green algae hostage as it drips down to form glossy black marks on the rock below.
I keep going, seeing bits of brilliant blue peeking down from above. I switch-back, heading in another direction but still gaining altitude, and find the source of the water, a patch of lingering white snow, stark against the dark mountain floor. Tiny green buds are poking their way up out of the brown mulch of fallen leaves and twigs, white and pink blossoms nearly arriving.
"Mommmmeeeeeeee," says a sudden jolly voice, and I am broken from my reverie. I stand in the humid grocery store parking lot once again, my wee charge before me in a shopping cart. He grins and pokes a grubby finger at me, reclaiming my attention. His strawberry blonde wisps need trimming, as they fall into his bonnie blue eyes. His round cheeks are pink and full of his winsome smile.

A friend shared this article today about a young girl who died after a night of playing a game called beer pong. At the college I attended for *cough* two years, we called it beer bowling. I'm pretty sure that my buddy Gunner and I took second place in some sort of beer bowling championship at his fraternity house, but that could just be a combination of delusions of grandeur and massive amounts of Beast Light.

Regardless of skill at this game, it and many others combined to give me more easy excuses to drink way too much. My favorite way to start off my Friday nights was with a Power Hour, where you drank a shot of beer every 60 seconds. I also played Quarters, TV games (where you drink every time a certain word is said), Truth or Dare, Flip Cup, Kings, and let's not forget having Snake Bite Shooters for breakfast, or drinking while showering, or walking two miles alone in the freezing snow to get to an off-campus fraternity house in the hopes of finding someone to drink with, or keg stands, or beer bongs, or jumping into the frozen lake on campus in February on a bet to win a case of Miller Genuine Draft in bottles... So many creative and ridiculous ways to do one simple thing: drink.

I can laugh off some of the things I did in college. After all, don't all college students do these things? Don't all college students sneak their way out of the dorm to a party with a backpack full of beer? Don't all college students drink their way from one fraternity house to another, arriving at the last one to lock themselves in the bathroom so they can vomit until they pass out on the dirty tile floor? Don't all college students drink until blacking out, and wake up with someone they don't know? Don't all college students drink so much that they stop attending all of their classes altogether at some point? Don't all college students take an ambulance ride to the hospital when they drink an entire bottle of vodka and an entire bottle of Southern Comfort? And upon release from the psychiatric ward, don't all college students go back out drinking that same weekend?

It may seem ridiculous to ask such questions. But to an alcoholic mind, we can't ever stop asking. Because the minute that we start to believe we really are just social drinkers out for a good time, then we will lose sight of what we had truly become while drinking. I do not ever want to become that person again, and telling my ugly stories is one of many steps I need to take to keep myself sober today. I can't take the risk of glamorizing the life that I used to live.

Home.... on the internet that is. My connection is still sporadic at best, but for now I have some juice and will run with it. The laptop is still in the faraway land of Hewlett Packard where I hope and pray she will be lovingly restored. I miss her so. The Sticky Thing is a bit less sticky today though, as I have laid down the law with the small people about eating or drinking here.

We had a really wonderful weekend of camping for my birthday. Yes I am a July 4th baby. No the fireworks are not for me. Let it go.

My oldest friend came with us. We were best friends in the 6th grade, and then her family moved back to her hometown in another state. We have managed to stay in touch for the last 22 years, but hadn't seen each other in person since my wedding 11 years ago. I think we talked non-stop for the first 36 hours. The Man was a good sport about it. It's amazing how much we had to catch up on, as we had both somehow managed to keep our darkest days and most painful secrets from one another. Telling each other about them was like therapy. We talked, laughed, cried, gave each other advice and comfort, and came out of it both knowing that God had somehow ordained those four days together for some greater purpose. We even talked about writing a book together, and how we are both at a crossroads point of our lives, wondering how the Lord will use the ashes of our former lives to create ministries for us to help others with. To say it was amazing would nearly cheapen what this weekend meant to me. It was truly the most perfect birthday gift imaginable.

Hello loves.... I just wanted to let you all know that I have not evaporated. We had a lovely camping trip for my birthday, and I will talk about it soon. But for now, my laptop was lonely up at Circuit City, so the Man's desktop computer decided to join her. Once Firedog is done taking all of the college money we have saved for the children, I shall return again to entertain you. That is all.

A friend was asking me about my prison experience and I thought I would share some of the details I shared with her.

The prison is the county lockup, so everyone there is serving a year or less. When we drove up, the gigantic fence with huge rolls of barbed wire on top was kind of surreal to me. We checked in, left our licenses and signed the book. You can't take your purse or phone or anything with you. You go through a machine that normally blows air on you to detect if you're carrying any narcotics (it would blow particles off and detect them somehow) but it wasn't working. The guard did the wand thing and then let us through. Oh, and we brought Big Books which had to go through the x-ray machine.

There are both men and women, though they are kept separate of course. If there's a line of each and they're going to intersect, they stop the one line until the other passes, so they don't get anywhere near each other. At one point when we were leaving, we were walking behind the line of women from the meeting, and a door to a glassed-in side room opened - this guy stuck his head out and was saying I love you to one of our girls. She said it back and the guard snagged the door and shut it hard as he went past.

It was weird, I wasn't the least bit intimidated by the inmates, either men or women, but the guards... they were scary to me. Which I guess is the whole point - but they are just very serious, business like, most are really big guys, and call you ma'am and they watch EVERYTHING, like you know they don't miss a single detail. The only guard who didn't come off that way was the one at the front who checked us in. He was more laid back and friendly.... and unfortunately smelled either of booze or very bad cologne. We couldn't quite tell which.

I'm still really happy with how it went, and looking forward to taking the commitment again. When I told my girlfriend that went with me that I would do it again, she said, 'Welcome to the prison commitment. There are only about ten of us who do this.' I think that's a shame, but I'm glad to be a part of it.

Ayiesha Woods - Have you heard of this girl? I just ran across her and her 'Love Like This' song is totally stuck in my head!

We Love The Iraqi Information Minister - I have no good explanation for why I like this site, but it just kills me.

Bike by Pink Floyd - I have a lot of Floyd songs that I enjoy, but this lesser known one is hands down my favorite. It's from the Piper at the Gates of Dawn album, which I happen to own on cassette. Don't be jealous. This little video is ridiculous and stupid and of course I love it because I really am that lame. But check out the fast paced borrowing action! There's something not quite right about the gingerbread men though...

Well, Trish gets the prize because that Beauty for Ashes name really stuck in my wee brain all weekend, and I had to have it, even if others have used it too. It should be stitched onto a pillow on my couch or something, because it is the shortest way to describe my journey.

So I picked out a cleaner and simpler look for my page and I'm happy with it for now. Not to say that I won't change it yet again later, but it looks good today. I've also changed my comments so that you don't have to register to leave one. I would still appreciate your name when you comment though. I'm just really a feedback hog, and not knowing if anyone reads bugs me. It's a character defect. I'll work on it.

So if you were kind enough to list my blog on your blog list, I'd appreciate you updating the name change when you can. I'm keeping the original link because I don't want to be any more annoying about this than I have to. ;)

Oh, and one more little thing... I'm working on a new top banner -- I got stuck trying to decide on color or B/W so I'll get back to it later.

When I was growing up my family took a lot of road trips. My Dad was a teacher and my Mom was a homemaker, so our summers were wide open. We camped across the States and back a few times, so I've been to more national monuments & parks than probably anyone else my age. (Grand Canyon twice!) This is back in the days of manual windows and the walkman, where you prayed that your batteries would last a few more days in the car, and that it wouldn't eat your Miami Vice soundtrack cassette. Don't get me wrong, I loved my family, and we saw a lot of amazing things.... but when you are 12 and on a road trip for two months with your parents and siblings, you can kind of lose your mind a little.

At any rate, one of the things that we did to pass the time was to play Horsey Horsey. Now, for you city kids who are unfamiliar with this diverse and complex game, let me explain. You see a horse, you yell 'horsey horsey!' and whoever has the most horses at the end of the trip wins. That's it. The most excitement comes if someone sees a cemetery and yells out 'bury your horses!' and you have to start from zero. I know what you're thinking, that this game is a sad little way to amuse small children and that a 12 year old would not think this was cool. Sadly, I was that lame, and I guess my 16 year old brother was equally lame, because we all played it with vigor. And when you are traveling the great plains of America, you are bound to see a lot of horses, so the count could get up into the hundreds, with the carnage of the cemetery ever looming in your mind.

Fast forward to road trips with my own children. We don't see so many horses around these parts, given that we live in the burbs and our only road trips are 75 minutes to the campground every weekend. It may be in Lancaster County, but it's still a pretty dry game when you're traveling the turnpike. So instead, we play Motorcycle Motorcycle. This works well, but they seem to need to play a form of this game at all times now, and the competition ramps up more and more each time. On a hike this morning they changed it to Bikey Bikey and then Persony Persony. At that point we reined them in a bit and asked that we please stick to one ridiculous game at a time. On the drive home earlier tonight, the Princess gleefully suggested that we play Signy Signy. I thought that maybe we could instead just have a quiet ride home. The Man thought that maybe we could play Roadkill Roadkill instead. Not too many miles down the road however, they settled for poking each other with their feet and giggling while the Man and I turned Travis Tritt up loud enough to drown them out. The Barnacle, who clearly found all of this behavior beneath him, sat quietly in his seat with his bee (pacifier) and blankey, with only an occasional noise to request his cup.

And not to brag, but I won the day with 27 motorcycles, because no matter what the Man says you are not allowed to count the ones inside the motorcycle store.

Tonight I did something I've never done before - I chaired a meeting for the first time. Thank God I had another gal with me who knew what she was doing, ahaha, because I am such an OCD person who needs structure, and this meeting was totally informal and we could run it however we wanted.
Now, I'm not sure why I thought this was a good place to stretch my wings, but I had just made up my mind to make the decision without overthinking it... The meeting was in a prison. I knew it would be a good thing to do, I wanted to do it, so I just said yes when the commitment was offered up. I did have a moment of utter inner shrieking and wanting to run for the hills when we entered the main hallway and stood before a giant steel barred door, but I managed to remain calm (yay God) and not run from the building. I did wonder though, if you run screaming from a prison, do they tackle you first and ask who you are second?
The meeting was uneventful and small and seemed to go pretty well. The hardest part was that the girls all just looked so young to me, it really broke my heart. I can't be judgmental towards any of them, because I could so easily have ended up there myself. I did my fair share of stupid and illegal things when I was drinking, and it's only by the grace of God that I never got caught. I certainly deserved prison time.
Maybe it's the mom side of me; I just wanted to hug them and convince them to stay sober, as if somehow my own will could do it for them. I don't know what any of their chances are, or what the statistics may be for alcoholics in prison. I don't think I would want to know, because I'm sure it would tear me up to think of them going back out once they are released. I can't stop thinking about their faces, and thinking how it didn't even seem real that they were incarcerated - it felt like we were just all sitting around having coffee in someone's living room, talking about our problems.
Seeing people in situations like theirs brings me back to something that I have been thinking a lot about lately. Why not me? Why am I the one who made it out without losing my marriage, my kids, my house, my freedom? I feel guilty in some ways about this, because I don't deserve what I have. If I couldn't talk to other alcoholics and share my experience, I think that guilt would just eat at me. It somehow always comes back around to gratitude, and living a life that shows how grateful I am.

So I'm braving it and putting my name on my signature here. I like my privacy, which is why I have been 'anonymous' so to speak, and why I keep my husband's and kids' names off of here as well. But one of my goals with blogging is to eventually become a published writer, and it won't help much to stay hidden.
And because I enjoy change so much, (and since no one answered me when I mentioned it before, *ahem*, I'm thinking of some changes in my format and title too. Pepperpottery is a fun word to say, but doesn't really mean anything, which is slightly embarrassing to explain when anyone asks.
My friend Trish had suggested Beauty for Ashes based on one of my previous posts, which I really love but I think has been taken by many others before me. I'm not ruling it out yet, but it's my back-up at this point.
We're leaving for the campground first thing tomorrow, and the rest of today will probably get away from me like it usually does, so for now I'll be pondering and hopefully will come back in a few days with a spectacular and inspirational title. Or at the very least, I'll come home with dirty laundry and a happy family and that will do nicely too.

It was a strange and difficult recovery. The physical pain faded for the most part after a week. But the emotional pain was undefinable. At first, I didn't cry. I began to think that maybe something was wrong with me, that I wasn't sad. One day, about 3 weeks later, I was on the internet, and I found an article that talked about the grief associated with miscarriage. It said that sometimes women go through shock and denial, and it doesn't seem real. Their minds protect them from the shock of the event. I was stunned to realize that this was me. There wasn't anything wrong with me. My mind simply could not allow me to try to process all that had happened in that Nevada hospital. It was too big. The fact that it had happened 2500 miles from home only made it more surreal, as if it hadn't happened.

The next day I went to a funeral for a church friend, and I began to cry, missing her. I cried my heart out. As Trisha Yearwood says, "It was like a dam had broken in my heart." I cried after that for days; it felt like I would never stop. But it did. Moment by moment, day by day, the Lord began easing the agony in my heart. I don't recall any time that I was angry at God for what had happened. He gave me peace about not having answers to the why's. I knew that there must be something good that could come from losing Lily. There had to be. I could not go on like she had never existed, with nothing in my hands to show for her short life.

But something else happened, something that I could not have foreseen coming from the loss of my daughter. Sobriety. Two months and one day after losing Lily, God brought me to my knees. I had been drinking all day at a barbecue, to the point that the Man took our daughter and went home without me when I refused to leave. I don't know how I got home. But that night, standing in my kitchen, God knocked the wind out of me, showing me what I had become through the years. I was heartbroken and laid at His feet, knowing that things would never be the same. I stood at the sink, pouring bottle after bottle after bottle down the drain, crying brokenly as I said goodbye to my past. I knew it had to end. I could not begin to fathom how I would go on without alcohol, any more than I could fathom how I could go on without Lily. But I knew that God would be with me, giving me the strength that I was incapable of summoning on my own. I told the Man about it the next morning. He was quiet but accepting, and has remained so to this day.

A few weeks later I became pregnant again, this time with our first son. The months crept timidly by, as I waited for the other shoe to drop. I held my breath at every twinge, unable to stop the fear. But as my belly grew, my fears slowly subsided, and I began to finally believe that I would have a new baby in my arms in a few months. I still thought about Lily every day, longing for her. What had she thought when she arrived in Heaven? Who had come out to welcome her? Could she see me? Did she know how much I desperately wanted her? How much I would always desperately want her? I had no closure, no goodbyes. I couldn't be at total peace because it was wrong, it was WRONG that I had not been able to say goodbye. I could not accept this, I would not accept this. I don't know that others can understand how I could continue to feel that way, even as I carried my son. But children are not interchangeable or replaceable. I needed to say goodbye to my child.

I began imagining what it would be like to have a funeral for Lily. Would anyone come? Would everyone think I was crazy? I needed to do something. It couldn't end like this. I began seeking out pregnancy loss resources, reading books, and talking to others online who had also lost a baby. And one day I found what I was looking for. A remembrance service for lost babies, held on October 15th, the day President Reagan had set aside for pregnancy & infant loss awareness. I knew I had to do it.

Six months after losing Lily, I spoke at the first annual Pregnancy & Infant Loss Remembrance Service at my church. I told Lily's story. Not many people came, but we shared our tears, and wrote little notes in a book, and lit candles in memory of our children. I finally had my closure. The service has continued year after year, growing from a tiny evening event with a dozen people, to a Sunday morning event where people flood the aisle coming forward to light candles at the end. Others have been willing to come speak and share their stories as well. Hearts are being opened so that they can finally heal. God is so good, and my heart overflows with all that He has done.

I don't think that there will ever come a time that I won't be sad for Lily. It's been seven years but there are still tears on my keyboard as I write this, and when I write in the journal that I still keep for her, filled with my memories and tiny keepsakes. But I have moved on with my life, and I can't say that I would change any of what has happened to me. I learned so much about myself, my husband, and God through this experience. It was hard, so gut-wrenchingly hard some days, but I knew at every moment, that the Lord was with me, watching over me. I could have died, but I didn't. I lost some of my fertility, but was still able to have two healthy sons. My husband and I grew even closer, bonded through shared loss. We have grown in our marriage, and in our Faith. And I have discovered the grace and mercy of God through pain that I can't even describe. My life was spared, and I have a beautiful family. I am grateful. My child is in the arms of the Almighty God, and someday I will meet her. That is enough for today.