What My Momma Taught Me

Years and years and YEARS ago, when I was an almost-6-foot-tall, 105-pound teen girl with huge glasses and braces, lots of other kids in school made fun of me.

Go figure.

When I’d tell my mom about it, she’d tell me that the boy who dared any OTHER boy in the class to ask me on a date (to subsequent rollicking laughter, high-fiving, and the secret vowing of every girl in the class to NEVER befriend me, the cute-boy-repulser) was probably having a bad day.

Or he’d been in a terrible bicycle accident and had possibly fallen on his head and THAT’S why he had been so unfeeling in his comments about me.

Or maybe it was allergies that were making him not be able to think in a Christian-like manner. 

Basically?  It felt like she was always on the OTHER person’s side.

But while this sounds bad and accusatory and not-very-Happy-Mother’s-Day-ish, just wait.

The good part, where I grew up and realized what that seeming-unfairness actually taught me, is coming. 

My mom is known for just being a good lady.  She never speaks badly of ANYONE, never talks behind people’s backs, and ALWAYS begins by thinking the best of everyone she meets.

And now, as a mom and a grown woman (even though, most days, it doesn’t feel that way), I understand what that trait of hers that drove me crazy in school and made me dislike her intensely, did for me.

It made me compassionate.  It made me understand that most people have a sad story somewhere in their lives, and most of the time, I do not know that story.

Like the lady that I wrote off as a snobbish officer’s wife, whose baby had recently and very suddenly died.

Or the family who I  KNEW had really messed up their kids because they were just bad parents, but who really were dealing with issues I couldn’t have even imagined.

My mom taught me that while I am busy living my life,  OTHER people are living THEIR lives and sometimes things that are unfair happen, and things that are painful happen, and things that I can’t even comprehend happen to people whom I assume are stuck-up or rude or uncaring.

When, all the time, they’re just struggling to get through whatever it is and come out on the other side intact.

And maybe I just need to assume that they are in the middle of something bad or sad or unfair, instead of writing them off as Bad People. 

That’s what she taught me.  

I’m still not very good at it.  Some days it makes me feel better to think badly of someone who has treated me unkindly or unfairly.

But OTHER days, I kinda get it, and I remember that they have a story that I don’t know about, and if I DID, I’d feel differently about the way they had just spoken to me and I’d give them the benefit of the doubt.

And maybe I’d stop being so self-centered, actually thinking that people are required to make me feel good about myself and comfortable and happy.

What IS required of me is to love them, and part of that means that  I need to  assume the best of others no matter how they treat me.

That’s hard.

But I have my momma to help show me how to do that.

She thinks that she messed up all those years ago, sticking up for the other person instead of me.

But the years have shown me what was in her heart all that time.

Compassion.

And that’s what my momma taught me.  

Something New and Highly Exciting

Or just a new idea I read about and am going to try now.

But it’s probably not highly exciting.  Or new.

Anyway, it’s a blog-post idea going around the internet called “Things I’m Scared to Tell You”.  Or something like that.

Basically?  There are things about me that only my awesome kids and yummy Yummy Man know about.

Now, I’m going to tell YOU some of them.

Because I’m all courageous and giving like that.

Here goes……..

1.  Every night, I check to make sure that my youngest child (who is always a baby under 2 years old or so) is breathing.  Yep.  Every night.  If I forget, I get up out of bed and go make sure because you just KNOW that THAT would be the night they would stop breathing and then I’d be the Worst Mother in the Universe.  And yes, I do realize how irrational that is.  Your point?

 2.  I have an almost-totally flat butt.  It runs in my family and my parents obviously did not think this through before they reproduced.  Thanks, Mom and Dad.  I look like a complete idiot in pants.  At least in skirts and dresses, I can hide the fact of my non-existent-butted-ness.  Whenever I sit on Yummy Man’s lap, it lasts for about 5 minutes and then he starts moaning in pain because he can’t take my knife-sharp butt bones jamming into his thighs any longer.  Oh.  Brother.  

3.  I have a terrible memory.  I used to have the greatest memory in the world and could memorize tons of things for tests and plays and Bible verses.  Now, it’s just sad.  I will put something in a special place so that I won’t forget it……and then I forget where that was.  Yummy Man tells me to make lists, but then I forget where I put the lists, or that I even MADE the lists.  My kids often ask me if I remember when we stayed in that hotel with the water slide and the AWESOME breakfast, and I will have no recollection at all.  None.  At.  All.  Huge chunks of my childhood are gone.  

4.  Packing tape, pulled off of a cardboard box, will give me chills for hours.  HOURS!  It’s like other people and the nails-on-a-chalkboard thing. 

 5.  I’m not a phone-talker.  I would rather email a company and wait for DAYS for them to respond, than call them up and get my question answered in 30 seconds.

6.  I can’t STAND black-and-white movies.  

7.  I used to hate animated movies too, but then Pixar came into existence and now I want to marry “Up” and “Ratatouille”. 

8.  I have to force myself to not check out books at the library.  I used to read 3 or 4 books a week (sometimes simultaneously) growing up, but now whenever I check out books, I stay up until 2 a.m. reading them and then I’m a bad mom the next morning.  Also?  I’m tempted to read them when I should be doing mom things like homeschooling and changing diapers.  I have a problem with priorities when there are interesting books laying around my house.  And I do realize the sheer patheticness of that last sentence.

9.  I have a weird fetish with smelling new books and magazines.  My oldest daughter recently informed me that if people saw the way I sniff them before I begin reading, they would think I have a mental disorder.  Whatever.  I’m okay with that.  They already think that anyway, what with the ten kids and all.  Also?  If you are in your 40s, you will remember mimeograph pages in school.  THOSE were the greatest-smelling things in the WORLD!  The teacher would pass out the quizzes that she just printed out on the mimeograph machine, and they’d be all warm and pliable and smelling like heaven!  Because God created mimeograph machines on the third day, along with flowers and all the now-dead mimeograph machines will be in heaven.  In my mansion.

10.  If someone offered me $100 million, I still would not go swimming in the ocean at night.  I wouldn’t even do it for a thousand dollars.  Because I have a major fear of sharks.  Sound childish?  Okay.  I’ve never been afraid of monsters under my bed, but sharks in the ocean while my skinny, pale arms and legs are flapping around in the water?  I’d literally rather be eaten by a grizzly bear.  And that’s WAY more likely in my current situation and I actually happen to be fine with it when I compare it to being eaten by a shark.  I actually think that a shark could just swim slowly up to me and LICK me, and I’d die right then and there.  I blame my brother for most of this fear.  My brother who is a missionary.  I think he thinks that THAT will get him into heaven after what he did to me emotionally with the shark books and shark pictures and shark articles and the hiding-under-the-water-and-rubbing-my-leg-all-shark-like-until-I-screamed-bloody-murder-and-wet-myself.  Doubt that he’ll be getting into heaven for that….even WITH the missionary work and the I-love-you-Allison junk that he does now when he sees me.  WHATEVER, Scott.

So there you go.  Things you DIDN’T want to know about me and now you do.  You’re welcome, and try not to be jealous.  Also?  I think each person who comments on this highly narcissistic post should tell me one thing that others don’t know about THEM!  And make it juicy so that I feel better about my weirdness.  Because that’s what the Bible says to do….”Encourage one another, and build each other up.”  See?  A biblical lesson to go along with this post!  

Awesome! 

Did I Not Make Myself Clear?

Sorry about that.

A few of you have asked where we are moving.  We don’t have orders.  We’re staying in Alaska but we’re moving on base, a mere 5 minutes from Yummy Man’s job AND the commissary so that, come November, I’m MUCH closer to egg nog. 

Yeah, we’ll be turning into city folk for the next couple of years until our time here is done. 

We do that a lot.  Bounce between living like city kids and then we buy a house in the country and do THAT for awhile.

When we retire, I’m certain we’ll end up on the biggest piece of land we can afford, but for now, sometimes living on base works well for us.

Except for the whole living-in-a-fishbowl thing that is kinda annoying.  The rubbernecking at the playground and watching people counting (ALOUD) as we pass by.

It’s always good to have another large family around  to kinda take the heat off of us.  There’s nothing wrong with that, right?

It’s been fun, when we’ve lived on other bases when someone has asked Yummy Man about his kids, and he has told them he has 10 of them, and then their mouths fall open and they kinda sputter in disbelief and then go into the inevitable…..”You know what causes that, right?”  ”Are you guys Mormons?”, blah, blah, blah. So then Yummy Man says “Yeah, but do you know the Gradys?  THEY have 11!!” 

Works every time.  

We’re all courageous and noble like that. 

 

 

I Know.

It’s been FOREVER since I posted and I feel really bad about it.

Well, maybe not REALLY bad, but bad, nonetheless.  Like, as in I feel the need to apologize to those of you who have stuck with me through the years and put up with my inconsistent blogging and general weirdness.

But my excuse is pretty good.

Really.

See, life has been really weird and stressful and in the process of being really, really different.

The whole maybe-we’ll-retire-here-and-have-a-neat-Alaskan-homestead-and-raise-things-and-be-all-independent-and-studly just isn’t going to happen.

God has shown us in various and MOST DEFINITE ways that we are not to stay here forever.

And I’m VERY grateful for that, honestly, because the winters here?

Wow.  I’m not tough enough and I have absolutely no trouble admitting that.

I can birth 11-pound babies on the floor of my living room but I’m just not tough enough to continually withstand 7 months of FEET of snow and ice and REALLY, REALLY stupid temperatures.

And I NEVER use the word “stupid” because it’s a bad example to my children, generally unclassy, and wholly unintelligent.

But the temperatures here are STUPID!

Which brings us to the subject at hand.

Change.

Yummy Man is getting deployed in the fall.  And because I don’t relish the idea of being alone (with 10 kids…irony, anyone?) in an Alaskan winter, 45 minutes from the nearest emergency care, and understanding that  I don’t drive well in snow and ice, we decided to go ahead and sell the house.

We had buyers within 3 days of making that decision.

And we didn’t even put it on the market.

See what I meant above about God making things very clear to us?

Yeah.

So we’ve been up to our eyeballs in packing the house and figuring out everything to do with moving to the base.

Also?  Yummy Man is in the most stressful job of his life and we’ve spent the last few weeks dealing with a very bad situation there.

I won’t go into the particulars here, but suffice it to say that if you know us in real life and see Yummy Man someday soon, try not to mention the knife sticking out of his back.  He’s kinda sensitive about it.   

So life is changing and we’re trying to roll with it.

And blogging hasn’t been at the top of my list of Things That HAVE to be Done TODAY!  

Sorry about that.

But hopefully, some of you are still out there in Blog-Readers Land and you’ll understand why I’ve been a Blogging Loser.

The adventure of our lives continues…..just with lots more people around, a MUCH bigger house with MULTIPLE bathrooms (WEEEEE!), and PAVED BIKE PATHS!

I ran on a paved bike path the other night and I might have cried a little, I loved it so much.

But that’s another post.   

Until then, please leave comments.  I NEED comments.  I LOVE comments.

Plus?  I need more friends.  Especially ones that can send their husbands to help us move.

 

 

A New Season. And I DON’T Mean Spring Because It’s Still in the Negative Numbers Here AND There is STILL Three Feet of Snow on the Sides of My Driveway.

Something happened in the last few months that showed itself last night.

It crept up on me, but in a good way, and now my life is different.

GOOD different.

Here it is…….

15-Year-Old vomited twice last night….. WITHOUT ME HAVING TO CLEAN ANYTHING UP.

If you’re not a mom, you probably won’t get the full force of joyfulness that this event has produced inside of me.

You could probably IMAGINE how awesome it might feel, but you won’t really KNOW.

And if you’re not a mom of many?  Then you’re still not on the same page.

I know how that must hurt so many of you and I apologize for seeming like I am better than you are.

But consider that I am bragging that I know more about vomit and the different and best methods of vomit clean-up than most women in the entire universe.

It’s not a club you want to be in.  Trust me.

Feel better now?

There are times….like on really bad days…..when I count down how many more years I have to homeschool my kids.  Or how much longer I will be buying diapers.

This morning I considered how many more years would pass before ALL of my children possess the incredible and extremely helpful talent of vomiting in toilets.

There IS a caveat in all of this when you consider that all of our children sleep in bunkbeds.  So that kinda throws a wrench into the whole thing when you consider that the kids on the TOPS of the bunks will take longer to become proficient at toilet-vomiting since they will be required to get SAFELY down from said bunk in order to do so.

I realize that there could be vomiting-over-the-side-of-the-bed-and-splattering-on-the-floor-mere-inches-from-a-sibling’s-face incidents.

I understand that and know that that is most likely in my future.

But just to know that a few of my oldest children now possess the ability to vomit in the toilet?

It’s like a new world has opened up before my eyes.

NoVomitCleanUpLand!

It’s like Disney World without the rides and princesses and stuff!

So at lunch today, we were having fun quizzing the kids on famous people in history.

We’re homeschoolers.  We can’t help it.

Here were two questions and answers…….

Yummy Man:  ”Who invented the phonograph?”

11-Year-Old:  ”DWIGHT L. MOODY!”

Oh my stinkin’ word!

Then Yummy Man was trying to be funny and asked this question….

“What did Abraham Lincoln tell his father after he cut down the cherry tree?”

He thought he was funny with that one, but THIS answer got way more laughs than the original punchline.

15-Year-Old answered…”The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.” 

I don’t think anyone learned much.  It was actually kinda shameful because, after we got some correct answers, then everyone started shouting out things like…….

“Who invented pasteurization?”

“JIM ELLIOTT!”

You could say that they know a LOT about missionaries and spiritual giants, but may need a little more education about other historical figures.

Actually, they know all the names they do, NOT because I’m a great homeschooling mother who has spent time researching and teaching about these people, but because I’m a great homeschooling mother who buys lots of CDs and DVDs about these people and historical events that they listen to and watch over and over and over.

Story Hour.

Drive-Thru History.

Liberty’s Kids.

Focus on the Family Radio Theatre.

Yep.  I’m good at buying educational stuff online.

And I’m okay with that.  Because it WORKS.

Although you wouldn’t know it by the first part of this post.

(Snort!) 

 

 

 

Last Night

(An aside….It has snowed almost continuously for the last 3 days and nights.  Another aside…..Yummy Man is a weather forecaster in the Air Force.  Okay.  You may now carry on.)

A conversation Yummy Man and I had last night……

Me:  ”So how was your day?”

YM:  ”Very annoying.”  

Me:  ”Really?  Why is that?”

YM:  ”The pilots were calling all day long, asking when they could fly.  It would pour snow and I would tell them that the ceilings weren’t high enough and then it would let up a little 15 minutes later and they’d call again to ask if they could fly NOW.  That was annoying!  I couldn’t get anything done!”

Me:  ”Yeah.  I totally get you.  It’s like when I’m in the bathroom, trying to have some privacy and there are 3 kids outside the door asking if they can go outside and how do you spell “often” and 3-Year-Old stinks.”

YM:  ”Yeah, but at least you can tell them to go away!  Can’t really do that with helicopter pilots.”

And I couldn’t really argue with THAT.

But at least he doesn’t have to change their diapers, right?

Totally got him on that one.  SCORE!   

Update

Some of you have written, asking how I’m doing after my surgery.

Thank you for that!

Because my family?  They’ve just been concerned only with the fact that, because food is indescribably difficult to get out of the huge caves where my wisdom teeth used to be, my breath has smelled less than stellar.

Try HORRIBLY, DEATH-LIKE, and ROTTEN and you’ll be fairly close to the accuracy of the smell. 

After the initial concern and love and care died down right after the surgery, this became the theme of our household for a few days…..until I got the hang of getting the food particles out of those caves.

Even my smaller children exclaimed over the stench coming from my mouth.  And then they told me that it just emanated from every pore in my body, and stunk up an entire room.

Wow.  Good thing I don’t have self-esteem issues.  Snort! 

But they were pretty polite about it.  Respectful, even, unless you count the look of complete and utter horror on their faces as they said it and anytime I got close to them.

And Yummy Man?  Well, if you personally know Yummy Man, you won’t even need to read how he felt about this whole thing and the manner in which he conducted himself around me and my stenchiness.

He had a BLAST.

Yeah.  That’s the man I promised to love and cherish and spend all the rest of my days with.

He made fun of me every chance he got.  He made a huge point of scooting to the farthest side of the bed possible each night and holding his breath whenever I came around and then exhaling loudly as he ran from the room.

He called me things like Death Breath and Catacombs Girl and other things that my mom wouldn’t approve of. 

If you DON’T know Yummy Man personally, let me just state that this has always been his personality.  He lives to entertain himself at others’ expense but mostly at mine.  I knew this going into the whole marriage thing and I did it anyway.  His awesome calves blinded me from it.  I have only myself to thank.

But the surgery itself went really well.  At least, I THINK it did seeing how I was totally asleep during the whole thing.

Now here’s the OTHER side to Yummy Man…..

When they brought me into the recovery room, I was still pretty out-of-it, but mostly awake.  One part of my mouth hurt so terribly that I was quietly crying and pointing to it so they could do something about it.  Basically, tears were running down my face and Yummy Man came right over and wiped my face and eyes with a Kleenex until the surgeon came in to give me a shot in that side.

You understand the Yummy part now, don’t you? 

Two things came out of the surgery…..two Allison Thoughts, if you will…..

One, going under ROCKS!  It’s an incredible testament to the science of pharmacology that you can MAKE someone go to sleep and, not only that, but while they are sleeping, you can use a small drill to saw into their bones and rip other bones out of their skulls…..WITHOUT THEM FEELING IT!!! 

How amazing is that?

The other Allison Thought is this…..when and if you have oral surgery some day in the future, where you end up having 4 huge holes in your mouth that are open and bloody and basically gaping wounds, TRY NOT TO VOMIT FROM THE PSEUDO-NARCOTICS THAT WERE GIVEN TO YOU FOR THE PAIN.

And CERTAINLY don’t do it 3 or 4 times!!! 

Because gaping, bloody mouth wounds and vomit don’t mix well. 

And THAT is the thought I will leave you with today.

You’re so welcome. 

 

Wherein I’m a Big Baby

So here’s the deal……tomorrow morning, I am having all of my wisdom teeth removed.

I’m not happy about it.

In fact?  I’m slightly nauseous just thinking about it.

Why?  Well, because I’m terrified of pain.  And not in a normal, everyday, regular-people-are-scared-of-pain-too kind of way.

If you don’t know this about me already, then you haven’t been reading this blog very long.

I’m terrified of pain.

Didn’t used to be this way.  But then I had a 10-pound baby in less than 55 minutes in a bathtub in Bavaria after 15 contractions and the violence of that experience left me with an extreme fear of replicating that kind of pain ever again.

(Wow.  That was an impressive sentence, wasn’t it?  Read it again really fast and it comes off as very impressive.  Trust me.  I know these things.)

This is where the “Big Baby” part of the title comes in.

I’m scared.

Like….REALLY scared.

Not so much about the actual surgery because I will be put to sleep completely, but about the recovery.  And how there won’t be any narcotics involved because I forget to breathe when I take narcotics, so no doctor worth his salt will let me get within 10 miles of a narcotic.

So Tylenol will be it.  Tylenol will help me make it through having 4 huge, bloody craters in my mouth.

See?  Big baby.

So if you think of me any in the next 24 hours, you can pray for me.

That I’ll make it through the surgery okay and will wake up from it and will not die from the pain thereafter.

And that the Lord will release me from the dramatics of this event and let it be NO BIG DEAL!

Please note that I will take no offense whatsoever if you use the words “big” and “baby” while praying for me.

I totally deserve it.

 

Birthdays

Our littler-type children always have this massive countdown to their birthdays.

I get to hear about it every morning as I’m making pancakes and I really do TRY to sound interested and excited but what I’m REALLY doing is figuring out in my head how many days I have until it’ll be too late to order  birthday presents from Amazon.

Nice, I know.

This morning, Almost-8-Year-Old ran to tell me breathlessly how many days until Almost-10-Year-Old’s birthday and then how many days until HER birthday.  (They are only 3 weeks apart….in different years, of course.  I’m not THAT fertile.)

Then she ran away back to the playroom but was back in 2 minutes, even MORE breathless.

This is what she told me……

“MOMMY!  Almost-10-Year-Old’s birthday is the day before Washington’s birthday!  She is SO. LUCKY!!!”  And she stood there with her mouth open wide in a huge smile and her eyes bright!

And I said, “Really?  She’s lucky?  Why is that?”

She said, “MOMMY!  It’s WASHINGTON’S BIRTHDAY!  Duh!”

And then she snorted and trotted off to start her chores.

Wow.  Doesn’t take much to excite HER!

Figuring out what to get her for her birthday should be EASY!