My face
Is full
Of snot,
I want
To go
Home now.
May, 2008
The Tiniest Poem
Introducing Kayla
This blond canine is Kayla. I don’t talk about her much, mostly because she’s a lovely dog who does obnoxious things. Like tear up our comforters when she is in the house. And god bless her, she probably is just trying to help me get rid of things but our blankets are not things that I’d like to get rid of. Crazy dog. Go after the knickknacks!
Anyway, we’ve had her since October of 2006 and got her when she was probably four or five months old. I must admit that I was not excited to see her enter our household because at the time I was six months pregnant and not in any mood to potty train the dog just to have a baby and need to potty train it too. But things worked out in the end.
I remember we used to keep her in our dining room and block off the entrance to our kitchen and living room with a big framed poster and a cork board since we didn’t actually have baby gates yet. She really enjoyed sleeping in this cardboard box that we’d accidentally left out one time. I remember getting up in the morning and walking through the kitchen and spying her curled up, all tiny and cute, in this cardboard box. We left the box in there for her until she got big enough that she decided she wanted to chew on it instead. Then we threw it away.
She’s mostly an outside dog now, due to her very rare but upsetting habit of destroying pillows or blankets that has developed since we’ve moved to our new house. We think it’s due to her excessive energy and the fact that she doesn’t have a fenced yard to run around in all day. We currently have this Tree Trolley set up which allows her a good 12 foot radius around the big tree in our backyard, but it doesn’t give her the ability to run around like she enjoys. At our last house, she had a huge yard to race around in.
Poor girl. But she knows fencing and freedom is in the works. Mostly because Andy’s got the remainder of the supplies from when we put up a fence at the old house all scattered around the garage. And he’s taken copious notes of prices, as well as stretched out what fencing we have to see how much more we’ll need. She knows whats up.
Flowers and Feasting
This pretty little plant is in my backyard and I’ve been wondering just what to call it for a few days now. This flower has flummoxed me. It’s so dainty, odd, and pretty. I’m very glad to have it growing back there.
It wasn’t until our Memorial Day cookout that I got a chance to ask my gardening relatives just what it’s name was. A Columbine! Hurray for Mother’s In Law and Grandmothers!
Now I have a good idea of just what we’ve got growing in our pretty yard. There’s Lily of the Valley (I’m very fond of these), Bearded Iris (they are EVERYWHERE and very entertaining to take pictures of), Columbine, Tulips, Daffodils, and some potential Day Lilies (we have to wait a bit for them to bloom first to know for sure).
Of course, the entirety of our cookout did not revolve around identifying flowers. Not at all, actually. The beginning portion dealt with the fact that all the gentlemen who were involved are idiots of varying degrees. Some much greater than others. I’m happy to say that my gentleman turned out to be somewhere in the middle.
I can’t really explain the situation too well except to say that we had two groups of people present: family and friends. And… some of our friends are idiots. Honestly, I think that’s why we enjoy their company so much. They make me feel sensible and smart, proud that my parents have blessed me with the slightest shred of common sense. But we enjoy them for who they are.
Turns out, we ought not mix the two groups. One of our bawdier friends is the type when there is relative quiet, to fill the room with stories of his exploits and talk about his social life and what all he’s been up to. Bless him, he did keep us entertained (if a bit chagrined) with tales about his baby mama, how woke up drunk from the night before on Peppermint Schnapps and therefore didn’t use mouthwash this morning, how he lives with a woman who is married and yet separated and after only three weeks of being together she is paying for all of his beer… ha. Right? Can you see your family members listening to this diatribe?
As soon as my Mother-In-Law showed up she started being extremely rude to our friend, which I must admit I found funny in the way that she did it. More with slight comments than anything else and I know for a fact that she was practically pulling her words from my Grandma’s thoughts. Well, maybe not for a fact, but while my Grandma has a bit more tact to not out and out snipe on a person, her thoughts were on the same page.
Andy was a bit disgruntled by this, I must say and while I can see both sides of the page… I’m still left thinking that the whole thing is funny. I mean, he’s the one who made the guest list and didn’t ask our friend to censor his conversation like he had any sense in his head.
Anyway, Andy and his friends moved outside to monitor the grill and the foodstuff while the relatives sat inside and played with Jasbaz. And being the terrible hostess I am, I went outside too. I hadn’t seen these guys in ages and they really are funny people. I like to be around people who focus on having a good time if only for a laugh.
I think I lost some Daughter-In-Law, Aunt, and Granddaughter points by going outside and not attempting to fuse the parties together. But truth be told, I enjoyed spending a few hours of an afternoon just having a nice time and watching Andy burn and over saturate our food with lighter fluid. Seriously, the man went a bit crazy with it. I’m surprised that the lumps of charcoal didn’t crawl out of the grill in protest. The gas grill, I might add.
Hehe. We have a lot to learn about hosting cook outs. Although next time, I plan on us owning a new grill and not one that is in the process of falling to pieces. Kind of scary. We’re rather lucky we didn’t catch the tree or the garage on fire. Especially with Andy wielding the lighter fluid the way he was.
It was an experience, to say the least.
A clip from the newslines
It’s funny how I had a huge post written up in my head today and then I read this news story and thought I ought to share it instead.
Every day we pick up the newspaper and read stories of suffering and inhumanity that make you want to draw the curtains and sit quietly in the dark.
Though it easily could have been, this tale is not one of them.
On the afternoon of May 4, Jessica Johnson Palmer took her three children to a park to meet her former boyfriend. According to the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office, the boyfriend and his current girlfriend lured the family into the woods, beat Mrs. Palmer to death with a baseball bat, slit the throats of 4-year-old Lindsay and 3-year-old Juan. They left Robbyn, a 7-month-old, to die alone.
But the baby didn’t die. And she didn’t die because Lindsay didn’t die.
In their haste, the killers’ blade missed Lindsay’s jugular. After the murderers left, the wounded girl huddled with her baby sister under a bush through the Louisiana night.
The next morning, park groundskeepers saw Lindsay stumbling out of the woods holding the baby. She collapsed. The children were bitten so badly by insects that sheriff’s deputies thought they had been burned. In the hospital that night, a sheriff’s spokeswoman told me, Lindsay refused to sleep until nurses brought her baby sister to cradle in her arms.
The information Lindsay gave police led to the arrest of two people, one of them allegedly her biological father. “God, you left the prophetess alive to tell the story,” the family’s pastor said at the funeral.
The Baton Rouge Advocate reported that Lindsay came to the funeral with a white scarf hiding her neck wound. Erin Manning, a Fort Worth writer, observed on my blog that the scarf conceals a profound mystery: “We can’t bear to look at the sacrificial cost of love – a wound so bravely borne because at some level, this child’s love for her tiny sister outweighed her terror and her pain.”
This is why the lives of the saints are so much more important than moral exhortation. We need to see and to feel what goodness, especially heroic goodness, is like. Evil, even great evil, usually can be explained, but true goodness? That’s more of a mystery. Mysteries, by definition, can never be fully explained, only revealed.
This is a revelation.
How must that child have felt that night, so tiny and abandoned, facing the crushing enormity of what she had seen and the blackness of the night in the swampy woods? I come from the next town over. I have been in those woods. They’re infested with poisonous snakes, wildcats and other killers that prowl at night. All children growing up in south Louisiana know that.
She could have run deeper into the woods to flee the gruesome scene never to be seen again. She could have sat quietly, paralyzed by fear and trauma, until she and the baby perished from exposure or worse. Either would have been tragic, God knows, but unsurprising.
After all, she was only 4.
That’s not what Lindsay did. After keeping vigil with the baby in the savage ruins of their family’s life, that little girl picked up her sister and walked straight out of hell.
Witness the power of love. It was love, surely, that gave that child the courage and presence of mind to face down unimaginable terror. All the darkness in the hearts of the diabolical killers, and the darkness of a thousand million evil nights like that one, cannot overcome the light that young child kindled in her heart, hiding under the bush near the body of her dead mother and brother.
Long after the despicable deeds of the killers are forgotten, people will tell stories about what she did. How many of us face long odds and struggle with hardship, sickness and despair? Who hasn’t been tempted to surrender to the thought that the hate and pain and sorrow of this life are too great to endure?
Let them think of Lindsay, who refused despair. For the rest of her life, the scar on her neck will be a luminous sign to the world: Love conquers all.
When Lindsay Paige Johnson, age 4, staggered bloody out of the darkness and into the light, she carried her baby sister. Baby Robbyn’s life is Lindsay’s gift to her.
But she also carried hope. This is her gift to us.
~ Source (2)
Everything I was going to write about just flew right out the window after that.
Mothers Day – According to Jasbaz
Remember when I told you all about how Andy got a Gateway Computer for me from Mother’s Day? Right. Well, now I’m actually using it. Heh. And to commemorate such a momentous and exciting occasion, I want to present you with Jasbaz’s side of the story:
So, it’s Saturday night and we’re waiting for Papas to come home. I’m hanging out with Mamas. We’re playing and all, but I’m getting a lil tired and waiting for Papas to come home so I can get my hugs and kisses and go to bed. Dang, papas. Hurry up. It’s been a long day of eatin’, drinkin’, playin’ and poopin’. I’m tired out, yo.
Mamas hear’s a door slam and goes to greet Papas. I get up and hurry after but I’m not so fast. I just learned to walk not long ago you see and they’ve had way more practice. Speed is not one of my skills yet. Life’s hard.
Anyway, Mamas shuts the door and goes out to talk to Papas for some reason. I dunno, I got left behind because I was too slow. Life is hard for us little people, ya know? Always getting picked up, put down, fed, diapered. Them’s the breaks.
Anyway, Mamas came back in with Papas and I was so excited to see him! And pissed because whatthehell papa it’s 9PM and past my bedtime. Anyway, I can’t hug him since he’s got big packages and is carrying them to the office. I follow. See what I mean, always getting left behind. Word of advice, never learn to walk! They make you walk all the time once they know you can do it.
I overhear that Papas spent one thousand dollars on Mamas without telling her. I started to worry for Papas life. Mamas is crazy when it comes to money. But she didn’t kill him. Yet. Instead she helped him set it up all the while sniping at him. Mamas does that. She mutters under her breath and does sneaky verbal attacks on the sly. Mamas is not a yeller, Mama is a subtle takerdowner.
Omigod, it took them forever. I ended up watching some kind of a crazy infomercial where you pour food in this gadget and it cooks omelette’s in like a second. It was crazy. Maybe I ought to make them get one of them things. Lady with too much makeup said you could make ANYTHING in it. She even made a steak – swear. S’crazy.
Anyways, whatevs. I gots to get to bed. Peace.