Parading

"It's costume parade day!" I said.

 "Go put on a costume!" I said.

"I don't care which one! Whatever makes you feel fabulous and confident!" I said.

And thus, the skeleton ballerina in witch socks was born.

The Wonderful Adventures of Nils and Other Assorted Things

I found Nils wearing one of Carolena's hats. I thought he looked so cute that I snapped a picture. I have tried like 800 times to upload the photos here, and it just isn't happening. The computer goes haywire (haywire? who says that?!) every damn time. Perhaps it is a message from Future Nils who has some kind of 2030 computer device that is blocking my ability to upload them. Considering the story behind the photos is that I found him wearing a big pink straw hat and took a picture and he insisted that I take about twenty-seven more, yeah, I would say Future Nils is happy they aren't getting posted. He heard the "click" of the camera, turned, posed and said, "Again! Cheeeese!" so I took another one and then smiled and got up to walk away.
And he screamed, "Again! Again! Cheeeeeese!!!"
So I laughed, he struck a pose, I took another photo, and got up to walk away.
And he screamed, "Again! Cheeeese!!!"
This went on for quite sometime eventually ending in a tantrum and fifty million photos of Nils in various pageant poses. And I do mean pageant poses.
What are they teaching this kid at school?

Aw, speaking of Nils at school... poor Nils pet an asp yesterday at school. Does that just break your heart or what? That sweet little guy. He saw one of those fuzzy little devils walking by and reached out his pointer finger to pet it. That just breaks my heart in both that my poor Nils was hurt and in its sad innocent cuteness. Evidently in addition to the pain of an asp, his feelings were pretty hurt as well. He told Carolena and me all about it when we picked him up that afternoon. Oh, sweet Nils.
If you've never been stung by an asp before, then chances are you are reading this from somewhere north of the land of anoles, asps, and humid Halloweens. Asps are venomous caterpillars. Yes, really. And you only purposely touch one of those dudes once. They're like crazy mini-porcupines (Casey science, not real science) who have quills instead of fuzz (Casey science) so when you touch them the venomous fuzz gets stuck in your skin and someone has to get it out (real science). Yikes!

Yeah, Future Nils is definitely using some sort of fancy technology to ensure Present Day Casey can't post embarrassing photos. Look, that cute pumpkin one uploaded in a cinch.

Blog updates: 
Reading: I finished Into the Wild (which turned out to be almost too fast of a read) and started The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin which is going to be fabulous. The prologue was so good that I read the whole thing aloud to Chris. I then settled in to start reading chapter one and promptly fell asleep (it was 920... waaay past my bedtime).

Caffeine: I remembered the big container of 1/2 caff and this morning drank plenty of coffee but far less caffeine... so that's good... except that I had four scoops and now I'm about to get up and go make some REAL coffee. Hmph. That didn't work. 
Also, I've been thinking about how I have memories of my grandfather Clyde's (aka "Pop") coffee mug burned into my brain. The fact that all of my memories of Pop involve him with a brown coffee mug (which I wish I now owned) with the dredges of a cup of coffee in it, combined with my father's, sister's, and brother's, and my coffee... ummm shall we say "habits" (aka horrible life controlling addiction) is making me think there is something coffee related in the gene pool. Perhaps that's where the Rush name came from in the first place? I'm beginning to think someone overly caffeinated just got dubbed "Rush" somewhere back in our family history when humans were doling out last names. 
*Also, for those of you who think I'm just obsessing... you've just forgotten that I looovvvee coffee and my neurologist doesn't think unlimited pots is a good thing. So there is a legitimate medical reason for the obsession. Otherwise I would cease to drink water unless it had dripped through beans. And also I like to obsess about things. That's also in the gene pool *cough*jimmers*cough* AND also it's my blog so I do what I want. Start your own blog and talk about boring non-coffee related things. 

Hey, speaking of obsession and non-coffee related things, anyone want to talk about polar exploration?!

Tarantula holes in the front yard count: numerous. 
Number of tarantulas I'm excited to have living around our yard: all of them. That's one fuzzy bug! Those suckers eat roaches, y'all. Bring on the arachnids!

After asps and tarantulas who else is going to spend the rest of the day saying over and over, "that is one fuzzy bug!"? Well, if you clicked on that then you are now...

Caramel Corn Dogs: Bragging AND Complaining

Each year for the kids' school carnival I sign up to contribute "a lot" to the bake sale. The form comes home asking parents to commit to bringing baked goods and I return mine with my contact information and a note saying I will show up with "a lot - whatever that ends up being." This was my third year in a row so by now the women running it just know to expect me. Don't feel guilty if you don't bake for your school bake sale. Other people contribute things like underwriting professional face painters. This is my contribution. Everyone just does something and it turns out great.

This year, I filled a laundry basket and a huge bag full of cellophane wrapped goodies, looked at all of it and decided to add caramel corn. Why? 

Yes, why indeed.

So then I made a crap load of caramel corn. A quadrupedal batch for those of you who have the recipe. For those of you who don't... don't ask. I'm no longer giving it out. I've realized the gift of caramel corn is that it is a labor of love. Part of the gift is that YOU didn't make it and I did. So, not giving you the recipe? You're welcome.

 After babysitting the caramel corn for an hour, I started bagging it and laughed as the thought "caramel corn dogs!" popped into my head.

And then, "Ha, caramel corn dogs... damn, I have to make them now."

The good news is that they were lots of fun to look at and turned out fabulous (in my ever so modest opinion) and a lot of them sold. The bad news is that... they took FOREVER.

FORR. EV. VER.

Why did I think that making and attaching tags and gluing googly eyes and cutting and gluing ears and making puppy faces would be a quick activity?

So, the good news is that they were cool and different and overall fun to make. The bad news is they were a huge time-suck and stole my entire morning.

The awesome news is: google "caramel corn dogs" and see what comes up.

 Ha! Take that Pinterest (aka the place where imagination and creativity goes to die *ahem* not that I have strong opinions on that or anything...)! Originality wins again!

The Best Part of Waking Up

I have a new friend who has become one of those people with whom we say, "me too!" too often and I have the sense that we (or I know I for sure do) sometimes stop ourselves from agreeing because of it. Not that I then disagree - I just don't say anything and instead do a robot dance. Hm... with my personality now you don't know if I'm kidding or serious about the robot.

Judge's rule? I'll leave you guessing.

Last week her response to my comment that coffee has a strange power over me was, "me too. I even set mine up before bed and then think about it when I'm going to sleep because I can't wait to drink it again."

Me, "Yep, me too. Totally. I don't understand how other people don't get that. There are too kinds of people in this world: people who love coffee and people who don't."

Her, "Agreed. My husband gets up even earlier than me (she's an early bird) so I hear it percolating and get insanely excited when I wake up!"

Dear Chris,
I only wake up at 440. The 438 time slot for plugging in the coffee is available.
Love, Casey

Blog update: Current daily coffee intake is up to three cups minimum. Damn. I'll let Future Casey deal with that.

I'm Being Swallowed By a Boa Constrictor...

Oh no, oh no, he swallowed my toe! He swallowed my toe!

With two little ones under the age of five and a second (very loveable but sometimes somewhat demanding) spouse named "the Church," life involves a lot of squeezing right now. Squeezing in the things that have to happen like laundry and dinner and vestry meetings and working to fill them with love as best we can rather than stress. My little helper monkeys folding laundry help to fill that task with love (and wrinkles) and the combination of working ahead, a freezer, and a crock pot sure does fill our dinners with less stress and more love. And pizza and a movie as the standing vestry night activity around here will forever be what my children think "vestry" means. Someday they'll be active adults in a parish, run for vestry, and be disappointed to discover that the meeting doesn't mean hitting up the redbox (or future equivalent), tossing on pajamas, and spreading "the pizza blanket" across the living room.

I don't have time for squeezing in Facebook or watching tv or movies. But I do have time for crafting with my kids. And baking a freezer full of baked goods for the school fall fair. And squeezing in the library, and decorating for Halloween (it's an on-going creative process around here), and more baking for the school fair. I've squeezed in time for reading for fun falling asleep snuggled with my book (Into the Wild at the moment) and am exactly one week ahead in my work on the Gospel of Mark... which isn't as good as it sounds because I really need to squeeze in the end of that and get to work on Luke! Yikes!

We've squeezed in ballet lessons, and pumpkin patches, and plenty of spontaneous family dance parties... most of which are initiated by Nils hearing a song he likes on Pandora and yelling "come on! come on!" dancing around the den. He loves my "Proud Mary" station. We're also squeezing in more than enough time for preschool humor knock-knock jokes. Nils loves those as well and has already added his own to the mix... spoiler alert: boy humor evidently begins before the age of two. You don't want to answer the door if he says "knock knock!"

I'm squeezing in my early morning workouts. We're squeezing in special family time being sure to mark it off in advance on the calendar... because we're taking the wisdom of older, wiser clergy families and refusing to let our family get squeezed out. And in the midst of all of the squeezing we find rejoicing and prayer and thanksgiving. Constant thanksgiving.

I'm being swallowed by a boa constrictor... but I'm a Syltherin so it's just fine. We're doing alright. We'll just toss the boa a party hat and invite it to the next Proud Mary living room dance party.

Grace-Full

Some days I nail it. Some days I have a seemingly unlimited amount of patience for critters in my household including but not limited to cats, children, a husband, and a plethora of spiders. Some days I am creative and fun and resourceful and kind. Some days I am generous and compassionate.

BUT...

But some days I have a secret (until Chris finds me) crying melt down in the laundry room because someone *cough*not-me*cough* unknowingly spilled bleach on the edge of the kitchen counter and I got it on my new shirt and one of only two pairs of shorts that fit me well. You know, my new shirt that I found at Goodwill this week (and is thus not replaceable) that says "think positive" across it.
And no, the irony of hiding in the laundry room to cry over bleach on someone else's cast-off "think positive" shirt is not lost on me at all.

Some days I have stressing melt downs over the fact that the work that I literally did not have time to get done until Saturday morning (scheduled to be done between the hours of 440-7am) was interrupted by the early rising of a chipper nugget who refused to "go snuggle with Daddy." It is a universal law of motherhood that any work left until the early morning hours of the last possible minute will be interrupted by a random early riser.

Some days I awake tired because of the Halloween festival that I forced everyone to go to at bedtime the night before which was not really even fun. Some days the coffee just isn't strong enough. Some days the scheduled on the calendar "family day nothing else!" turns out to be a day when everyone should really just hide from my wrath.

And days like this are the days I'm reminded of grace. Free, unearned, undeserved, free flowing love.

Chris took the kids to the park for the morning so that I could finish my work. Pizza dough is rising. Beer is in the fridge. Aggies are on tv much to the glee of Nils who cries out "football! football! and is happily eating two suckers and a box of Nerds while watching the game (duh, didn't I already convince you it's that kind of day around here?). Supergirl is flying around ready to "save the people!" and now that my slightly postponed work is finally finished I know that a good book and a calm bed are calling my name.

Yes, grace abounds. Grace abounds.

Rhino Hide

I just went to retrieve my single cup of coffee from my coffee maker and found a cup of water sitting there. Was the Holy Spirit trying to tell me something in some sort of coffee into water type miracle? Surely this was a sign from heaven telling me it's time to back off the caffeine.

I stared into the cup of water for a few minutes and then realized I just forgot to put in the grounds. Coffee full steam ahead!

Don't buy that coffee pot. It sucks. And I don't often say something "sucks." But if you have any respect or love for coffee at all, for the love of God, steer clear of the Bella. It is atrocious. My environmental side finds the Keurig abhorrent for my own daily minimum two cup use (yeah, I said it) and my inability to regulate coffee means I need something small. *sigh* This is one of the many reasons why I told Carolena recently to just never get addicted to caffeine when she's a grown-up.

Someone recently asked me for advice on how to not take everything to heart. "How do you not let everything get under your skin?" she inquired (she's a fellow clergy spouse).

I blathered on about taking the advice that I give to my daughter "no matter what you do not everyone is going to like your shoes, hair, (fill in whatever) so you might as well just do what you like" and just about general confidence in the fact that I can't help how other people act; only how I react.

But really I should have just said, "I drink a ton of coffee and it might be turning my skin into rhino hide and that's why nothing not everything sinks in. Tough coffee rhino skin."