One...Two...Skip "A Few"...Ninety-Nine...One Hundred!

Me to the nine-year-old daughter who was a bit out of sorts:

"Why don't you get a few of your stuffed animals and cuddle up on Mommy and Daddy's bed and put in a movie?"

Her response"

"Okay, Mommy!"

and this...




It appears that some defining of terms is in order. I think we'll start with the difference between "a few" and "a plethora."


I guess Daddy is sleeping on the couch tonight.

'Tis the Season

'Twas the Summer for...



book-buying. Lots and lots of book-buying (This is just one of the many piles).

Perhaps it will be the Autumn for mid-century bookcase-finding.

If You Have to Ask, You'll Never Know. If You Know, You Need Only Ask.

In case you, Dear Reader, haven't had a chance to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows--Part 2, this is a picture of The Room of Requirement:



And if you are like me, and you view movies as amusing but seriously lacking substitutes for the books themselves, here is an illustration from the book:



The Room of Requirement is a pretty nifty part of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It is a magical room which can only be discovered by someone who is in need. It is called the Come and Go Room by the house-elves of Hogwarts. The Room is located on the seventh floor, opposite a tapestry showing Barnabas the Barmy trying to teach trolls to dance the ballet. To make the Room appear, a person has to walk past the section of blank wall three times concentrating hard on what is needed.

And many times, what is needed is a place to unload something quickly or hide something you'd rather not have found by anyone else.

Now, I sense that you are fidgeting in your seats, wondering when I am going to get to the point of all of this.

The point is this:

The inside of my house doesn't yet look EXACTLY like the Room of Requirement, but it's getting pretty close.

And the problem is, people around here keep needing a place to quickly unload stuff faster than I can get it picked up.

I need a calm, serene, uncluttered home.

The Room of Requirement doesn't seem to work for me.

I must be a Muggle.

The Countdown Is On...

23 days and counting...

Kids Think the Darndest Things

I despise the word "turd." I don't know why I dislike it so much, but I do.

Apparently this abhorrence is not genetic. Or if it is, it wasn't passed on to my offspring. My teenagers have no problem using it.

On our way to Kansas City the other day, that word kept flying around the car.

"I really wish you would stop saying that." I said to them. "I really don't like that word."

"Why?" My eleven-year-old asked. "Is it a bad word?"

"It isn't a bad word," I replied. "It's just kind of disgusting. And it really isn't nice to call someone a piece of poop."

"THAT's what a turd is???" My youngest daughter piped up indignantly from the backseat of the vehicle. "They call me that all the time!!! I thought it was short for turtle."

How Cliche

I used to view the idea of a mid-life crisis with skepticism, a small amount of amusement and more than a little scorn.

I don't know about you, but the image that always comes to mind for me is something like this:



You know...an old, balding man with a bad toupee and a fake tan in a shiny red convertible with a leggy blonde half his age next to him in the passenger seat. Probably there is an ex (or soon to be ex) wife and three kids somewhere whose lives are devastated or about to become so.

I never really thought about women experiencing such a phenomenon.

Until I experienced it.

So I did some research on the subject. Here are just a couple of things that I found:

This quote by Sue Shallenbarger--
"A midlife crisis is a cliché until you have one."

and this--
"A midlife crisis might occur anywhere from about age 37 through the 50s..."-- Dan Jones, PhD, director of the Counseling and Psychological Services Center at Appalachian State University, Boone, N.C. (for those of you adamantly declaring that I am way too young to experience such a thing)


If you're about to go pop the popcorn and grab a drink to settle in and read the juicy details, I'm so sorry to disappoint.

Neither this post, nor this blog are about the whys and wherefores of my midlife crisis.

If you're about to call me, text, send me a message on facebook, or make an appointment with my pastor on my behalf, you can relax.

I have declared my midlife crisis to be over, and I am fine. My family is fine.

And because I would secretly want to know if I were reading this on your blog:
No. I am not the proud owner of a shiny new convertible. I did not get a tattoo or a boob job (although I did pierce my nose and my tragus somewhere along the way). I do not have a secret Italian lover, nor am I having an affair with the 18 year old bag boy at the supermarket. :o) My midlife crisis was neither so sordid...nor so simple.

I imagine no one's is.

Being a girl from Kansas, I've always loved the Wizard of Oz. And I love the part where, while trying to figure out how to return to her family, Dorothy tells the Tin Man what she's learned while in Oz.

"...if I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with! Is that right?"

So, welcome to my backyard as I search for my heart's desire in this new season that is "midlife." Feel free to stay for as long as you like. Or to run away as far and as fast as you can. :o)