Winter Gone Wild

You know, it seems as if everything is just a bit off kilter with all this snow and crazy cold and the fact that we haven't seen the actual asphalt of our road in over a week.

Or the mouth and eyes of our snowman.

Poor thing.

It did have a mouth and eyes at one time.

Warning:  using black jelly beans for
snowman eyes and mouth will cause bleeding.
Like the makeup of Carol Burnett when she
played the aging silent movie star,
Nora Desmond.

Am I right?

Monte left early Tuesday morning on a business trip.

I asked him what I should do if I spotted a coyote in our yard while Nigel was out there doing what he needed to do.

Without hesitation Monte said,

"Grab a pot and bang on it."

Me:  "That's what you would do if you saw a coyote outside right now? 

You'd grab a pot and bang on it?"

Monte:  "No, I'd kick it."

Me:  "You'd kick a coyote?"

Monte:  "Absolutely, to save my dog and protect my family."

Then there was a show of muscle flexing and fist making.

I decided to do some research on The Google because it seemed as if everyone in town had pictures of coyotes in their backyard or one very near them.

This problem was real. 

And it wasn't going away.

Not a big cat.

Nor were there 10TV helicopters 

dedicated to tracking their whereabouts.

Google told me that basically Monte was right.
(But a little wrong too).

Coyotes are skittish creatures not so much into sticking around for the loud noises of singing, screaming or pot banging.

As long as you stare right into their eyes while you do it--

to show dominance.

Never, under any circumstance, 

should you take off running 

or kick them.

The night before Monte's business trip McDaniel's basketball team won in overtime.

It was one of those games that, as the sweet grandfather of one of the players put it,

"Got my pacemaker pumping!"

We treated McDaniel and one of her teammates out to a victory dinner afterward--their pick.

They chose KFC.

I will get a salad, I sighed to myself.

The very cheery lady behind the counter informed me that cole slaw was the extent of their salad choices.

So I ordered a chicken breast.

They were out of chicken breasts.

In fact, they were basically out of most of their chicken items.

So I ordered a chicken pot pie.

They were out of it.

I told the cheery lady she needed to help me.

So she suggested the cole slaw.

(again)

And a grilled thigh.

(…yum?)

And oddly enough, cake.

We wondered as we made our way to our seats, how an establishment known for chicken could become so depleted of it.

We decided that the C of KFC was less about the chicken and more about the cole slaw and cake that night.

I am sure coyotes played in there somewhere.

And most definitely the cold.

Weary and Entertainment Starved

I woke up to the sound of helicopters this morning around 6:15ish.

Half-dreaming, half-awake, I rationalized the obvious circling that the helicopter was doing

over 

and over 

and over, 

what seemed to be RIGHT ABOVE OUR HOUSE,

as a search for coyotes.

Because that is what you do in a city neighborhood when coyotes are starving because the winter has been the coldest and longest and involving so much snow and they start eating little dogs in their very own backyards.

I know.

Can you even imagine?!

It happened. 

I heard it on Facebook.

Or was it the news?

It was definitely in a text from Carisa 

begging us to watch Nigel closely 

as he does his business outside.

Good thing he is white and blends in nicely with the snow.

Anyway,

my brain made it rational for our local news to "track" the coyote's whereabouts via helicopter.

In the dark. 

For good TV, of course.

McDaniel came in our room and asked if the Russians were trying to bomb us

via helicopter.

Thank you, Monte, for giving the detailed and impassioned 

Cold War history lecture during the opening ceremonies of 

the Winter Olympics in Russia.

RABBIT TRAIL:  Is anyone else having trouble "getting into" the Winter Olympics this year?

Maybe it is because this has already been like the LONGEST winter and watching MORE of anything winter seems like it is making it even longer.

Or maybe it is because I saw it was 55 degrees in Sochi yesterday and it was 18 degrees here in Ohio. Yeah, I was slightly jealous of Russia.

But mainly I think it is because I am a child of the 80s where we were taught very real things about the Cold War and "pushing the button" and the odds of surviving a nuclear bomb (not good) and "I will break you" said by Drago in Rocky IV was really more of political statement than a boxing one.

ALL THAT TO SAY, I can't love watching a host to our Olympians that I have been taught want to end our way or life or at least take it over completely.

I searched the Internet and found out that a water main had broken very nearby and flooded a busy road,

thus icing it over, 

thus making it unnavigable. 

Film at 11.

From the sound of it, a LOT of film at 11.

Can I just say that my coyote story or even the Russian one would've made better television than watching cars slide off the road as water shoots out of a broken pipe?

That is so. last. week.

Not that I want either of those scenarios to happen, please no, Lord, but it has been a long winter.

We are weary and entertainment starved.

That has been very noticeable in our local news when a fuzzy picture of an animal flashed on the screen with the title of Big Cat Spotted.

Except it wasn't a big cat.

What was thought to have been a bobcat turned out to be a coyote. 

(See--I did hear it on the news and not just Facebook or Carisa!).

Seems a little bit like another show:

We are cold and bored and can't go anywhere because there is snow and frozen water everywhere and our dogs are possibly going to be eaten by coyotes.

My mom texted me that a hawk has positioned itself in a tree behind their house so as to "pick off" any bird that dares to belly up to the feeder my dad keeps stocked for them.

Not. Pretty.

But certainly more interesting than the mistaken identity of a bobcat/coyote, 

especially since none of them turned out to be Big Foot.

The local news also reported a wreck in a little town about an hour away. The wreck happened on Coonpath Road. 

That entertained me to no end. 

(see how desperate I am?)

Especially since my girlfriend grew up in that town.

Of course I had to text her immediately and she did indeed remember Coonpath Road.

It was the road she took to the pool in the summer.

Summer. Ahhhh.

Remember that?

Big cats aren't mistaken for coyotes in summer.

Water main breaks don't get 30 minutes of film footage from a news crew helicopter in summer.

People don't slide off icy roads and crash into poles on Coonpath Road in the summer.

Right?

Don't ruin this for me.

I am like Olaf the snowman singing of summer in the movie Frozen,

blissfully 

hopeful 

and ignorant.

Play Pretend

I went to my women’s bible study the other morning,

got my cup of coffee,

sat down,

opened my workbook and bible.

I noticed out of the corner of my eye,

someone waving through the small glass window in the closed door to the classroom.

It was the church’s preschool director.

She was waving me out into the hallway.

She explained that she needed to give a new family a school tour but had already promised to video one of the teachers interacting with the students for her student teaching.

That’s where I came in.

I got to video a classroom of 4-year-olds interacting with their teacher.

I wasn’t to speak.

Ahem.

Just keep the camera on the teacher as she explained and observed students

at the pendulum station,

building and knocking down a cardboard brick tower,

playing with a large toy dog,

and then a painfully long 3 minutes of trying to get the CD player to work at the listening station.

“Can you hear it now?”

“Now can you hear it?”

“How about now? Can you hear it?”

I have to admit,

I forgot how mind-numbingly loud a classroom of 4-year-olds could be.

There was so much to look at and observe myself that I had to keep reminding myself to video what the teacher was doing and not what I was looking at.

Which was so many things!

There was a boy constantly asking when it was his turn

FOR EVERYTHING!

They had this great system of clipboards they called “Waiting Lists” and the kids could write their name down when they wanted to be next.

The boy could easily look to see WHEN it was going to be his turn,

but he must’ve liked asking

over

and over

and OVER again.

For fun.

I saw him refer to the list.

Saw him point to his name. 

He KNEW EXACTLY WHEN 

it was going to be his turn.

Then there was the boy that hummed his own little ditty

that was remarkably catchy,

(I caught myself humming it later in the day)

over 

and over 

and OVER again

while he walked back and forth across the room 

tossing up and down the blood pressure cuff 

from a pretend medical kit.

But the greatest pull of my attention was the little boy that I noticed taking all the plastic lids from the pots and pans from the play kitchen,

just the lids,

and shoving them down his pants.

Some lids he shoved UP his pant legs

and some he shoved DOWN his pant legs.

He tried to shove one lid into the pocket of his cargo pants

but it just wasn’t to be.

When he shoved the plastic pot with the handle right into the front area of his pants,

I felt like I needed to alert someone.

Before I could do so, the boy whipped out the pot quickly by the handle and pretended it was a sword

and he was challenging an opponent.

OHHHHHH! 

He was putting on his armor!

For battle.

This little boy that I was ready to rat out to the teacher

as a weird little possible thief 

or possible WHO KNOWS WHAT,

was deep in the pretend.

Which is really just the child word for practice.

All the kids in the room were practicing.

The boy on the waiting list was practicing (not perfectly) patience.

The boy humming was practicing creativity.

And the boy with the pot lids was practicing protecting himself.

Even the teacher was, 

with me recording it,

 practicing her craft of educating these children.

I remember when my girls were little and they always wanted to

“play pretend”.

Being a mommy

or a waitress

or a hair stylist

or doctor

or (ugh) make up artist

or teacher

or chef.

They were always practicing to be something.

What am I practicing?

He replied, “My mother and brothers are those who hear God’s word and put it into practice.”

Luke 8:21

Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality. 

Romans 12:13

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.

Ephesians 6:10-11

I heard a great quote from our senior pastor at church on Sunday,

“God never wastes an experience in a believer’s life."

And so I don’t want the 

lice,

the one missing basketball shoe,

the pants with no one inside them,

the poetry,

the bitter cold snow,

lice AGAIN

or the room full of 4-year-olds,

to be wasted.

My word for the year is SEEK, after all.

And there has been SO MUCH to see.

What are you practicing?

Lice, Lice, Baby

Yeah, they came back.

Or, more than likely, they never completely left.

The good news is we actually got to use that $150 prescription strength highly flammable lice shampoo.

If that could ever be seen from any angle,

other than financial,

as good news.

I kept Ellie home from school because it had to stay on her hair for 8 hours.

It smelled like intense Pine-Sol with a kerosene-like finish.

But worse.

I swear it incinerated every hair in my nose.

The dog sneezed every time he walked into the same room as Ellie.

I started to light scented candles several times throughout the day and had to stop myself, hearing the cautionary words of our pediatrician to not even let Ellie in a room with a hair dryer running lest she burst into flame.

Ellie pulled out some leftover pizza from the fridge for lunch and I asked her if she wanted me to heat it up in the microwave.

She just took a bite of it cold and shook her head a bit and said,

“Kablooey.”

Oh yeah, right! I kept forgetting the constant 

threat of the flammability that was my daughter.

It reminded me of the Andy Griffith episode where Andy and Barney suspect a goat left in their watch has eaten some sticks of dynamite. They tip-toed around the animal worried any little sound or movement would cause, as Barney put it,

“Kablooey!”

Day #2 of Round 2 of the lice showed only a slight improvement.

And I found 2 nits in McDaniel’s thick, long hair!

I have to admit,

I could no longer find the funny.

Not when I caught a glimpse of my reflection wearing the polka dot shower cap.

Or even when I started to sing the “Sloppy Joe’s, Slop-sloppy Joes” part of 

"The Lunch Lady" song by Adam Sandler with Chris Farley.

Hair net-shower cap--same thing,
this is what I felt like.

And when I can’t find the funny,

I have lost hope.

I was exhausted from the constant 

laundry

and vacuuming 

and hair nit-picking.

And flat-out mad that these stupid

lice wouldn’t go away already!

Julie made this for me and I have it hanging in the living room. I had the weary
part down pat. But I was struggling with the rejoicing. 

I had heard from a friend the first time we dealt with the lice that there was a Lice Center in our city.

It seemed to me at the time that we should at least attempt to take care of things ourselves before running off to the Lice Center which was probably for serious, stubborn, reoccurring cases.

Well, let me tell you:

lice is always serious, 

(because it is contagious)

stubborn 

(many are resistant to over-the-counter and prescription treatments)

and unless you get every last nit:

(think Jurassic Park 2, or was it Lost World??, when they thought when they 

blew up the island all the dinosaurs died but some of the eggs survived)

REOCCURRING!

Can anyone else hear the sermon in that?!

No, I didn’t either at the time.

I finally came to the end of myself and realized I couldn’t see every nit or get every nit.

Monte left many messages the night before with two different lice centers.

Isn’t it amazing that you can live in a city for 14 years and never know there is not one, but two lice centers in it???

I researched what these lice centers were all about.

One uses this heated vacuum-like machine to literally suck the lice right from your head.

I pictured a lice version of a Flowbee. 

Remember this vacuum hair cutter?

And couldn’t wait to watch the entire process and ask 4 million questions.

But that center couldn’t get the girls in until late in the day. 

Time was crucial!

I had Monte work his sales smooth charm to get us into the other Lice Center within the hour.

(Who incidentally said the whole heated vacuum-like lice version of a Flowbee didn’t work.)

Dang.

I was really hoping for a quick fix. 

Wait. I think I hear another sermon…

It was completely God’s provision we didn’t get into that center or I’d be writing ANOTHER one of these lice posts in two weeks.

And quite frankly, 

I have other things to talk about.

I felt my humor slowly creep back as we walked up to the building.

You see, hope comes in spite of our circumstances,

not because of them.

Thank you, Lord!

We waited in the lobby and watched a little girl walk out with wet French braided hair followed by her mom holding several bottles of spray.

She assessed the hair on the three of us sitting there and said,

“Good luck!”

We were called back into a room with two hair salon looking chairs. The staff are mostly nurses or of some medical background. 

A cute young, enthusiastic gal worked on us. She wore the equivalent of a welding mask but with red laser lights and a magnified lens. 

Think of that Predator creature’s night vision in the 

Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.

I wanted to take a picture but I worried that my flash would 

somehow get intensely magnified and burn her poor retinas.

Hey, I was one of those kids that built an eclipse-viewing apparatus out of a shoe box and a mirror to protect my eyes.

I know how these things can work.

Yet, I don’t know how to turn 

the flash off on my iPhone.

Cute Young Gal decided that I should get checked out first.

Because 85% of the time a child is infected with lice, the momma ends up with them too.

For the love of Pete.

She sprayed this non-toxic stuff in my hair and started combing through it with a fine-toothed metal comb.

It was so soothing.

I noticed that two walls of the room were covered with pictures kids had drawn.

I am with you, Claire!

I love the “See you never” in the corner.

Yes, they are!

This comic strip is very informative explaining a sleepover where lice is the uninvited guest.
Sorry my flash made it hard to read.

My favorite.

McDaniel pointed out Chasady’s picture. Nothing about lice. Just her
wearing a “Justan" Bieber t-shirt.

Cute Young Gal found a few nits in my hair!!

But I wore a polka dot shower cap!

(and sang the “Sloppy Joe” part of the “The Lunch Lady” song!)

I was told to leave the non-toxic stuff in my hair for 24 hours.

She also told me I could use the hair dryer in the hallway that had the size and blowing power of the pink and purple Barbie one the girls had when they were toddlers.

I was busy not-drying my hair with it, when Monte walked in.

The Lice Center asks that ALL members of the household come in to get checked.

Four seconds later Monte walked back into the hallway and claimed he was lice free.

What? Just like that?!

He went on to say that he was told lice hate testosterone which is why young boys get it but rarely men.

Then he flexed his muscles and kissed his bicep.

I knew right then that was not the last 

I was going to hear about that.

While Cute Young Gal worked through Ellie’s hair, I noticed the room also had a mural.

Wait. Is that me?

Is the louse with the ‘stache smoking?

A cute little 4-year-old boy walked in with his mom and stood right by Ellie’s chair so she could watch him play Angry Birds. He kept asking her if she saw him beat all the bad guys.

When the staff person asked to help him into the chair, he looked over at Ellie and said he could do it all by himself.

He also let it loudly slip how brave he was being about the whole lice thing.

I waited for him to flex his muscles and kiss his bicep but I guess his testosterone hadn’t kicked in all the way yet.

Ellie had loads of nits and McDaniel had more than a handful too.

Which was WAY more than the "only 2" that I had found in her hair.

They got their hair French braided while a co-worker came in and explained in great detail her favorite television show called, “The Ghost In My Child”. 

SPOILER ALERT:  Apparently a 2-year-old thought he was the designer of The Titanic and then another toddler started speaking fluent Chinese.

The girls laughed out loud.

The Lice Center was expensive. 

But it was done by professionals who knew what they were doing, what they were looking for and could do it quicker and more thoroughly than Monte and I.

Because I thought I had it conquered last time.

But this time, we walked out of there LICE FREE 

and the girls got certificates to prove it to school.

We go back this week for a follow up appointment

just to be sure.

And my humor is fully intact.

Frozen

We saw Disney’s Frozen before Thanksgiving.

We LOVED it!

I shivered the entire movie because of how 

believable they made the cold seem.

And, oh by the way, it was actually cold outside.

Or what we thought was cold.

At the time.

Today is the second day in a row that school has been cancelled due to the sub-human temperatures.

I decided to take the girls and their friends to see Frozen again.

And AGAIN, I almost froze too death 

in the theater watching the movie. 

Like I kept my coat and gloves on 

and wished I had a scarf for my nose 

kind of cold.

The movie was just as good the second time around.

That song, “Let It Go” is something else, isn’t it?

After a winter of lots of snow and dangerous cold,

I have a different version of this song I’d like to sing.

Winter, I mean, not you.

You stay.

Please.

But seriously, how prophetic were the powers that be at Disney to release this movie THIS winter when many schools across the country have already exceeded their number of snow days and it is not even February yet?

Which is probably why Frozen is still in the top 5 at the box office because so many people are free from the confines of a school schedule to repeatedly go see the movie.

Like us, today.

Well played, Disney.

Well played.

Silent Sunday

“Winter Storm”

(featuring Audrey Assad)

Could've come like a mighty storm
With all the strength of a hurricane
You could've come like a forest fire
With the power of Heaven in Your flame

But You came like a winter snow
Quiet and soft and slow
Falling from the sky in the night
To the earth below

You could've swept in like a tidal wave
Or an ocean to ravish our hearts
You could have come through like a roaring flood
To wipe away the things we've scarred

But You came like a winter snow, yes, You did
You were quiet, You were soft and slow
Falling from the sky in the night
To the earth below

Ooh no, Your voice wasn't in a bush burning
No, Your voice wasn't in a rushing wind
It was still, it was small, it was hidden

Oh, You came like a winter snow
Quiet and soft and slow
Falling from the sky in the night
To the earth below

Falling, oh yeah, to the earth below
You came falling from the sky in the night
To the earth below

The Arrow, the Song, the Poem and Buttonholes

I love poetry,

but it seems somehow I forgot that

in the middle of doing this thing called LIFE.

McDaniel recently brought to my attention that she needed to memorize a poem for school.

That old love was immediately awakened.

She had to choose the poem from a website of lots of different eras and styles and poets.

I told her it would be easier to memorize something that made sense to her.

We read A LOT of poetry that day that did not make any sense.

There was an opportunity to enter a competition reciting a poem with feeling.

We watched some videos of kids doing just that.

They were amazing.

McDaniel chose this poem:

"The Arrow and the Song"

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I shot an arrow into the air,

It fell to earth, I knew not where;

For, so swiftly it flew, the sight

Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,

It fell to earth, I knew not where;

For who has sight so keen and strong,

That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak

I found the arrow, still unbroke;

And the song, from beginning to end,

I found again in the heart of a friend.

I memorized it right along with McDaniel because I listened to her practice over and over and over.

And also, because I really, really liked it.

She said that she was able to recite it perfectly in front of her entire English class on Tuesday.

I forgot to ask if she slipped into the British accent 

she was prone to do while she practiced.

The teacher suggested McDaniel enter the poetry reading contest, which she promptly poo-pooed.

 We have a beret for her to wear should she change her mind.

In the bleachers after their basketball game Tuesday night, McDaniel and her friend recited their poems to me and her friend's mom.

Her friend's poem took me off guard:

Famous

by Naomi Shihab Nye

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,

which knew it would inherit the earth

before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds

watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom

is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,

more famous than the dress shoe,

which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it

and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men

who smile while crossing streets,

sticky children in grocery lines,

famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,

or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,

but because it never forgot what it could do.

I was sitting next to the girl's mother as I listened to her daughter unaffectedly speak these words that so affected me.

We had just been talking about all the unnecessary pressures on our daughters in school and sports. We talked of dances and tests that revealed what our children should be when they grow up.

A journalist for McDaniel

but, oddly, enough, 

also a construction worker

or brick layer.

Which is a bit different than 

the tattoo artist suggestion

she got when she last took

this career test in middle school.

And then this poem spoke out into the air 

louder than the

dribbling basketballs

or squeaking tennis shoes

or blasting rap song 

in the gym.

When the poem was done and McDaniel and her friend skipped off unchanged to get pizza, 

I turned to her mom, who's eyes were misty like mine and I said something like,

"See? We need them to realize they are buttonholes. Buttonholes!!"

And she burst out laughing because, well,

I had just screamed buttonholes really loud

which sounded a lot like a slightly different word,

in a gym that suddenly had gotten a whole lot quieter.

I am reading Emily P. Freeman's book "A Million Little Ways".

It says "uncover the art you were made to live" right on the cover.

I keep reading this one section over and over because it is just so "a-ha moment" powerful.

Emily is describing what it means to be God's workmanship:

We are created in Christ Jesus, on purpose, with purpose.

Adam and Eve were made in his image and given a job to do.

You and I are remade in Christ, and we're given a job to do too.

But, this type of work we are to do is not the kind that comes from the outside, like a task we discover or approach. It isn't a talent or skill we go to school to perfect. This word for "work" is the type that assumes the completion of an inner desire.

When a poet writes a poem, he isn't writing a technical manual or a how-to booklet. A poet writes to express an inner desire.

We see that same idea here in Ephesians 2:10, where it essentially says, 

You are a poem written inside the person of Jesus Christ. You exist to carry out his inner desire. This is your good work.

So this is our job, to carry out the inner desire of Christ. And the inner desire of Christ is to bring glory to the Father.

I would've sworn to you that in that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem,

that my "work",

my writing,

was what was being shot into the air

or breathed into it

by ME.

But Emily Freeman helped me realize that

I AM THE ARROW.

I AM THE SONG.

I AM THE POEM.

And God is the archer.

God is the breath of the song.

God alone is the glory in the poetry

that is me.

And may I, 

like the buttonhole,

never forget that.