We live in Eastern Tennessee. I love the South. People are friendly. Yes, the South has just as many problems as any other region in the US, and maybe more, but I’m going to focus on the positive right now.  I love the fact that total strangers strike up conversations with me…regularly. Especially when I’m standing in line at the grocery store.

I just got back from the grocery store. The woman in front of me in the checkout line had unloaded her groceries and there was still room on the conveyor belt so I put up the little divider stick and started unloading my cart. The woman smiled at me and then pointed at the three Orange Crush Bundt Cakes she was buying. “These are the best bundt cakes EVER! Why, everyone down at the church was disappointed when I didn’t bring more last night!.” I smiled, nodded, and agreed that they were very good cakes. (I could say this with authority because someone from MY church had brought some to a church function. Orange Crush Bundt Cakes ARE good!) A bit later, after eyeing how loaded down my cart was, she made a comment on how many groceries I was buying. I told her I had 10 kids and I just hoped the groceries lasted through the weekend. Her response to that was that she had 2 boys which was the same as 10 kids and there was No Way my groceries were going to last through a weekend. She finished checking out and went on her merry way, I finished up my trip with a smile on my face. I was thinking to myself how much I enjoyed meeting friendly people at the store and then I started laughing to myself as I remembered my friend Peter’s trip to the store that he told us about a while back.

Peter and his wife Emily and all their children are some of our best friends. Peter is a tall, lanky guy, very gregarious, never met someone he didn’t like. Unlike me, who’s just doing good to respond to someone else’s friendliness, he has no problem striking up conversations with strangers. One time when he was over, he told us about his recent trip to Kroger, right down the road from our house. He said that he was standing in line and noticed that the woman in front of him was watching the register carefully as the clerk ran up her bill. Finally, she stopped the clerk and said that was all she could get, she didn’t have enough money to get the rest of the groceries still on the conveyor belt. Peter, who is always ready to lend a helping hand, stepped up to the woman and asked her if she would mind if he went ahead and paid for the remaining groceries. She was delighted and profusely thanked him. She went on for quite a bit about how much of a blessing he had been to her and then she said, “I want to bless you too! I’m a pastor and I’m going to pray a blessing on you right now!”

Now Peter is well-versed in the more charismatic side of church life. He was quite happy to take any blessing coming his way and so he said, thank you, that would be great. He then closed his eyes and in good charismatic fashion, raised his hands a bit in order to receive this blessing. The Pastor Lady, who was from a more energetic-type congregation, stretched out her hands and started praying a loud, excited prayer of blessing over him, right there in the Kroger check-out line. Peter is generally up for anything, but he couldn’t help feeling just a bit self-conscious and he slit his eyes a bit and looked around him. He looked at the clerk and there she was, hands outstretched, nodding in agreement as the pastor prayed on. He glanced behind him. No irritated customer there, the lady had her hands outstretched to him too, joining in the prayer. He looked behind the pastor and a random shopper had stopped her cart and stretched out her hand as well. At which point in time, Peter relaxed, went with the flow, and just took that blessing that was being poured out on him.

While I can’t say this story happened because Peter was in the South, I sure think it helped.

Writing is a form of therapy for me. It’s one of the big ways I deal with stress. This was from a couple days ago.

There are days when you just want to bang your head against a wall. Or a ceiling in this case. I was going about my business this morning, taking kids to school, feeding breakfast to the little boys who are now my sole companions during the day, washing dishes, starting laundry, trying to clean up at least the downstairs of my house (we’ll save upstairs for tomorrow) and I walk into my bedroom to put something away and I see this. (Ignore the unmade bed and the apple that some child apparently deposited there as well.)

 

My ceiling collapsed. In my bedroom. Randomly. Yes there was a crack in the sheetrock, but nothing that called for this!

Our bedroom is actually, technically, a sun room. It does not have a closet (one day my husband will build me a closet, when all the stars line up perfectly) and so I bought one of those freestanding clothes racks, put it in the corner of my room, and that was my closet. You’ll notice, from the picture, that the ceiling collapsed on my closet. It also collapsed on my dresser. Not Andy’s dresser. My dresser. And of course, I was in a hurry this morning, and was getting dressed in the dark and so I left half of my dresser drawers open. And it collapsed on my bed. You of course didn’t know this, but the ceiling collapsed on MY side of the bed. Not Andy’s. I’m feeling just a little bit picked on by whatever randomness caused this to happen.

Andy came home early from work to try and fix it, but two and half hours later, nothing has happened yet. I asked Andy what the plan was and he said the little kids invited him to sleep upstairs with them. Hmmm.

This is of course also the day that my son informed me that his pet ferrets had fleas and I have been trying to tackle the momentous task of de-flea-ing ferrets, and then de-flea-ing their bedroom. All of this involves laundry.

Now that I think about it, maybe it’s not as random as I thought. My room is in desperate need of paint and some kind of organized scheme that will properly house all of our belongings. I am not good at home-remodeling-type projects, but two days ago I was sitting in my chair staring at the walls of my bedroom and I decided. I’m just going to do it. I’m just going to go out and buy paint on my own. I’m just going to paint these walls without waiting for Andy’s superior skills to become available (his current to-do list is already a mile long). And then I looked around a bit closer. There was one space where the ceiling met the wall and there was a large crack. Andy had said that it just needed a piece of crown molding to go over it. Could I put up crown molding? Maybe…not. The ceiling had a big crack in it and I knew it was going to have to be repaired eventually and did it really make sense to paint the walls when the ceiling was going to have be repaired first and that big crack taken care of. Maybe I shouldn’t try to paint after all. (Did I mention that this house is over 100 years old and is only half-remodeled?) And so, I talked myself out of it. Now, two days later, ceiling laying on the floor, I’m starting to think…Maybe it’s a sign?? My ceiling is about to get repaired, how hard would it be for Andy to slap on a piece of trim to take care of the crack and then I’d be home-free to start painting!  

And now you can see how writing is therapeutic. I have just written myself out of a bad mood.

P.S. Not only did I get my ceiling fixed, but my dear husband put up crown molding and he’s talking about picking out paint… Hurray for collapsed ceilings!

This week we celebrated our 19th wedding anniversary.

I like to think of our marriage as an “arranged marriage”. God-arranged. That’s really the only way I can tell you how a girl going to school in Southern California hooked up with a guy who was living in Northern Florida. (No internet or dating sites were involved.) My marriage is all about that cliche “Opposites Attract”. In one corner you have renaissance man who can spin, knit, sew, bake, build houses, fix cars, and start a fire without matches. In the other corner you have the domestically challenged, absent-minded musician who takes great pleasure in reading copious amounts of books and then thinking about what she read and perhaps discussing some of the finer points. My shy, inhibited self was very attracted to his no-inhibitions, seize-life-by-the-horns style of living.  

As all opposites do, we at first relished each others differences and tried to share in those things. I went on a lot of camping trips. Andy bought me a baby grand piano and spent many evenings listening to me play. I thought it was fun to try new things with my husband like letting him teach me how to knit a hat (one of the ugliest hats you’ve ever seen)(Andy’s was perfect) and Andy indulged me by taking me to the bookstore regularly to update my pile of books I was reading. And then, slowly, the charm wore off and we had some hallelujah moments like, Look buddy, I’m not a sewer, I’ve never been a sewer, I don’t want to ever be a sewer- if you want hand-sewn curtains, do it yourself…And he suggested that maybe I should go to the library to find my books, and maybe I should put that book down and possibly help with the housework?

It’s called marriage. Two people learning how to stop putting themselves first and stop being so selfish and learning how to cooperate. Overall, we have managed to learn how to live with each other’s differences. I know better than to expect him to read anything besides Louis L’Amour or Clive Cussler and he doesn’t ask me to participate in handcrafts.

It’s been a good 19 years. Lots of laughter. Lots of shared smiles. Hand-holding. Snuggles on the couch. Shared  “secret” icecream that we sneak into the kitchen to eat and hide quickly whenever we hear a child approaching. Leaning into each for comfort at the end of a really hard day. Just sitting quietly together, no need to talk, just being in the same space with each other. Making eye contact across a crowded room and sharing an amused smile. Silly texts.

This is not to say our marriage has been a bed of roses and smiling unicorns and rainbows and whatever other analogy you like. We have had many moments where we still love each other but don’t really like each other too much. We’ve had a couple moments where we’ve had to call our pastors and say, Hey we need an emergency marriage counseling session. But, we keep overcoming and moving on and falling deeper in love with each other.

When Andy first asked me to marry him he told me that he was committed to me. He was committed to our marriage and being the best husband that he could be. This has meant a lot over the years. We have found that the emotion of “love” comes and goes. Some days you  wake up and you’re just not feeling it. Here’s the thing we’ve also learned though, love is a choice, not an emotion. We’re committed to this marriage and so we choose to love each other. The Bible says that love is patient, kind, long-suffering, never keeps track of wrongs, never gives up… So, we’ve made the choice to be patient and kind, long-suffering, not keep a list of wrongs, and we keep trying over and over again. Even when we are irritated or annoyed and we fail horribly, we apologize and then we keep trying. I would have to say that this quality of commitment is what I treasure most about my husband. I know that he’s willing to do whatever it takes to keep our marriage healthy.  

Every morning this past week my husband has awoken me with a kiss and a whisper in my ear Happy Anniversary Eve Eve Eve Eve…Each day one of the “eves” disappear. And every morning I’ve been  waking up with jolt of panic, Did he say happy anniversary? Did I miss it, did I forget? And then I smile when I register that he said “eve” and I haven’t missed it and he’s just being super-sweet and how did I get so blessed to be married to him? That is a mystery that’s right up there with the Bermuda Triangle, where do missing socks go, and why am I the only one who replaces the toilet paper roll?

My subtitle for this piece would be, “Me Telling Stories About My Kids That Probably Aren’t Interesting To Anyone Else, But I’m A Mom, And I Get To Do This Sometimes.” The Subtitle for the Subtitle would be: “She Ain’t Going To Win Any Awards For Photography.”

Last weekend we had the awesome experience of attending my nephew’s wedding. (Yay Malequi and Meredith!) It was a very large, family-friendly wedding and we had a wonderful time. During the reception they asked anyone who was related to bride or groom to come out in the hallway for a picture. There was a lot of family and the majority of them were little ones (and no, they were not all mine!) and so the picture took a while. Afterwards people were milling around everywhere, we could hear the dance music starting up in the ballroom and my husband Andy and I exchanged a look. Andy asked, “I wonder if we could find someone to watch the kids for a while so we could dance.” I nodded my agreement. That would be nice. Then I looked around a bit. Wait a minute. Where were the kids? Only Baby Noah, who was attached to me at the knee, was in sight. Andy picked up Noah and we started looking around. I walked over near the door to the ballroom and looked in. The dancing had started. It looked fun. Then I looked a bit closer. Wait a minute. Were those my kids? Yep. The 9 and 10 year old boys had taken to the dance floor and were having no problem keeping up with everyone else. The other younger kids were hopping around on the sidelines, clearly delighted that there was going to be dancing. I called for Andy to come see and we stood there open-mouthed as our boys danced all over the floor. Who taught them that?? Sure wasn’t me. My husband is an excellent dancer. I am not, but I enjoy dancing with him. He makes me look half-way decent. We don’t dance often though. Weddings, the Company Christmas Party, impromptu spins around the living room…that’s about it. We’re still not sure where our boys came up with this. Of course, by the second song I was thinking clearly enough to get out my phone and get some pictures.

Even the baby got into it.

Finally a slow dance came on. Andy handed Noah to the 10 year old and asked him to hold him for a couple minutes so we could dance. It was romantic, but I was distracted. I kept glancing around to see where the kids were, trying to make sure no one was getting into trouble. Andy laughed and said, “Don’t look! Just for a minute!” I was about to nod my agreement until I saw that Noah had freed himself from his brother, walked over to the cupcake table, grabbed a cupcake(with a plate!) and then settled on the floor to enjoy his treat.

Ah well, dancing time was over now. He certainly enjoyed his cupcake though. It fueled him up enough that he stayed awake for the rest of the party and was not the first child to fall asleep when we finally piled up in our van.

Thank you Malequi and Meredith for inviting us to your wedding and throwing a wonderful party!

We have spent the last several weeks traveling. During that time we have stayed at various campgrounds. Some thoughts on camping…

I am an awkward camper. I married a boyscout/camper/adventurer/outsidegenius type person who loves to be outside and will always choose sleeping on the ground in the wild as opposed to staying in a hotel. We went camping on our honeymoon. I was young, in love and really didn’t care where I was, so it wasn’t a problem. Over the years as we have traveled all over the world together, I have adapted to the camping mentality and I am the first to point out that it is a lot cheaper for our family to camp while traveling than to stay at a hotel. But, I’m still an awkward camper. I would say my number one complaint about camping is lack of bathrooms. I inevitably have to use the bathroom in the middle of the night which then involves me crawling from the air mattress, disentangling myself from whatever child has climbed in with me, finding the zipper to the opening in the dark, cringing because the sound of the zipper is loud enough to wake the whole campground, and then crawling on hands and knees through the opening where I end up in a heap on the ground. Then shakily standing up and staggering to the nearest bathhouse/outhouse/whateverisavailabe place. Of course all of this is precluded by an hour of laying in the bed trying to convince myself I can hold it and wait till morning till my body finally says, No, you cannot wait.

So, we’re camping and by some miracle I sleep through the night and don’t wake up till early dawn. I was of course awoken by the baby who half-woke and wanted his mama. I quickly grab the baby and lay him next to me so that his cries won’t wake up everyone else. He finally settles down and goes back to sleep. I am now squished between the baby and my husband on the air mattress. The laws of physics and a general knowledge of air mattresses tell me that if I get off the air mattress my husband and baby are going to sink into the middle of the air mattress, which might wake up the baby. I need to use the bathroom, which in the case of this campground, is a rather icky outhouse. Stay where I am and not wake the baby or use the bathroom? Finally the bathroom wins out. I poke Andy and tell him I’m using the bathroom and he’s in charge of keeping the baby quiet. Then in one big flurry I crawl over my husband and stumble out of the tent. The air mattress half-deflates, baby starts rolling and immediately wakes up and starts crying. I stand outside the tent in indecision. Go back into the tent and get the baby quiet or run for the bathroom???? My body says, there are no options here, go to the bathroom! Ok. I am going to trust my husband has what it takes to quiet the baby so I turn and head towards the outhouse.

I need to add one other important piece of information. I wear glasses. I need glasses. I cannot see without glasses. I have maybe a 2 foot circle around me where I can see, and then everything is fuzzy and blurry. I have left my glasses inside the tent. I start walking towards the outhouse and stop. In my blurry haze it looks like there is a truck parked beside the outhouse and it appears that several people are moving around the outhouse. Cleaning? It certainly needs cleaning. It’s an obvious time to clean as everyone is still asleep. Except me. I stop at the edge of my campsite, squinting, trying to see what is going on. I have no desire to go up close and see people in my present state of just-crawled-out-of-bedness. I stand hovering, wondering if they will be done soon. There is another proper bathhouse on the other side of the campground which is probably a good 5 minute brisk walk away. I really don’t feel like taking a walk right now.  

As I’m standing there I see through my blurry haze another camper in the next campsite over, crawling out of their tent. The camper stumbles toward the outhouse and stops short as well. They (can’t tell whether it’s a he or she) see the workers by the outhouse. The other camper stands hovering on the edge of their campsite doing a repeat performance of me. I feel a moment of connection. Yes. I understand your pain random camper.

Ok. I am going to have to go to the other bathhouse. I can walk 5 minutes. But I can’t see. Do I dare try to walk through the whole campground blind? …No. I do not dare. But I don’t want to go back into my tent and look for my glasses and wake the baby up again. My husband just got him back to sleep. More hovering as my half-awake brain tries to figure out what to do. Wait. I have some prescription sunglasses in the car. It’s light enough they can work. I quietly open the car and the phrase from an old cassette tape I used to listen to as a kid comes back to me, “How can I see to find my glasses without my glasses on to see?” I think this as I squint into the car. The glasses should be on the dash. There are a lot of things on the dash. I reach my hand up and try to see if I can feel them. I feel an assortment of books, charging cords for various phones, papers…no sunglasses. I stand back. Think this through again. Can I walk blind,? Maybe I can do it, it should be ok…No… Are they done cleaning the outhouse?!! I can’t see all the way over there, but random camper is still hovering so I presume they aren’t done… More thinking.

Maybe the sunglasses are in my handbag? I go back to the car and grab my handbag. I of course can’t see into my handbag. This is not because I’m blind though. Even with glasses I wouldn’t be able to see into my handbag. My handbag is the black hole of my life. It holds an infinite number of objects and once something goes into my bag, it is rarely found again. I try to feel inside my bag but I”m so tired that my reasoning abilities aren’t working. I have no idea what I’m feeling. I start getting a bit frantic and turn my handbag upside down and begin dumping it out. There’s my wallet and my other wallet that holds 10 children’s worth of insurance cards, library cards, random other cards I need. Papers, tissues, and Oh, look, a spoon. Why is there is a metal spoon in my handbag? It’s actually been there a while. I’m not sure how it got there and every time I see it I am surprised again at its presence, but I have never discovered the spoon while I was at home, where I could then remove the spoon and put it into the kitchen. So, I keep stuffing this surprising spoon back into my purse with the good intentions of removing it when I get home, which never happens.

But I digress. Back to my sunglasses. They are not in my purse. I need to use the bathroom. I am blind. It’s time to take drastic measures. I am going to retrieve my glasses from the tent, sleeping baby or not. I slowly start unzipping the tent. It sounds horribly loud but I persevere. Must get my glasses. Must use the bathroom. I manage to open the tent and then start feeling around the air mattress. I know I put them somewhere around here. My husband wakes up. I whisper-yell – I need my glasses!! He sits up and feels around until he finds them and hands them to me. Thank you Knight in Shining Armor. I slap my glasses on my face and look over towards the outhouse. Random camper is leaving the outhouse. The workers are gone. Apparently a lot has happened while I undertook my search for sight. I am now wide awake. I head towards the outhouse. Camping is so much fun.

My husband’s brother married a lady from Nagaland (northeast India thereabouts) many years ago and they have made their home with their children there in the city of Kohima. They have come to the states for a long-overdue visit and we have come up to be with them and my husband’s parents.

My sister-in-law Asanuo is an amazing cook. (She is also one of the sweetest people you’ll ever meet!) She has her her own baking business in Kohima, and if you want to see her amazing creations you can check out her Facebook page, Asanuo’s Kitchen, to see some beautiful work.

Here we are on vacation together and we are all trying to share the cooking. I have everyone over to where we are staying and I cook up some boxes of pasta, throw some jars of pasta sauce on them, add some browned hamburger, and voila, supper “à la Esther”. Quick, easy, filling, inexpensive. This is how I cook. Then Asanuo offered to cook. We had chicken with caramelized onions, gravy, pan-roasted asparagus with almonds, rice, and cranberry sauce, with a nice wine on the side.

I am one of those interesting people who has somehow become a worse cook over time instead of a better one. When I first got married, my idea of cooking was to make some boxed mac and cheese, add a can a peas and a can of tuna, and serve it up with pride. My husband taught me how to cook Rice and Beans, Shepherd’s Pie and how to bake homemade bread. I took off from there and became a pretty decent cook. But as the kids multiplied an interesting thing happened. They started expressing their opinion about the food. And after a while it just wasn’t fun to try new recipes because at least half the kids were going to have something to say about it. And even when I let them know that I was not interested in their opinion, and actually, they were not allowed to express anything but positive opinions at the table (they could keep their negative ones to themselves) they would still pull faces or just push the food around their plate. And so my creativity died a slow, drawn out death and I eventually developed a menu that would ensure at least half the kids ate at each meal. But, it kind of took the fun out of cooking. And I will freely confess that my cooking is not very inspired. And maybe it’s not fair to blame it all on the kids, I may have just burned out a bit from doing so much cooking.

That brings us back to cooking for the family. Asanuo is obviously the chef-level cook from the fancy French restaurant type, while I’m more of the short-order cook down at the local fast food place type. I have decided I am not going to feel insecure about this. Instead I’m going to try and figure out how I can buy groceries and let Asanuo be the one that cooks them.

It’s a good plan.

 

Our family undertook a 1140 mile trip to Maine from Tennessee to visit family. According to the maps app it should have taken around 17 hours of driving. The maps app  doesn’t take into account the fact that 10 children are going to need around one potty break per hour, and the app doesn’t take into account the fact that Mom said No Way are we going to drive through the night and then show up in Maine exhausted while all the kids are well-rested and ready to go out and explore. Mom is getting too old for this 17 hours of driving thing. No thanks. So we camped one night. Of course the hope was that we would camp at the half-way mark, somewhere in Pennsylvania, but after 7 potty breaks in 9 hours, my husband had enough. We camped in West Virginia. All that to say, the entire trip took about 26 hours of driving plus another 13 hours for camping/sleeping.

I’m sure you’re curious. What did 10 children do for that many hours cramped up in a van? And how did Mom and Dad survive? And now we will get to the point of this piece which is Principles. I am not a fan of electronic devices. In our parenting ignorance, we bought our first 4 children a device around middle school age. As we watched our kids get sucked into all that the internet has to offer, we decided that we were not going to repeat this mistake. The next unlucky 6 kids will not be getting a device. We’ll get them a smartphone their senior year of high school and call it good. In our middle school and high schools the kids are handed out laptops to use for the school year so it’s not like they’re totally deprived anyway. I would like to add that I am not interested at all in changing other parent’s minds on how to handle technology. We’ve just looked at what is working and not working for our family, and this is the decision we’ve made. So, founding principle: as little technology as possible please.

A friend of mine offered to lend me her travel dvd player for our trip. I nonchalantly said, “Oh, thank you! But we’re fine. The kids will read and color and bring toys to play with.” Because, Principles! I also want my kids to learn the art of sitting and thinking and looking out the window and amusing themselves. Because, Principles! It’s good for them!

The kids each packed a backpack full of toys and books and crayons and coloring books. I bought a couple travel games and a couple new toys to amuse them. We had a good supply of snacks. We were ready! (I would like to add that my teenagers brought their devices. I haven’t tried to seperate them from their devices. It’s kind of like taking drugs away from an addict. In my passive aggressive way, I’m just waiting for their devices to break and then I won’t replace them.)

This Principled Mama now has to confess that by the middle of the second day, in a bid for peace, I was holding my iphone up by the ceiling of the van so that everyone could see it and letting the kids watch Frozen, the one movie that I had downloaded on my phone. (Incidentally, this movie was downloaded on my phone the last time we took a trip to Maine). So here I am, holding my arm up in the air for an hour and half so that my kids can watch a movie. Why were my kids squinting at a tiny screen while my arm felt like it was going to break off, when they could have all been watching movies on a nice travel dvd player? Because, Principles!  Sometimes I want to kick myself for being so principled.