tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137225522024-03-12T19:06:15.128-05:00Ms. Booty Homemaker Explains It All To You.Ms. Booty Homemaker Explains It All To You.
--"Desperate housewife my zigzag!"Ms. Booty Homemakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11468536186448152481noreply@blogger.comBlogger663125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13722552.post-26633644233644927412013-12-03T05:23:00.001-06:002013-12-03T05:23:24.513-06:00Aftershocks.I have a new mobile phone.<br />
<br />
When my father calls me, my mother's photo and phone number show up, as my Facebook contacts are synced with my phone.<br />
<br />
The first time it happened was startling, like hopeful as if there'd been some mistake....<br />
dawning realization.<br />
<br />
<br />
Yes, I could change that.<br />
<br />
But what then? One can not effectively cleanse oneself of memory. Of longing. Of the truth.<br />
<br />
This is the picture I see when my father calls me.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmtGLiiuQw8Uxt-WdfBXNbiCHkHARYdUnWnX0JRiGfGspP3N4gQDkttnKzbbbjLksmRUMVz0nStUMT3ZY_yl3Hv-iYCd5lo2mg3BOOBEedbJQAti_45UtpxgBaUWDKFClx5ZPc/s1600/diggy+no+hair.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmtGLiiuQw8Uxt-WdfBXNbiCHkHARYdUnWnX0JRiGfGspP3N4gQDkttnKzbbbjLksmRUMVz0nStUMT3ZY_yl3Hv-iYCd5lo2mg3BOOBEedbJQAti_45UtpxgBaUWDKFClx5ZPc/s400/diggy+no+hair.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
It was taken when she lost all her hair from the radiation in 2011.<br />
<br />
Today would have been Mother's 74th birthday.<br />
<br />
I do not want to forget.<br />
<br />
<br />
Happy birthday, Mother. Wherever you are. Happy birthday. I love you. You mattered.<br />
<br />
You will be remembered.Ms. Booty Homemakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11468536186448152481noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13722552.post-11551568885674715432013-12-02T11:41:00.000-06:002013-12-02T11:41:06.146-06:00Advent. Advent arrived three weeks after Mother went to sleep and didn't wake up.<br />
She'd been in a long term memory care facility for just that long.<br />
The young women who cared for her delivered her medications that morning.<br />
Mother said she wanted to sleep longer.<br />
The young women returned forty-five minutes later, chatting and laying out Mother's clothing for the day.<br />
She was dead but still warm when my father arrived.<br />
Having been through years of hellish suffering, Mother at last went to sleep and simply didn't wake up.<br />
We had prayed for that kind of exit from her broken body and mind.<br />
<br />
And now, we are without her.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR39pFqbUmoWb-24R0nCPFBGxH_toXG4btgQcXDXjJPwP6VZ-0WXeQTkXnQG6VsBPCwp0nz7tBJxi4EcFto0tCsotKIGLN0HSpbTSTBiAW0c5nwPbqf1IGDizGTDPoOqYTvpIB/s1600/20131201_191452.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR39pFqbUmoWb-24R0nCPFBGxH_toXG4btgQcXDXjJPwP6VZ-0WXeQTkXnQG6VsBPCwp0nz7tBJxi4EcFto0tCsotKIGLN0HSpbTSTBiAW0c5nwPbqf1IGDizGTDPoOqYTvpIB/s320/20131201_191452.jpg" width="192" /></a>We have begun the first holiday season without her in our midst, shining during her favorite time of year.<br />
<br />
I feel broken myself. Tired. Sad. Normal activity requires monumental strength. Today, home with a sick child, I am given the opportunity to reflect and rest. My boy, now eight, wraps his sweet arms around me constantly, or holds my hand, rakes fingers through my hair.... for these weeks, there has been more contact even than usual. We have given up the pretense of starting him in his own bed even.<br />
<br />
Driving in from "town" to Papa's house the other evening, our boy asked, "<i>Where are Diggy's ashes</i>?" When asked by his father why he thought of that at that moment, our boy replied that we'd just passed the place in which he and I last saw her, a week before she died there.<br />
<br />
These associations tether us to the living and to the truths of being part of something larger than ourselves. The very next morning, my husband, who'd brought fresh laundry up to the bedroom of my teen years said, "<i>I really like our kid. I just like him so much. Somehow, folding jammies always makes me think of that.</i>"<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilnLNVNz0oZYuXRrsrnOJUYajwCNXGghjJmzKU_k0uugZQAvEBEgdqw3JiGrScn10bDaVZSkl9q9KujQPlDTerw_fdliodCozHjSOzIiBtPGN9GQP6rEnl-PCPQDGDb0ceOZ0V/s1600/20131201_191442+(2).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilnLNVNz0oZYuXRrsrnOJUYajwCNXGghjJmzKU_k0uugZQAvEBEgdqw3JiGrScn10bDaVZSkl9q9KujQPlDTerw_fdliodCozHjSOzIiBtPGN9GQP6rEnl-PCPQDGDb0ceOZ0V/s320/20131201_191442+(2).jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
Our boy has encouraged me to again go on a Facebook fast, as I did last Advent. "<i>I get more time with you,</i>" he says. And so....<br />
<br />
My sister and I created our Advent wreaths this year from cuttings from her yard, dried grape vine wreaths and candles procured by our husbands, holders lifted from Mother's considerable stash.<br />
<br />
We are quiet. Waiting. Hopeful.<br />
<br />
<br />
<ul style="background-color: #f9f9f9; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<li class="prayertext" style="margin-bottom: 20px; padding-left: 40px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/prayers.php?id=1" target="_blank">Unexpected God, your advent alarms us. </a></span><a href="http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/prayers.php?id=1" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Wake us from drowsy worship, from the sleep that neglects love, and the sedative of misdirected frenzy. Awaken us now to your coming, and bend our angers into your peace. Amen.</span></a></li>
</ul>
<br />Ms. Booty Homemakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11468536186448152481noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13722552.post-73330864815220418482013-11-19T06:29:00.005-06:002013-11-19T06:35:45.412-06:00Telling it just like you're here. <br />
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<br />
Oh, Mother. I miss you so....<br />
<br />
I've been here in your house, staying with Daddy since the day you died.<br />
<br />
This house we moved to thirty years ago when I was sixteen and you were younger than we children are now. You made it a home. Let me pick out curtains that Irene custom made, and we had our friends here for slumber parties and late night swimming. Remember that Jeffrey was Johnny Appleseed in his school play one of those first years, and he sang and looked so cute?<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" class="spotlight" height="400" src="https://scontent-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn2/1461856_10153527867215427_957989262_n.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="300" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I don't even remember our writing this, do you? After freshman year of college?</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Every room here, every nook, cranny and drawer, has you in it. A scarf you wore to a soccer game, or a news clipping from your service to UMW or Church Women United. We keep finding little squirreled away stashes of photographs in unexpected places from mismatched eras and your handwriting is on the backs with names and dates and sometimes captions like, "Not a very good picture of Laura." These things have kept us laughing and crying, both.<br />
<br />
Dana and I, along with Laura, went through all your clothing. That was tough. We girls all took things of yours that we wanted and we'll be wearing them -- Dana most of all, as she was closest to your size. Jeffrey laundered and folded the clothing you most recently wore, and declined my help to fold. He has been wonderful, as you know. You raised a good boy into an excellent man, Mother.<br />
<br />
And Dana gave a hilarious and moving eulogy at your service. Everyone laughed. Smiled. Remembered how fun you were. Eric says she captured that part of you perfectly.<br />
<br />
Yesterday just about dark a floral delivery came from one of Daddy's friends -- a beautiful white camelia in a basket filled with fruit. A LOT of fruit. The lady delivering the fruit told Jeff and me that you banked with her at First Tennessee for years, I remembered her face.... but that she'd been the florist owner the last year and a half, and knowing you, she overfilled the basket with good fruit for your family. She, like everyone, remembered you as gracious and always smiling. I think that's one of the words about you I have heard most often: gracious. And it's true, that was your way.<br />
<br />
I like to think we're making you proud here. Daddy has been kind of amazing, really. Very gracious himself and kind. I keep thinking that you're just a breath away whispering, "You just be the best Joe you can be," and with your encouragement, he's doing just that. The children have been lovely and such a comfort. Every one of them adored you, and my boy told me he knows your spirit lives on inside of his heart. Audrey finds your photograph in one of your church directories and says, "THERE's my Diggy!" The big girls have been wonderful with the younger ones, and I'm glad they'll all help the new baby know you. He hasn't gotten here yet, but little Leo's arrival is imminent. <br />
<br />
Mother, I'll admit, I have some unkind thoughts toward people. People who didn't come see you for their own reasons, or were even unkind and dishonest. But I know you, you'd have said, Love them anyway. So I've bitten my tongue, and tried to do as you would -- offered kindness and cried and fussed about it later.<br />
<br />
It's hard though, Mother. Because you deserved the best. You didn't deserve the pain and suffering of the last few years. You were supposed to live into your nineties and go on that cruise with me and Dana and the grandkids, go to San Francisco and England and wherever else with Daddy.... I can't face the open years head on and know that you won't be there.<br />
<br />
For now, I focus on today, and just the tiniest bit more. It's too hard to do otherwise. I miss you terribly. <br />
<br />
Last night I was flipping through television channels and that Hallmark movie Matchmaker Santa was on; the movie that was playing on the television at the Courtyards the last day I saw you before you died a week later. I gasped. You were watching the movie with the other residents while Daddy snoozed on the couch beside you in your wheelchair when my boy and I kissed and hugged you, told you we loved you and that we'd see you soon.<br />
<br />
I did not know the next time I'd see you you'd be dead and I'd be seeing your body all cold and stiff at the funeral home. They kept you there for me to see you before the cremation. And even though I knew it was your body, and that your spirit had gone on, I wanted to say goodbye. I left you with a fresh coat of Viva Glam on your lips and kissed you goodbye.<br />
<br />
On Friday, I picked up your ashes, and your death certificate. I sat in my husband's car in the parking lot of the funeral home with you in a box beside me and sobbed. I didn't drive back across town until I'd worn myself out and settled into gentle tears. This grief is a real bear, Mother. It hurts so damned much.<br />
<br />
We're all relieved, though. Relieved that you are no longer suffering. You never complained. And yet relied upon us for everything. I know that was, as you only said a few times, terrible. And then you'd apologize to us for your needing us. We'd have done anything for you. Any one of us.<br />
<br />
<br />
And today, I'm going to leave this house and go home to Nashville to my husband and child. I'm going to rent a car and drive back across the plateau to do the next things that need doing and start a job at a new school, help my child make sense of this loss, crump up with my husband in our bed and try to sleep.<br />
<br />
It's hard to go, though.... Hard to leave Daddy. Hard to part from this house, from you in every room, in every memory, including that we ultimately couldn't keep you here until the end, even though it broke our hearts.<br />
<br />
I'll be back next week. For Thanksgiving. And the beginning of Advent comes just behind that -- your favorite season. I have yet to understand how we'll get through it without you.<br />
<br />
But just for today, Mother, I'm going spend some time with Daddy and with my brother, your only son, and pack up and go home to my house for a few days. I am anxious about the drive. I pray for strength and for calm. For safety as I ferry myself from my loved ones here to those there. If you would, please whisper your encouragement. I need it today.<br />
<br />
I love you, Mom. Ms. Booty Homemakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11468536186448152481noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13722552.post-54024910882964677482013-11-14T14:37:00.001-06:002013-11-14T14:37:56.860-06:00Diggy's Blessing. Peggy Joyce McDaniel La Grone: December 3, 1939- November 10, 2013<br />
<br />
<div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>from her Celebration of Life Service on November 14, 2013</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i>First United Methodist Church, Oak Ridge, Tennessee </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Mother Father God, I come to you today broken and full of
sorrow, reaching for joy. I call out to you for blessings…. Blessings on the
heavy hearted, the ones who sing out of tune or with tears running down cheeks.
Blessings on the ones who stumble, who can’t make words come when they want to
say, <i>“I am sorry. I love you. I wish I knew how to help.</i>” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUSSc9rTXeqEZ8UcT8HXBFe4lekyTLogZdEoWXyYmr-Y9skMLykffMIwpXZ97wFhRAZIcUYB6XcSOHY_NmyVIfbxhploCZBmCUaKz6Pz87rsXmpxFrpp6bex-kFNNqBMQvTDM_/s1600/1395417_10153502120230427_663833727_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUSSc9rTXeqEZ8UcT8HXBFe4lekyTLogZdEoWXyYmr-Y9skMLykffMIwpXZ97wFhRAZIcUYB6XcSOHY_NmyVIfbxhploCZBmCUaKz6Pz87rsXmpxFrpp6bex-kFNNqBMQvTDM_/s320/1395417_10153502120230427_663833727_n.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Bless the girl who grew up in Deep East Texas and fell in
love with a young man who bought her a Dr. Pepper and spent the rest of his
life with the goal of trying to impress her. Bless the girl who became a woman
who taught school, married, became a mother, cared for own mother through
illness and great loss, of her brothers and of her father. Bless her dear sister,
loved and lone. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Bless the woman who embodied the radical hospitality of
Christ – whose personal viewpoint and politics evolved to reflect the world in
which she found herself, a world where families were torn apart by poverty and
by war. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Blessings on her for working to end them both, for setting the example
that her own children would go on to follow.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Blessings on those children who grew up utterly sure of
love they were loved, of the grace they were given, even when – especially when
– they least deserved it. Bless the daily communion dispensed by way of
motherly love and bedside hot cocoa and cinnamon toast. Bless the quarters
taped to paper lunch sacks and encouraging love notes on napkins. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Blessings on this family. Bless them in their anger.
Their anger with you, God. Their disbelief, their hurt, and their canyon wide
missing of the one they cannot comprehend losing. Bless their old saddle shoes
in a hat box in the basement, their Pinewood Derby cars and letters home from
camp and from college and far away cities. Bless their little child selves in
such pain at their beloved Mother’s long suffering, the unimaginable loss, the
duties that call them to tend to children of their own who are afraid to go to sleep,
even when their little bodies won’t let them cry. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Bless the grey hairs and the exhaustion, the doctors and
the nurses and the tearful care takers who weep and shudder. Bless the hand needing
another to hold, the shawl needing shoulders, the wheeled chair with nowhere
left to roam. Blessings on the remembrances of words she seemingly just spoke,
like, “<i>My daughter who sings has come back</i>.” OR “<i>I love you so much I think my
heart might explode.</i>” OR “<i>Thank you</i>.” And at hearing her as yet unborn grandbaby’s
chosen name, “<i>Leo the lion</i>.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Bless the father and husband of near fifty years whose
heart is not just heavy, but broken, for he has loved her since they were
almost children themselves. Blessings on him, God. Bless him and bring him
comfort. Bless the brown recliner which holds respite from gravity’s pull and
from the big too-empty bed. Bless the tears that go unwept, as well as the ones
that baptize chins and cheeks, and shoulders of tall husbands, of wives ready
to bear children, of sisters and of brothers, of small children like cats in
laps. Bless the grandbabies who adored their Diggy. The youngest of whom only know
or remember her as sick and as dying. Bless them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Bless them all, God. Bless them. And most of all, God,
Bless her. Bless our Diggy, the one that you know by name, by the sweetness of
her Spirit, the enormity of her heart. Bless her, God. Bless her freedom from
suffering in a broken body and from the shackles of her precious damaged mind.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Blessings on her, and on her people, all of them. The
ones related by blood or by marriage or because she claimed them as friend. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Bless US dear Lord. Blessings on us when we falter, when
we ask why, when we are not sleeping for nights upon nights and we know that
life will never again be the same. Bless us at this time when faith is scarce,
forgiveness just a word, but the love that loves that can’t stop loving goes on
and on and on. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Blessings on THAT-- Blessings on what she taught us by the way she
lived, and in what she ardently believed, through even the worst of it all….<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Bless that love that goes on loving in this sweet little
messy God filled life. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Amen. </span><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Ms. Booty Homemakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11468536186448152481noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13722552.post-12408891469309080992013-11-10T12:38:00.001-06:002013-11-10T12:38:37.639-06:00And now we are four. <div style="text-align: center;">
<img src="https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/20657_445925965426_3181941_n.jpg?lvh=1" /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
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Thankful for the many years of life and love we have shared with Mother, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pegala1906?directed_target_id=0">Peggy</a> Joyce McDaniel La Grone. We believed we were lovable and magic, because she was. Our beloved Diggy passed peacefully in her sleep early this morning. We will remember her words to us following her cancer diagnosis: "Love fully. Forgive, forgive, forgive. And: stay true to the Spirit of your Christian core." That's our mother, loving others and always letting her heart lead.... I can not tell you what a hole is left in not only our lives, but in the world at large with her no longer in it. And yet, we give thanks that her body and mind no longer suffer, and that her spirit is free.<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
May you rest in peace. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
Peggy Joyce McDaniel La Grone December 3, 1939 - November 10, 2013</div>
Ms. Booty Homemakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11468536186448152481noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13722552.post-26149225886718774982013-10-05T09:43:00.000-05:002013-10-05T09:43:16.841-05:00Domestic revelations of a domestic revolutionary. Should your bathroom smell strongly and inexplicably of pee even after you've swabbed it down repeatedly, check the shower curtain. Why? I couldn't say. Pee smell that misses the scrutiny of the husband with an unworking sniffer and a little boy who smells of dirt and sweat and dog and pencil lead? Could be the shower curtain. Washing it (in hot, with very little detergent, just like those cloth diapers years ago) could well do the trick.<br />
<br />
Should your husband and child come home from school to find you washing dishes and sweeping the floor in your underpants and a torso long sports bra, smile your best smile. Smile your best smile especially if this wasn't intended as a sexy saran wrap come-on, as you are a portly middle aged but reasonably attractive and good natured woman. Smile your best smile as you say to your husband, "Well, I guess you didn't expect to come in to find your wife in her underpants and a bra." Smile bigger when your husband adds, "And a necklace!" Place your open palmed hand over your chest as if saying "I swan!" just as you've seen your mother do for decades whenever she is tickled or moved or flirty with your father. You may wish to disclose that you are in such a state merely because not only did you burn the supper (aloo bhindi) you'd intended for take away for a friend because you were on the phone with your brother and highly distracted, but you'd also spilled a considerable amount of aforesaid burned supper (laden with tumeric) onto your clothing and had actually intended to change but had again gotten distracted by the dirty floor needing attention.<br />
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And so it goes. If you are especially lucky, your sweet husband will take you out to supper by moving a few funds around and hold your hand across the table and then build a bonfire for your child and a friend upon coming home.Ms. Booty Homemakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11468536186448152481noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13722552.post-57479007016094896382013-03-21T16:00:00.000-05:002013-03-21T16:00:12.740-05:00Holding while letting go. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_lI5HN6lhLWeF6YbkvVCEwPx8gw3KiJVbBYENCTaJVyhbKVqrH2T684N_pzmKzQb1fdiO4yObqY4fPOguTQ-IV2GGMULVyGilBzPjUJ8OVMRYvHzz0pOcb0vcth3a_eatdI0f/s1600/Mother.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_lI5HN6lhLWeF6YbkvVCEwPx8gw3KiJVbBYENCTaJVyhbKVqrH2T684N_pzmKzQb1fdiO4yObqY4fPOguTQ-IV2GGMULVyGilBzPjUJ8OVMRYvHzz0pOcb0vcth3a_eatdI0f/s400/Mother.jpg" width="300" /></a>I'm struggling with how to word it all and how to feel it all and still yet continue on with living life as we now know it. Preparing for life as we see it's going to be, without foresight, because, well, I'm not the omniscient narrator. I'm just someone's daughter and someone's sister, someone's wife, and someone's mother, and this is the how it goes.<br />
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I'm not special. Many many have been before me on this journey, my own parents included.<br />
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The plain truth: we are losing Mother. Piece by piece, bit by bit.<br />
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There is nothing more that needs to be said. She knows how much we love and respect her. We know she would do and has done anything for us. No one really wants to talk about it. And yet, we have to sometimes. The days are long, the years are short. In child-rearing, and in watching a parent decline, hoping like Hell you're doing enough to offer comfort, keep regret at bay, be part of the team.<br />
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No one wants to feel left out. No one wants to have another pull her burden, or lift her share. We lean into now, while simultaneously preparing for a future we didn't ask for but is coming all the same, in a faster fade than we'd like.<br />
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As I said, there is nothing (or almost nothing?) that is left unsaid. We're all sad. We've all been angry. She's tired of fighting, and shakes because, as she told me today, "It's all so stressful."<br />
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It seems cruel that one good woman should be made to endure so much. So much pain, so much loss of independence, so much indignity, such need for help to do pretty much anything. For my independent, intelligent and highly spiritual mother, this last leg has been a mean moan, a long quiet mean moan echoing into a vast unknowing.<br />
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My sister told me to come. I changed my plans, on the fly I drove here. To Mother and Daddy's. Even now, in the midst of my own grief, I am thinking of my best friends, and how lung cancer has one father in its grip, a brother has pancreatic cancer holding strong, a mother beat breast cancer but lost her husband to the effects of a long decline into physical weakness and dementia. I am not alone. I think of my dearest and oldest friend boarding a plane going to tell her brother goodbye.<br />
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It sucks. Inelegant to say, raw and primal to live.<br />
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And we're the lucky ones. We have had Mother for so many years -- had her in high quality sparkling wonderfulness as the woman who adored our every word and song, but told us we'd have to work for things. Told us that a bird in the hand was worth two in the bush, even when we (I) didn't want to hear it.<br />
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I'm glad she knows I finally learned some of the bird in the hand wisdom. That I ended and healed from a broken marriage. Made a new life with a partner I'll love beyond the grave ("Not everyone has a tall handsome husband, Daughter," she tells me -- she is right. But I do, as does she.) I am glad she's seen all her children become parents, finish some things we started (me, especially, since frankly, I worried her perhaps longest.)<br />
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Here, I bag up things for Goodwill and the Ecumenical Storehouse. Clean out drawers, make plans to tackle closets. I cook, because that is what I do.<br />
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I listen to my father. I watch him, as he gently scratches under her chin with his hand at the breakfast table and I know how her vacant face lights up to him alone, her husband of nearly fifty years. She bestows upon him a smile and says, "Me and you." He repeats it. I listen as he tells my brother of this moment. We get choked up a lot around here.<br />
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And in the inbetween times, we all go on about the business at hand. Raising our children, teaching our students, preparing and eating meals. Putting gasoline in our cars, walking by the river and reading books, driving between here and there. Paying bills, fitfully sleeping, generating more questions than answers.<br />
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She tells us she wants to go home. That it's all too stressful. She says thank you and that she's sorry (the thing that tears at my heart the most.) That she wants to get in a car, go far. Get on a plane. She asks if we have made the travel arrangements, and when we will leave.<br />
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We know what is coming, though we can not forsee its impact, the loss of her colorful self in the world as we know it. But I think I can say that each of us is willing to give up the reds and violets for the pink sky at twilight, and her peace, whenever that time might come.<br />
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We are both holding her close, and letting go, as she did with each of us.Ms. Booty Homemakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11468536186448152481noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13722552.post-66815815547472961442013-02-02T06:51:00.000-06:002013-02-02T06:53:09.031-06:00Winter at Home: Signs of Life. <img alt="130125_0003.jpg" height="240" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=15579e1823&view=att&th=13c9ab4fee0a7875&attid=0.1&disp=thd&realattid=1425859104405979136-1&zw" width="320" /><img alt="130202_0012.jpg" height="200" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=15579e1823&view=att&th=13c9abe9d828935e&attid=0.1&disp=thd&realattid=1425859770123399607-1&zw" width="148" /><img alt="130202_0015.jpg" height="200" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=15579e1823&view=att&th=13c9abf4aaa41a92&attid=0.1&disp=thd&realattid=1425859817883580690-1&zw" width="148" /><img alt="130202_0013.jpg" height="400" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=15579e1823&view=att&th=13c9abf19b76a7f2&attid=0.1&disp=thd&realattid=1425859797769947484-1&zw" width="300" /><img alt="130202_0008.jpg" height="240" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=15579e1823&view=att&th=13c9abde23a84d20&attid=0.1&disp=thd&realattid=1425859715561160704-1&zw" width="320" /><img alt="130202_0011.jpg" height="300" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=15579e1823&view=att&th=13c9abe6835a81b7&attid=0.1&disp=thd&realattid=1425859742029316096-1&zw" width="400" /><img alt="130202_0002.jpg" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=15579e1823&view=att&th=13c9abcab65fb07f&attid=0.1&disp=thd&realattid=1425859637679441944-1&zw" /><img alt="130202_0007.jpg" height="400" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=15579e1823&view=att&th=13c9abdc3d524d7b&attid=0.1&disp=thd&realattid=1425859704060706177-1&zw" width="300" /><img alt="130202_0005.jpg" height="400" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=15579e1823&view=att&th=13c9abd2c91e4fa7&attid=0.1&disp=thd&realattid=1425859668567130112-1&zw" width="300" /><img alt="130202_0003.jpg" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=15579e1823&view=att&th=13c9abd10f7f5c91&attid=0.1&disp=thd&realattid=1425859653267443107-1&zw" /><img alt="130202_0001.jpg" height="300" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=15579e1823&view=att&th=13c9abc6e2569900&attid=0.1&disp=thd&realattid=1425859617299103744-1&zw" width="400" /><img alt="130129_0002.jpg" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=15579e1823&view=att&th=13c9abc25750bf89&attid=0.1&disp=thd&realattid=1425859594362807413-1&zw" /><img alt="130126_0001.jpg" height="400" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=15579e1823&view=att&th=13c9abba7ff06c25&attid=0.1&disp=thd&realattid=1425859561083895808-1&zw" width="300" /><img alt="130202_0020.jpg" height="300" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=15579e1823&view=att&th=13c9abadcb1a6815&attid=0.1&disp=thd&realattid=1425859509153169408-1&zw" width="400" /><img alt="130124_0002.jpg" height="400" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=15579e1823&view=att&th=13c9ab83388ea702&attid=0.1&disp=thd&realattid=1425859324300754944-1&zw" width="300" /><img alt="130117_0006.jpg" height="400" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=15579e1823&view=att&th=13c9ab616273efd4&attid=0.1&disp=thd&realattid=1425859179372028603-1&zw" width="300" /><img alt="130118_0002.jpg" height="400" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=15579e1823&view=att&th=13c9ab58c6e3996b&attid=0.1&disp=thd&realattid=1425859142943244288-1&zw" width="300" />Ms. Booty Homemakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11468536186448152481noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13722552.post-11480179837606754652013-01-31T14:33:00.000-06:002013-01-31T14:43:00.173-06:00That kind of love. I'm home sick this week. First with my boy, who had inflamed lungs and a stellar case of thick snot. And now I've got the parainfluenza. Cruelly, it mocks the flu, but isn't the real deal. Hardly seems a difference. <br />
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And so I'm home with my hair in a bad ponytail, wearing a Y tee shirt and a cardigan with yoga pants, drinking mug after mug of hot tea, emptying box after box of Kleenex tissue. <br />
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I've watched episode upon episode of The United States of Tara, streaming onto our new Christmas family present television through the new Christmas family present Wii on Netflix. <br />
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My boy is back at school in his standard school attire uniform, missing both top front teeth and looking more adorable than I can stand and I have the nicest damned husband in the world who brought me a steaming container of Tom Yum Goong last night. </div>
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And today, I'm crying trying to remember the last "normal" pre dementia conversation I had with my mother and there's so much of life, THIS Life, this sweet messy little one, that is good and right and I'm grateful. And yet, I miss my mother. Terribly. It's not fair. </div>
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I may be forty-five years old and a mother and a wife myself, a school teacher, a tax payer, a late night laundry doer. And still, I miss my very own mother. So badly. </div>
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I miss her able-bodied, well minded Mother self who taught me pretty much everything, including how to love her because I can't not even when there's something different to hold onto. </div>
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I know my brother and my sister, they know that kind of love, too. Our mom is the best mom. Our mom is magic. </div>
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Thank you, Mom. for giving us everything. <br />
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Our mom IS that kind of love. Ms. Booty Homemakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11468536186448152481noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13722552.post-21172295937471009772012-12-24T17:13:00.000-06:002012-12-24T17:13:50.577-06:00Preparation.When something, or someone, is coming, it's time to get ready. <br />
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Be it the arrival of the innocence of the Christchild, or of longer days full of light, Santa Claus, or the open ended and hopeful possibilities of the impending New Year. </div>
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Here in East Tennessee, we are readying. Mother has her first week of chemo treatment down. She and Daddy are both a year older-- we have feted and celebrated them, though Daddy has requested not to have his now traditional <a href="http://msbootyhomemaker.blogspot.com/2007/12/zona-cake.html">ice box fruitcake</a> in honor of him. (The rest of the family is sad about this, so I may have to pull one out before we depart for the next leg of celebration northerly, where I will make it yet again.)</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4DUnXaemstvJSUhv6GIe4dUoXvezEG6eKftBBRFkXO67jqno86Psso1ePobDn4AABW7HNyE2zDU6GLEBn-hJwacHkcytm3RQbO_H4-Eol_R54mHDO_2EIucmjzNYfDLzTv1WR/s1600/olen+reindeer+food.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" eea="true" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4DUnXaemstvJSUhv6GIe4dUoXvezEG6eKftBBRFkXO67jqno86Psso1ePobDn4AABW7HNyE2zDU6GLEBn-hJwacHkcytm3RQbO_H4-Eol_R54mHDO_2EIucmjzNYfDLzTv1WR/s320/olen+reindeer+food.jpg" width="240" /></a>This will be the first time in my memory without a true Advent wreath to light at Mother and Daddy's here on Christmas Eve. We will certainly have to light a candle tonight, and it would give my heart great joy to hear our son read the birth story from his Uncle Jeffrey's childhood Bible, which lives in the room upstairs in which we sleep here. </div>
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As I write, Mother is drinking tea and eating a cookie brought us by a neighbor at home in Nashville, and a pumpkin muffin brought here by my sister in law. My Mister has helped The Boy hang his series of (eight) Santa letters -- some directive, some requesting. They are even now creating a snack for the reindeer. <br />
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Our butter is room temp for pie crusts and for our <a href="http://msbootyhomemaker.blogspot.com/2005/12/wedding-cookies.html">favorite holiday cookies </a>which will be baked up this evening for Santa and the rest of us, too. <br />
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I have addressed a second raft of Christmas cards, and last night before bedtime, our Boy wrote all the letters to Santa, and today once his father arrived, we've begun to make our time honored Santa Box (in which the big man delivers presents to the La Grone children and theirs.) <br />
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The questions at bedtime included, "Do you believe in Santa? What would you ask him if you could? I'd ask him if he's real. And if he has magic dust." <br />
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I think about how sometimes we wonder are YOU real, God? Do YOU have magic dust? Is Jesus real? <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ9M_QgvQWKoN9SPe22mehXyOGTyfVbQaKO67aqWJ3oNw6Mia0vlTx4NPyZz0dE_0yXJALAyntJ7Z6Kk4CUmkplwfHaFOn7bIbPvmxn3KzvcCkQUBepjnugoaJvRZAFoIO9Oox/s1600/santa+letters.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" eea="true" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ9M_QgvQWKoN9SPe22mehXyOGTyfVbQaKO67aqWJ3oNw6Mia0vlTx4NPyZz0dE_0yXJALAyntJ7Z6Kk4CUmkplwfHaFOn7bIbPvmxn3KzvcCkQUBepjnugoaJvRZAFoIO9Oox/s320/santa+letters.jpg" width="240" /></a>I made my own peace with that some time ago, agreeing with myself to let the mystery be. I have tried to impart this open hearted belief in believing to my child. The willingness to allow ourselves to be steeped in a love even bigger than Van Morrison's love that loves to love that loves to love.... The ability to say, "What?!" and then create a stronger purpose for holding on another year when a friend says "Santa's not real, my parents TOLD me." </div>
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Does it matter if you call your belief Santa or God or Christchild or New Season? </div>
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I am not sure it does, to be honest. </div>
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I choose to believe. I choose to hold onto faith, to expect Light. To await the miracle of the Christchild with wonder and with reverence. I choose to believe that chemotherapy may help my sweet mother by shrinking her brain tumor. I choose to delight in cookies and ice box fruit cake, letters to Santa and wrapping bits and bobs like books and lipsticks and handmade treats in colorful paper, with, I have to believe, all the love and wonder of the three kings with their gifts of frankincense, gold and myrh. </div>
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I KNOW they came to see Jesus as a toddler. That they didn't actually appear at a manger bed while cattle were lowing and angels hollered, "Hark!" </div>
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The timing on this is immaterial to me, because I have chosen preparation. I have chosen the kind of love that can not be explained, but can be felt right here among the ones I cherish, the ones close to birth, and the ones closer still to death. </div>
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We are waiting. We await. We stretch our hearts larger yet again, and walk into darkness unafraid, expecting Light. </div>
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Ms. Booty Homemakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11468536186448152481noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13722552.post-2563909068216629042012-12-16T15:35:00.001-06:002012-12-16T15:36:15.104-06:00Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.... for help in times of fear and upset.<br />
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for single parents raising children with mental illness.<br />
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for the great suffering inflicted upon the victims and the families of the victims of this senseless act of violence.<br />
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for the voices silenced, the children who lost their mothers at the hands of a very troubled young man.<br />
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for the children left behind without a best friend or a beloved teacher, without the prior sense of safety and of innocence.<br />
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for the mothers and the fathers in Sandy Hook and their paperboys, their newscasters, their truck drivers and nannies; their bakers and store clerks and city councilmen and women. for that community, please God, grant them peace. grant them comfort in each other in the face of unimaginable tragedy.<br />
<br />
for all the teachers and the mamas and grannies and fathers and uncles everywhere like in Nashville and in Dallas and San Francisco, in St. Paul, Denver and Philadelphia.... the ones who are weeping and watching their children sleep, worrying about other families in other towns, or wishing their own dead children could come back from cancer or overdose or maybe a car accident.<br />
<br />
there is such great suffering. it is hard to understand. to wrap even the most agile of hearts around....<br />
<br />
please and thank you and help: these are the prayers today, yesterday, into the new week as laundry spins, fractions are added and subtracted, maps are studied, ornaments are hung, choirs sing and families gather to hold one another another day, another year, another little while.<br />
<br />
<br />
we want things to be predictable here on earth with the excitement coming from things like roller coasters and new babies and chili cook-off winners and beautiful new postage stamps on love letters. we want all the rent hearts to be mended, the cleaving couples to come back together, the church to stop pointing fingers and fussing about who marries who because love is love is love. we want every man, woman and child to have plenty to eat and a warm place to go where he or she can get plenty to eat and the ones that love them open their arms.<br />
<br />
we want to stop weeping at the brokeness and the senselessless, the confusion. we want to say, Enough!! Everyone brush your teeth and go to bed. Tomorrow will be softer, we will find an answer.<br />
<br />
Mother-Father God, I'm not sure that can be. but it's what we want here.<br />
<br />
I want my students to be safe and well fed, to learn how to read and multiply, to believe in themselves and to become productive citizens of the community. I want not to get out of work at four o'clock in the afternoon while I've been teaching children in a poor neighborhood -- one that knows violence and unmet desire well -- to learn that north of me by several states, a man walked into a school and shot up a bunch of people for reasons we may never understand. I want to get to my child across town fast, so fast, and drive him home even if it takes two hours through the traffic and he falls asleep.<br />
<br />
thank you for that. for that small inconvenience of time, with the sweetness of my lightly snoring son in his booster seat while I am driving in quiet. thank you for no radio or television over the weekend, but instead Christmas carols and a husband who loves us and a place to call home. thank you for a safe place to be a family, and to cry for those that woke yesterday in a world where that was no longer true for them.<br />
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<br />
it isn't fair, God. any of it. and I've been pretty mad at you this year, anyway. but I'm still looking for you. still praying. still hoping.<br />
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<br />Ms. Booty Homemakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11468536186448152481noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13722552.post-73666226707511144592012-12-14T06:53:00.002-06:002012-12-14T06:57:32.797-06:00Season of Light. The days are long. The years are short.<br />
Sunrise, sunset....<br />
<br />
<br />
I spend most of my waking hours away from home, away from my child. Away from my mate, my dog, my family of origin.<br />
<br />
Like so many others, I spend an awful lot of time in the car, criss crossing town between my child's school and my own, to and from home, and so on.<br />
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Evenings spent coming home like this:<br />
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Make these moments all the more precious:<br />
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After supper (take out pizza) we went into the yard to look for meteor showers. The city lights make it difficult to see them. We saw blinking planes, believing at first they were meteors, adjusted, watched, waited, foggy wisps of breath issuing from our mouths. Craning our necks back, upward starting into the vast sky.<br />
<br />
"Space HAS no end," said our son when his father attempted to explain how to look into where you couldn't see the space anymore.<br />
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"Will the meteor rocks hit our house?" he asked.<br />
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"How can we see the meteors if the rocks break into something small as a grain or rice or sand, Dad?"<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
And then the tromp back into the house, the unplugging of the Christmas tree lights, the readying and cozying into flannel sheets, the Mister's voice reading aloud from the seventh book of the Harry Potter series.<br />
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I drifted off. Surrounded by the people I love, in the kind of moment we live for.<br />
<br />
<br />
Light. Yes, it can be both wave and particle, but too, it can be: Home. Hope. Hello.<br />
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Or even the road toward it. Ms. Booty Homemakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11468536186448152481noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13722552.post-80662042422167890882012-12-13T05:40:00.001-06:002012-12-14T06:56:56.676-06:00Many things have happened since.... <br />
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<br />
our lives went ass over tea kettle.<br />
<br />
<br />
In short list form:<br />
<br />
<br />
* My brother Jeff and I stayed with our mother during her most recent MRI, earplugs in tight. We got lost in the drone. I laid hands on Mother. I prayed over and over in my head, "Help. Give her peace." Not very eloquent, instead practical, urgent, even desperate. Jeff checked her eyes to see if she was sleeping or awake.<br />
<br />
* My son has now had several sleep overs with his girl cousins and loves his Aunt Dana ferociously. At last, he has made up to her all the early years of snubbing her (and most everyone else) for yours truly.
<br />
<br />
* I have attended, with a caravan of co-workers, the pre-funeral visitation for one of the mothers of children at our school. She was struck by a car very near school, and died. We are all deeply saddened keeping watch over the children by day in our hallways and classrooms.<br />
<br />
* As my fast talking three on the Enneagram friend Jo Ellen says -- I expected my job as a schoolteacher in an urban inner city school to be difficult -- Kingdom work. Goodness, love, mercy. Daily, I struggle and fall short of the peace inside I strive toward. I question myself and my abilities in a way that hurts. Still, I show up every single day and give the best I've got.<br />
<br />
* I missed the Holiday Luncheon at my boy's school. Again. Forgot that it was happening. Forgot to send funds. The boy reduced to puddles of tears on the second night in a row I came home late.... sometimes I get home after he is in bed, leave before he's out of it.<br />
<br />
* I am thankful for Katherine and Karen, mothers who mother my boy in my absence. Mothers who show up for the Parents Visit Music Class Day and make our boy feel just as special as their boy and girl, respectively, by loving him up and sending pictures and videos to my phone to include me on his experience. Blessings, they are, these other mothers so full of joy and love and heart-full friendship.<br />
<br />
* My husband, my friend, my man, my love, my partner. My Beloved Mister. With the time in, we're a better team then ever. I tell him that my siblings are concerned about my scatteredness, my repetition in telling the same things. He wisely reminds me that my talking about something is like most people thinking about something. It's how I process. And now that I've given up the Facebook time suck, which in many ways was a way for me to empty my brain, my verbal tics, such as they are, are all the more apparent. We have all had a good laugh over that.<br />
<br />
* Too, I have laughed (again, at my expense, but why not?) about my traveling road show. My cobalt blue station wagon crammed full of hiking boots, apples and clementines and thermoses of water, a box of clothing outgrown as a pass along for a friend's son, glass baby food jars for science projects at school, books and Legos and far too many fast food straw wrappers, extra coats and sweaters and random things piled or chucked in at the last minute on my daily commute, or the longer weekend version across the plateau and down into the valley and back..... My father says, "Hell, you could throw a pumpkin in the back of her car and she'd not realize it until the vine starts growing out the windows!"
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Oh, oh. The mistletoe. The cancer. The lack of kid toothpaste in the house. The overdue library books and friends I don't deserve.
Merry Happy Wonder.<br />
<br />
Help. Give us Peace.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our Quaker Oats Star, fashioned by me in the first year of our marriage, covered with aluminum foil and painted with spirals, makes an appearance this year in its naked state..... at the boy's request. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br />Ms. Booty Homemakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11468536186448152481noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13722552.post-37234503475083451272012-12-02T00:34:00.001-06:002012-12-02T00:36:59.266-06:00This kid stole my heart. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Ms. Booty Homemakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11468536186448152481noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13722552.post-40019048189481966962012-09-25T20:10:00.004-05:002012-09-25T20:10:32.996-05:00Seven. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Ms. Booty Homemakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11468536186448152481noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13722552.post-59869161369012695022012-09-25T17:31:00.002-05:002012-09-25T17:31:30.233-05:00Dearest Boy on Your Seventh Birthday. My darling boy,<br />
<br />
Today, you are seven. As you told us last night, "Every day we are becoming more mature."<br />
Yes, my dearest. Every day. You are. Daddy is. And so am I. You have, in large part, made us into the people we are today -- better than we'd have been without you by this point, that is for certain.<br />
<br />
We are flooded with love for you, and yet we've learned to swim, to thrive in it rather than be swept away.<br />
<br />
You make us laugh. Your first joke was about nursing. There have been so many more over the years from the endless tomato jokes to the ones you read to us from your magazines. Daddy is always better at guessing the real answer, but my creative answers make you laugh. Oh, how you laugh. With your whole vibrant yum-up-the-world-right-now-in-one-big-hug self.<br />
<br />
You have been a challenge from the get-go. I think we've all mellowed a bit with age.<br />
<br />
I love your smile and your friendliness and how anywhere we go you are proud of your family and you are excited to be right in the thick of whatever action is whirring 'round. We go into a Target, you make two friends. At the park, you always invite others to play. You put yourself out there. I love that.<br />
<br />
I just like you so much. And so does Daddy. We three have a good time, don't we? I like that we love books and board games and music and good food and spending time together. I love how you love ALL your family, just the same. Diggy and Papa and Grandma and Grandpa and Aunt Dana and Uncle Jeff and all the cousins and even Bert the Dog, and me and Daddy, just. the. same. We are, as you say, "in my family."<br />
<br />
I love how the other day when you called to see if Henry could spend the night you left a message for Katherine and let slip at the end, "Love you...." Even though she is not technically in our family. Even though you might not take it back, but you aren't willing to engage with the fact of having said it. Having felt it.<br />
<br />
Like with Mrs. Arms, your undisputed favorite teacher ever (except for Heather, your Christ Teacher, and mine, too) you wouldn't hug her forever but instead you'd give her a belly bump. She was a miracle for you. She really got you, in a way no other teacher had. I know she must be so proud of how much your handwriting has matured, to use your word. You have worked hard for it.<br />
<br />
We enjoy you. Even when you are cranky or scared or angry or fretful or having a belly ache. We enjoy your love of vampires and Harry Potter, of Legos and backroads instead of interstates. We enjoy that you are still so snuggly every morning when you wake up, and that you run to us after school or anytime we've not seen you for a bit. We delight in watching you play soccer and tennis, and focus all your energies on neater handwriting and organization. It makes me laugh that there's a plastic action figure of Dr. Doom on top of my canister of Rosewood bath salts by the tub.<br />
<br />
Last night after we read our Harry Potter chapter and Daddy fell asleep with you, I came in to get him. He and I crawled into bed and I told him, "What a wonderful boy we have been given." "Yes," he said. We are so thankful.<br />
<br />
Remember your birthday last year? You were six. You and I had a picnic and cupcakes with Papa and Diggy when she was in Vanderbilt ICU. You were afraid of her IVs and the way she was hooked up to a catheter bag. Over the last year when she's been so sick and so far away from herself as you knew her before, you have been pretty amazing. You have hugged her and kissed her and told her about your life and prayed for her and spent a lot of time with Papa, too. I know you have brought them joy.<br />
<br />
Thank you, my boy, for letting me be your mother, for being in this life with us -- this sweet sweet sweet little messy God filled life.<br />
<br />
With all my love,<br />
Mama<br />
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Ms. Booty Homemakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11468536186448152481noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13722552.post-51468130816042892562012-09-23T05:51:00.000-05:002012-09-23T06:00:51.086-05:00Actual things my students have said to me this first quarter of the 2012-13 school year.... <br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyWie15hO4f1L4HSWfCHIXnQPZST-VXAYoYhNm4qDacmUCZRJZWdewVNEXBYqzHPx5760snXAYhs4wa1ohHBL73uylHlX3ybuBqgQiGI64ojEs3IjIaDvFKYxgGKLYszNZV4Us/s1600/science+bulletin+board.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" hea="true" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyWie15hO4f1L4HSWfCHIXnQPZST-VXAYoYhNm4qDacmUCZRJZWdewVNEXBYqzHPx5760snXAYhs4wa1ohHBL73uylHlX3ybuBqgQiGI64ojEs3IjIaDvFKYxgGKLYszNZV4Us/s400/science+bulletin+board.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My fourth grade students working at my interdisciplinary Science and Language Arts bulletin board.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<ul>
<li>I don't hate you. I just hate some of the things you do. </li>
<li>Can I come live with you? I want you to be my mom and to come live with you and your husband and son. </li>
<li>I brought you these chips because you gave everyone your lunch for snacks when they were hungry. </li>
<li>I hate you. </li>
<li>I don't have to listen you, little girl. Fat girl. </li>
<li>Don't you love your boy? </li>
<li>Mrs. B, you're the best teacher I've ever had. </li>
<li>I hope you die. I hope you die in prison. I hope you die soon. </li>
<li>You told us fair is not equal. I get it. </li>
<li>You are so unfair!</li>
<li>What are those things under your arms? </li>
<li>What's that on your eyelid? </li>
<li>Ugh. Tagmoles? You should get those things cut off. </li>
<li>What's that in your eye. A pinGUECKula?! What's THAT?!</li>
<li>I love you. </li>
<li>I know you love us and care about us. </li>
<li>How do you spell student? </li>
<li>What's today's date? </li>
<li>Can we stay outside longer? </li>
<li>Do you have a bandaid? </li>
<li>I gotta use it!! </li>
<li>Mrs. B, you're giving me a headache. </li>
<li>This is too hard. I can't read. </li>
<li>Mrs. B! I get it! I get Real World Math!! </li>
<li>I wish I was in Ms. Kramer's / Ms. Mitchell's / Mrs. McMillan's class.... </li>
<li>I don't wanna be in nobody else's class, Mrs. B. </li>
<li>Would the principal fire you if you did that? </li>
<li>I don't like when you go away. I hate substitutes. </li>
<li>Can we eat in the classroom with you? </li>
<li>Can I hold your hand? </li>
<li>Mrs. B, my leg / cheek / thumb / tummy / throat / head / foot hurts. </li>
<li>I don't care if you DO call my mama! </li>
<li>Can we call my mama to tell her I had a good day? </li>
<li>Did you see me? </li>
<li>Watch ME, Mrs. B. </li>
<li>Can I be the line leader? </li>
<li>Can I take the attendance to the office? </li>
<li>Can I sharpen the pencils? </li>
<li>Can I clean off your desk? Erase the board? Collect the homework? </li>
<li>Mrs. B, you are too nice. That's why we be misbehavin'. </li>
<li>Mrs. B, you are mean. </li>
<li>I love you. </li>
<li>Can I read to you? </li>
<li>Will you read to us? </li>
<li>Thank you for telling me that. </li>
<li>O.EM. Gee. </li>
<li>I cain't work with HER. </li>
<li>Can we work together? </li>
<li>What's that what you call when you do something....? Consequences? </li>
<li>Your husband must be a nice man. </li>
<li>I hope you have a good weekend with your husband and your son, and I wish I could come home with you this weekend. </li>
<li>I hate you. I wish you would get fired. </li>
<li>Do you love me? </li>
<li>How do you think I feel? </li>
<li>These kids are crazy. They don't know how to act. </li>
<li>With my glasses on, I can see the whiskers on your chin better. </li>
<li>Your hair is grey, not brown. No offense. </li>
<li>You look a lot younger in your picture. </li>
<li>Are you white? </li>
<li>What's that word? </li>
<li>I don't know how to do this. No one will help me!!</li>
<li>You didn't bring any ranch to dip your carrots in? How can you eat that? </li>
<li>You got a snack for me? I'm hongry. </li>
<li>You always get me in trouble. </li>
<li>Mrs. B, Ms. B, Miz B, Mrs. B, Ms. B, Miz Bee...........</li>
</ul>
Ms. Booty Homemakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11468536186448152481noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13722552.post-56525044418981230192012-09-09T17:42:00.000-05:002012-09-09T17:42:10.026-05:00Banner Weekend. Fall weather has at last arrived.<br />
First soccer game of the season with Nashville Soccer United on the Sharks team of second and third graders; the boy scored a goal, had a couple assists, and several attempts.<br />
<br />
Family at the Tennessee State Fair was great. Boy rode first roller coaster, visited first fun houses, saw a pig race, won a hermit crab and two goldfish from the ping pong ball toss game.<br />
<br />
On top of that, our almost seven year old finally lost his first tooth. Biting down on the corndog stick further loosened his first really loose tooth last evening. Today a good wiggle in the living room popped the tooth right out.<br />
<br />
In the meantime, the Mister and I are both working hard and enjoying our respective posts -- me at an urban inner city school and him down in a burb of the city teaching young English Language Learners.<br />
<br />
We celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary next month and I'm looking to book us our first away from the kiddo night....<br />
<br />
Our life, in a few snapshots:<br />
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Ms. Booty Homemakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11468536186448152481noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13722552.post-48936638289849370472012-08-25T06:52:00.001-05:002012-08-25T06:56:19.055-05:00Where did it go? A prayer of sorts.Exactly one month prior to his seventh birthday, our son, our boy, creeps through the dark early morning across the hall from his room to ours. Snuggles in tight, then stretches and heaves out a great sigh, as if at last, he has come home.<br />
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An hour later, my husband and I stand over our boy, admiring him. The thick thatch of wild bark colored hair, the impressively long hoppers popping from beneath the comforter at a jaunty angle. The broad boyish form of him slantwise across our king sized bed, sprawling in claim of his territory.<br />
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"<i>Where did our little boy go and when was he replaced by this large creature?</i>" asks my husband.<br />
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We smile. "<i>He's almost <b>seven</b></i>," I say. I remember the long ago <a href="http://msbootyhomemaker.blogspot.com/2007/09/humid-tendril-of-your-breathing.html">poem</a> my husband sent me -- way back when, when we were colleagues and friends, emerging over time into pen pals and eventually lovers of the most old fashioned sort -- courting.<br />
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I had wanted a home crawling with children. I'd imagined myself a Louisa Mae Alcott character, like Jo from Jo's Boys. I'd fancied the idea of a heap of family. I really was born to be, as my friend Joan laughingly accused when our boys were in kindergarten and I'd headed off to the park with a string of borrowed children hand in hand: the old woman in the shoe!<br />
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For such a long long time, I held that dream. Mourned it. Wept it. And then something happened. I forgave him, and I forgave myself.<br />
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Where did all that sad go? Poured into loving my family, as it is. Into hand washing dishes, year after year. Into laying on the floor with my dog, whispering to him my secrets. Into gardens that fed us after I'd tilled and cried at the same time. Into working and earning a master's degree. Into nurturing the children I teach, into becoming a better daughter, into becoming quite nearly as good a wife as I have been a mother.<br />
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The sacrifices have been great. As has been the pain and the missing. It has not always been pretty.<br />
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Where did it go? The time? The missing? The sad? The little boy? The wild at heart lovers? All here, transforming into something deeper and longer lasting, making me all the more aware of the fleeting nature of living in this human body in this human world. Our tender places and the wounds we all carry. The grace that fills up the empty places, cleans us out, allows us to move forward.<br />
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The beauty and contentment of now has been worth every. single. moment.<br />
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And now, we admire our boy at nearly seven. He is beautiful. WE are beautiful.<br />
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I am truly madly deeply in love with the journey that is emerging as this messy little God filled life. The man. The boy. The woman I am becoming. The larger family into which we are interwoven, along with the community we are co-creating.<br />
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<i>Make room for the beloved</i>, I quoted for years. And here we are. On the way. Together.<br />
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Thank you. And Amen.Ms. Booty Homemakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11468536186448152481noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13722552.post-30880445316414950582012-06-07T13:09:00.000-05:002012-06-07T13:09:36.162-05:00That's my boy.<blockquote style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" type="cite"><div style="background-color: #f1f1f1; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-top: 5px;"><table bgcolor="#f1f1f1" border="0"><tbody>
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</tbody></table><div><div>Tuesday night, hundreds of you turned out to show your support for a budget that creates strong schools, safe neighborhoods and a Nashville that is moving forward. Nearly 60 of you stood in line for hours to speak before the entire Metro Council. Police officers, firefighters, teachers, emergency workers, business leaders, arts supporters, nonprofit workers and even kids asked our Council members to support this budget and create a brighter future for Nashville.</div><div> </div><div><strong>Tuesday night, you were Moving Nashville Forward. Thank you tremendously for your dedication and willingness to show up and speak up for the city we all love. </strong></div><div> </div><div>There is still much work to be done. We have just a few weeks left before the Council takes its final vote on the budget. You'll be hearing more about the many Nashvillians who spoke Tuesday night, and how you can join them in the coming weeks.</div><div> </div><div>But for today, we think this picture just about sums it up. Thanks to you, we're Moving Nashville Forward.</div><div> </div><div><img align="center" alt="" height="400" src="http://i.imgur.com/MfG10.jpg" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></div></div></td></tr>
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</tbody></table></div></blockquote>Ms. Booty Homemakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11468536186448152481noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13722552.post-60636881913419532072012-05-24T06:37:00.000-05:002012-05-24T06:38:08.204-05:00Our rising second grader, age six.<p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYclslqUgFky8VY3Tcz6PhU8SDHASh046Yst-_7wsiYvR8HXgAcAJkYfIRKyoqyimNF76fpkhjymQJaLuYcARC66i6Ds8n002I1xwMTlOyIhu7hgHCknv-eYeAcHi1lNdubwDY/s1600/photo-788205.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYclslqUgFky8VY3Tcz6PhU8SDHASh046Yst-_7wsiYvR8HXgAcAJkYfIRKyoqyimNF76fpkhjymQJaLuYcARC66i6Ds8n002I1xwMTlOyIhu7hgHCknv-eYeAcHi1lNdubwDY/s320/photo-788205.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5746062749097455394" /></a></p>
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<br>On the way out the door for "special breakfast" with Daddy and our crew of family besties from school, relationships we have made and built up over these last two years--- lovely, dear, wonderful families who have children our boy's age and grade level, and some on either side. This year has been amazing with Mrs. Arms and the first grade Rockin' Robots. A year made all the better by sweet friends. Ms. Booty Homemakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11468536186448152481noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13722552.post-58527504070400650672012-05-24T06:29:00.001-05:002012-05-24T06:29:36.304-05:00<p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnvnUNakYR75Oyg5hWGZCk8Cblqi-40_JWN8T6OfdpXNUosKGaIpN63hqawYbnQ4__EU77EFfA57TEzbHjt48sIXfc9p4tfEfJdhKg5YK4OOqtQhFdXAbAzSC9DngbmPU0eOcv/s1600/photo-776305.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnvnUNakYR75Oyg5hWGZCk8Cblqi-40_JWN8T6OfdpXNUosKGaIpN63hqawYbnQ4__EU77EFfA57TEzbHjt48sIXfc9p4tfEfJdhKg5YK4OOqtQhFdXAbAzSC9DngbmPU0eOcv/s320/photo-776305.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5746060556008420130" /></a></p>
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<br>Ms. Booty Homemakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11468536186448152481noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13722552.post-19448492603617343532012-05-24T06:20:00.002-05:002012-05-24T06:26:07.812-05:00Last full day as a first grader, age six.<p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaE64R301QvRilY28JOi5-8-uE8ke0bP3-kBShVlFZW0Gn7FIh5ZQZUVKZv4mwL1r2oXLH1fUYRuEaNHu4u5k6rKvnviOxbu6TRXPoM2sLF2um6lG3VXZ9Sta5RD8vm3j8wPwV/s1600/photo-718747.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaE64R301QvRilY28JOi5-8-uE8ke0bP3-kBShVlFZW0Gn7FIh5ZQZUVKZv4mwL1r2oXLH1fUYRuEaNHu4u5k6rKvnviOxbu6TRXPoM2sLF2um6lG3VXZ9Sta5RD8vm3j8wPwV/s320/photo-718747.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5746058159167367362" /></a></p>Ms. Booty Homemakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11468536186448152481noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13722552.post-7680250627239222362012-05-24T06:19:00.001-05:002012-05-24T06:19:33.012-05:00<p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTN0Wnffga-KPH3-5zCbmlRZAmS8igOXm4FKAaB4VlbWiYXgeZfeQPE3ptNH5Q8MVGZh0JmkHvYtcVj5K8MrFZDDJgSzRHw0YdOHTvYk209ZdZuI1C_kAyWqSEqC6PGdpZCyrO/s1600/photo-773013.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTN0Wnffga-KPH3-5zCbmlRZAmS8igOXm4FKAaB4VlbWiYXgeZfeQPE3ptNH5Q8MVGZh0JmkHvYtcVj5K8MrFZDDJgSzRHw0YdOHTvYk209ZdZuI1C_kAyWqSEqC6PGdpZCyrO/s320/photo-773013.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5746057959437719554" /></a></p>
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<br>Ms. Booty Homemakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11468536186448152481noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13722552.post-10359484262884830832012-05-24T06:18:00.003-05:002012-05-24T06:18:59.910-05:00<p class="mobile-photo"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDe6RhyA091tnZO8_r69L5QoM3iGKAVfdFA60d7d2hZGd3xeXmMDQQaavj89cxHukSjsWdwa1CzUofsF7VBwCLTttAq8fXNWDDCJYFFDTc3aLYzgxP6B4tlk7VZSTwZusxkr_S/s1600/photo-739911.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDe6RhyA091tnZO8_r69L5QoM3iGKAVfdFA60d7d2hZGd3xeXmMDQQaavj89cxHukSjsWdwa1CzUofsF7VBwCLTttAq8fXNWDDCJYFFDTc3aLYzgxP6B4tlk7VZSTwZusxkr_S/s320/photo-739911.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5746057821043273746" /></a></p>
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<br>Ms. Booty Homemakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11468536186448152481noreply@blogger.com0