Road Trip

For all of you taking road trips this weekend, I hope they don't look anything like this:

Happy Memorial Day Weekend!

Oddities at the Post Office

This is weird. We're going out of town soon (that's not the weird part) and I wanted to put our mail on hold. I went to the post office's website, filled in all our info and under special instructions, typed, "Thanks!" But apparently, that's not a valid message:

Maybe, "Thanks!" is just too casual. So I upped it to "Thank you!" and tried again:

No dice. I figured it must have something to do with the number of characters used, so, undeterred, I gave this a shot:

And that worked.

That's weird, right?

It's probably weird that I'm thinking this much about it, but I can't figure out why you'd have to use a majority of the characters to make your message go through. Just add this to the list of things I don’t understand about the USPS. Like the number of signs in my local post office telling customers the post office trash cans are not for outside trash. 

This is a big problem? Really?

Oh well. I just hope the message gets through to our mailman. And I hope everyone who works at our post office knows I never bring in outside trash. Never.

Laughter heals

Sean and I had the opportunity to see Carol Burnett this week. She showed some of her favorite clips of her show and took questions from the audience. One man wanted to thank her for bringing laughter to their family after his daughter died in 1975. He said her variety show was appointment television for his family and they looked forward to an hour each Saturday night when they knew they’d get to laugh. Carol was genuinely touched and teared up – I bawled my eyes out.

In response to that comment, she said laughter heals. She is so right. Hope you’ll take a few minutes to laugh today.

One of the clips Carol Burnett showed on Wednesday night: 

I laughed out loud at this one. Right out loud:

For Amy:

And in honor of the closing of The Office - we'll all need some ice cream to get over the loss:

Happy weekend!

Worth the (decade) wait

In 1997, I took Amy with me to the local Christian bookstore to pick up the new Amy Grant CD, Behind the Eyes. My Amy was one and did not fully appreciate the importance of being quiet while we listened to the new CD on the way home. Granted, it was nap time, but still. Seems like she should have intrinsically known that this was a time when crying was not a good idea.

Today, I took my Amy to the bank to sign a signature card so she could get her own debit card, and when we finished, she drove off in her car, headed to chemistry class as I drove off in mine to Target to pick up the new Amy Grant CD, her first new release in ten years.

 

My, how time flies.

Pretty sure this is the only time I’ve ever walked into Target and didn’t use a cart. I went straight for the music section, got the CD, checked out and walked with great purpose to my car. I opened the CD as soon as I sat down and promptly couldn’t figure out how to load it in my CD player. After a momentary panic, I found the eject button, got the Christmas disc out and slipped in the new CD.

It’s good. Y’all, it is so good.

Well, there is one song with slightly questionable theology… Okay, really questionable, but I’m just skipping that one.

Anyway, it’s like listening to an old friend tell new stories. And that’s a pretty sweet way to spend the day.

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(If you're going to get the new CD, get it at Target - they have the edition with three bonus tracks.)

Friday Fun

Books may go electronic, but some paper products will always be in style:



(HT: David McW.)

Sinbad on how to get your grown kids out of your house. Hope we don't have to resort to this. So worth the 4 minutes:

 

Don't forget Mother's Day on Sunday! Today is the perfect day to tell her your plans for Sunday. Seriously. Tell her your plans. I'm sure she'd really, really like to know if something is being planned for this weekend:

Happy weekend! 

The Office is (almost) closed

Several years ago, Amy and Michael started watching The Office, the NBC “documentary” about people who work in a (wait for it) office. I don’t know how they got interested or who introduced them, but once they met Michael, Dwight, Jim, Pam and the rest of the crew, they were hooked.

Two years ago, they asked me watch the show with them. Seeing an opportunity to spend some quality time with my teenagers, I said yes. So we started watching from Season 1, Episode 1. It did not go well. I could not stand the show. Michael Scott made me physically ill. How could anyone – ANYONE – be so dumb?! And it wasn’t just Michael; the rest of the crew was dumb, too; even Pam! Why couldn’t she see Roy was clearly wrong for her? Jim seemed to be the only one who didn’t make me want to throw up.

There were nights I didn’t think I could make it through another episode. But I knew I was running out of time with my kids; they’d be grown and gone before long. So if this was a way to spend more time with them, I would make it work. Even if I had to occasionally close my eyes. And plug my ears.

Well, I powered through and Amy and I finished up Season 8 last weekend. I thought I was close to being able to watch the finale with the kids next week. Oh no. Turns out, in order for me to be totally caught up I had to watch 21 more episodes. Twenty-one.

Oh my word. That’s almost eight hours! I don't watch eight hours of television in a month, much less a week.

But because I love my children, I have ignored their needs since Monday. In that time, Amy and I have watched 17 episodes of The Office. We have to finish them all this week before our free trial of Hulu Plus ends, which is the only way I can see the current-season episodes. Miraculously, I cooked dinner Monday night. Thankfully, Sean had a dinner meeting last night, because there was no way food was happening with all this Office-watching going on. The girls had cereal.

And let me just tell you, if Pam and Jim mess things up because of the microphone guy and Jim’s new job in Philly, I am going to be unhappy. Very unhappy.

Four more episodes and I’ll be caught-up and can watch the finale with Michael and Amy.

The things you do for your kids…

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Please do not read this as a glowing endorsement of the show. It is certainly not entirely family-friendly. But it has been a great vehicle for conversation-starters, which has been good.

You will survive (believe it or not!)

Michael called last week and asked us to help him move out of his dorm room. So Saturday afternoon, Sean and I drove up to move him out. When we got there the only things that were packed were the car pictures he’d hung on his walls. Those had been stacked neatly and placed gingerly in a suitcase. Everything else: still in drawers, on hangers, on shelves.

After going to three different stores to find boxes, we got his room packed up and loaded into Sean’s truck. Michael still has a few days of exams to finish, so we left him with just enough clothes and Cokes to get him through Wednesday. Everything else went in the back of the Escalade. As we drove the boy’s stuff home, it hit me that his first year at college is almost finished. He’ll be home later this week. His freshman year will be in the books.

Wasn’t it just last year at this time I was crying every other minute, dreading the thought that he’d be away at school? And now the thing I feared is over?

How did this happen?

I got an email from a friend last night, telling me she had just submitted her son’s housing info for his freshman year at college. She said if she thinks about it too much she can barely hold herself together. She wrote, “The thought of taking him to campus, moving him in and then LEAVING HIM THERE is too much for me!”

Oh, honey, I know the feeling! But I also know she'll be okay.

I don’t blame her if she doesn't believe me.  I didn’t believe the people who told me I’d be okay. And there were plenty of people who did. They’d gone through it and they knew I would, in fact, be okay.

That’s the trick, though: they’d walked that path already and come out the other side mostly unscathed. And now, I have, too. Dropping him off was terrible. As bad as I feared. But then we entered into our new normal. And so did he. And it was good. We all had a really good year.

So, dear friend, allow me to be one of the many people adding my voice to the chorus of, “You will be okay.”

You really will.

And I will not be offended one little bit if you don’t believe me. But when you reach the point of thinking you absolutely cannot get through it, just remember that the woman who bawled her eyes out for months in anticipation of the dreaded drop-off actually survived. The same woman made it through the first family meal with an empty place at the table and the first family road trip with an empty seat in the car and the first of many, many days in a row of not talking to the child she’d never gone that long without talking to before. And this woman is telling you that it was okay. It was new and different and sometimes weird, but all in all, it was okay.

And in 12 months, you’ll be the one telling your friend of a senior that she too will be okay. Because even though you thought you wouldn’t survive, you did.

And you’re okay

Surely God is my help;

the Lord is the one who sustains me.

Psalm 54:4