Scotty LOVES Mimi!!

Jackson's Coyboy Birthday Party was GREAT!

Paradox (n) - a contradiction that equals a truth.

I suddenly have grey hairs, lots of them. Does one, at this point, consider dying the hair. Should I go short and curly...just get it over with? Honestly, I don't mind getting older because I don't really feel like I am getting older. Mentally, I feel pretty much the same way I felt when I was in my teens, and it is much easier to be mentally me now than it was to be mentally me then. Physically, I am just droopier. Everything is a little droopier including my cheeks (both sets), my belly, my knees (how does that happen?), and the bottom of my arms. I hate to sound like I am complaining, but what on earth is the universe's purpose in making us droop as we age? Now, in addition to drooping and getting grey hairs, I woke up this morning with a pimple on my chin. Where is the justice in that? Once a person notices 30-40 grey hairs on her head and distinctively droopy skin all over, she should not be expected to go through the adolescent ritual of trying to hide a pimple, really. Nevertheless, today, I went into my high school (as a teacher, granted) drooping slightly, grey and brown hair in a pony tail (woke up late), and cover up slathered over the very obvious pimple on my chin. Such is life.

News:
Scotty has an ear infection. He can't seem to get totally well this winter, and it makes me feel very helpless. Plus, the doctors keep giving him more antibiotics, and I worry that he will be immune to them by the time he is 10. What did people do to help their sick children before antibiotics? One of my goals is to do more research about and implementation of holistic health practices for prevention and eventually for treatment.

Greg had our bathroom painted pretty fall sky on a football Sunday blue. It is very serene and also energizing. I like it, but it makes me miss the ocean for some reason. Maybe I am just missing the ocean.

Last week, families logged in between Sept. 29 and Oct. 13 of 2005 were referred their children. Our agency received referrals for 81 children (6 boys!). We have been logged in for almost one month. I am thinking we are one month down and 29 to go! We'll just have to wait and see though.

OK. So I am the kind of girl who has never been able to figure out the big deal about scrap booking! Am I an anomaly? Am I neglecting an important part of making memories last? For some reason, the muse of crafts and all things crafty seems to reject me as a subject. Thus, among many girls my age, I feel somewhat foreign. Those women are all stamping, scrap booking, Pampered Cheffing, etc. etc., and I admire their enthusiasm for domesticity. I've even tried to fake it occasionally to see if I might develop a taste for what I should probably be doing. Those women are creative, kind, and capable. I just sincerely don't get it, though. No wonder I am a little on the fringe of everything. Buying into the regular patterns of any one group of people is difficult for me.

Maybe my lack of craftiness is just a symptom of my larger issue which is the inability to focus on anything for very long! Ah well. That may be one of the big reasons Greg and I make a good team. At least he doesn't expect me to be crafty...or extremely domestic. We have this crazy jungle gym of a house with ultra mega shiny paint on all the window sills, doors and trim b/c Greg thought it would be easy to clean! (Everyone wonders if we just painted because it looks wet.) We've been here for over a year now, and we still have pictures sitting on the floor below the walls where they ought to be hung. Toys are EVERYWHERE (both Greg's and Scott's). My school books and papers along with office supplies show up in the strangest places (How did that get there?). Shoes are strewn across the landscape of the floor like hills and valleys; the baby's crib, which we have never disassembled since Scotty got a big boy bed, is full of clean laundry to be folded. We have three different dinners at night because we have one meatatarian, one vegetarian, and one kidatarian living in our house(occasionally, by chance, the menus collide and we actually have one common dish...mac and cheese). I am exaggerating, of course (a little). Sometimes our house is very tidy, and occasionally I can get a great dinner together that pleases everyone, but mostly our life seems just a little different from the scrap-booked, picture perfect lives of many of our friends.

Somehow our life works though. We turn on the radio, and we all dance around the house like people in love with life. Greg is incredibly industrious, and he is always engaged in a project to make our life easier, happier, or just more fun. In the morning when we wake up, we group hug in our mismatched kitchen and say, "love you more than the whole world and everything in it". We like learning and speculating, pretending together and reading books. And even though I am on the fringe of almost everything else, I am right in the middle of this little life of ours, and so is Greg, and so is Scotty. Every night I thank God for so so many blessings.