A word about West Virginia

     I don't have thick enough skin to be a real blogger.  Whenever you put words out into the world, it's inevitable that someone will hear them differently than you intended (or perhaps exactly how you intended, but they are unexpectedly hurt or angered).  As a preacher, I certainly know this and realize I can not always be responsible for how my words are heard.  Still, I was bothered to learn that my last thoughts on states' self-esteem had upset at least one West Virginian friend.  Bothered enough to attempt, now, some explanation.

     I wrote this: "West Virginia has one of the lowest self-esteems of any of the 50 states.  You can't even make jokes about West Virginia without feeling like you're kicking a puppy.  West Virginia's the overweight girl hiding behind her hair, off to the left in Chemistry class, praying no one can see her - but she sparkles when she's at home with her family."

And I stand by my analogy.  I would like to clarify, however:

• One's self-esteem is not synonymous with one's actual worth.  That is to say, one's own opinion about one's value, beauty, or talent is not the same as one's actual value, beauty, or talent.  One may hold oneself in either too high or too low esteem.  Therefore, to say that West Virginia has a low self-esteem is not to say that West Virginia isn't a valuable, beautiful, or wonderful place with much to offer.  Rather, West Virginia often underestimates herself.
• Those who know West Virginia well ("her family") know exactly how "she sparkles" - how the fog traps between her hills and clings to the rivers, how the rainbow of fall creeps in and takes your breath away with a thousand shades of fire, how her people are loyal and sometimes wary but warm and willing enough to pull up an extra chair at the family table.
• I wasn't poking fun at West Virginia (I know well the danger of that: "You can't even make jokes about West Virginia...") but at the often ridiculous hubris of Texas.  It really is ridiculous.  

I loved living in West Virginia.  I will no doubt continue to realize all the things I love about West Virginia as I miss them.  And I already plan to take my children back someday in the fall, so they can fall in love with their birthplace.

In Texas...

[This may be an ongoing post topic, as we adjust to our new/old home state.]

In Texas...

• we bathe the kids with the hose in the backyard.  We like to think of it as a water conservation effort - an important thing in Texas.  It definitely uses less water than a bath or a shower.  And it waters the grass at the same time.  These are actually just the side benefits though.  Mostly, we do it because we're too lazy to undertake real baths for 4 kids.  Not always.  Just some nights.  I'm pretty sure this isn't a "Texas thing," as in a practice of the general population. It's just us as far as I know.
• people like to pretend they're in an independent country.  There's a beer here that bills itself as the "National Beer of Texas."  I am pretty sure that 75% of Texans never even recognize that as humorous. They are the same ones who don't know we lost the battle at the Alamo. When I moved to New Jersey and West Virginia I realized that states have varied self-esteems.  New Jersey's is fairly low, but in a belligerent way.  New Jersey is the skinny high-school boy dressed entirely in black, with clunky boots, and a sneer on his face.  He doesn't care what you think of him, because he already knows it's nothing good.  West Virginia has one of the lowest self-esteems of any of the 50 states.  You can't even make jokes about West Virginia without feeling like you're kicking a puppy.  West Virginia's the overweight girl hiding behind her hair, off to the left in Chemistry class, praying no one can see her - but she sparkles when she's at home with her family.  In contrast, New Mexico (another state I claim as home) has a pretty high self esteem.  Sure, there are a lot of poverty and immigration issues, and many people don't even know it's a state.  But she's gorgeous and doesn't really give a damn what you think of her.  Her hair's long and sleek and she's just as likely to smoke pot on a Saturday night as she is to play the violin in her grandfather's mariachi band.  And she'll graduate in the top of her class without even trying and go on to art school in New York City.  And then there's Texas.  Texas doesn't even know it's merely a state.  One of 50.  He's the quarterback, and homecoming king, and everyone likes him... at least that's what he thinks.  He laughs loud and talks big and doesn't ever realize half the crowd finds him annoying.  And in his defense, they choose to keep hanging around him.  One of my friends from West Virginia asked me the other day, "Why do people from Texas always tell you they're from Texas?"  It's a state self-esteem thing.
• my kids are picking up some Spanish.  They no longer say (too loudly), "Why are they speaking Spanish?" every time someone near us is speaking Spanish.  They're getting used to the bilingual nature of Texas.  Now, they say the Pledge of Allegiance each morning at school, first in English and then in Spanish.  (I did this in elementary school, too, and I've always thought it was a little ironic.) And they're picking up a few phrases here and there.  For example, I think Asher must have heard the word cucaracha because he walked past a dead roach outside the other day and said, "Watch out for the big enchilada!"
• we're trying on old friends, and old selves in the process.  After being mostly out-of-touch with college friends for the last 11 years, it's different to be living where old roommates can stop by with their families on the way to the beach.  So we've already gotten to reconnect with some friends from college, and are likely to encounter more in the coming months.  It's this odd (though enjoyable) process of figuring out what type of friendship potential you have now, post-grad school/career choice/marriage/kids.  It's also like being re-introduced to your old self - the person you used to be when you last hung out with that person.  The remembering's a lot of fun, and the making-friends-again is too.   It'll be interesting to figure out what fits.

Yahoo

In my second sermon to our new congregation, I had the occasion to introduce Josiah in this way…

“I want to begin today with one word: YAHOO!  It’s a word I’m learning from my son.  Josiah is our third child, and he’s 2 years old.  And Josiah is the kind of kid who, on the day he was born took a good long look at the world and thought to himself, “Now this is gonna be a lot of fun!”  Josiah is all about the fun.  He almost never stops smiling.  He greets you in the morning with a smile and keeps it going all day.  Playing with his siblings, he’s smiling.  Running around the yard, he’s smiling.  Tormenting his baby brother, he’s smiling.  You put him in time out… he’ll still be smiling.  And his irrepressible nature, as you can imagine, makes him a lot of fun to be around.  He loves to laugh, and to make other people laugh.  He hates to sleep because he might miss a good time.  And he runs and runs to keep up with his big brother and sister.  If it looks like fun, Josiah’s going to try it.  Twice.  I know, if I hear him say, “Watch, mama!” he’s about to jump off of something.  I have prayed more prayers than you can imagine over his two front teeth. 

He’s working on potty-training these days and in true Josiah form, about the third time he sat on a toilet he held his hands out to the side and said, “Look!  No hands!”  So it should come as no surprise that his newest word is “Yahoo!”  “Yahoo!” he says as he leaps off the couch.  “Yahoo!” when he hears we’re going swimming.  “Yahoo!” he yells when he gets his flip flops on the right feet.  I’ll even hear him say it too himself for no apparent reason, “Yahoo!”  For Josiah, there’s a lot to celebrate in life.”

[For the record, I did work my way around to making a point with all this.  I didn’t just talk about my kid for 20 minutes.  But they pay me big bucks to preach so I can’t just go around giving away sermons for free J]

          Josiah helpfully validated my description of him after worship when, with a number of witnesses from our new congregation, he jumped off one of the pews with a smiling “Yahoo!”

          He really is that fun.  And funny too, especially as he has started talking more and more (and we can understand him now!).  Realizing his “yahoo!” side may need to be curbed before he’s 16, I’m sure enjoying him now.

10 minutes after this photo was taken, Josiah rode his brake-less tricycle down the neighbors steep driveway and into their closed garage door.  

He didn't say "Yahoo!"  And he wasn't real happy about the outcome (a badly bruised cheek that faded into a black eye the next day).  But at least he had his helmet on!

Arriving Home

The last step of a move (when you hire professionals), is to take an inventory – to make sure everything is present and accounted for.  So I’m taking stock tonight:

1. 4 Children present and accounted for.  Moving isn’t easy, not even for the little ones who are virtually useless in the help department.  They had to say goodbye to a lot of good friends – to most of the people they’d known their whole lives.  And even if they can’t fully comprehend the magnitude of the goodbye, it couldn’t have been easy.  At various times, each of them has shown the stress of that.  They’ve been unusually clingy, or crabby, or bewilderingly disobedient.  I have too, though.  Overall, though, they’ve been just as resilient as I’ve come to expect.  And now that they’re in their own, albeit new, space, I feel like they’re settling in and settling down some.
2. There are good people here in San Marcos, too.  They’ve welcomed us warmly and eagerly.  They seem excited we’re here and happy to meet our children.  We might just find some friends here.  Moving as a pastor is the BEST.  I don’t think there’s any other profession where you move and have, immediately, a whole community of people waiting to welcome you.
3. I love my new house.  I loved our old house, with its rich woodwork and three floors and big front porch.  Not to mention that it was our first house and we poured a lot of work into it.  I’d only seen this one once, fairly briefly, so I didn’t actually remember it really well.  (I kept checking the online photos to jog my memory like some kind of weird brick-and-mortar stalker.)  But as Joshua said when we walked in as the owners, “It’s better than I remembered.”  And it is.  I’ve come to think of it as our “treehouse” because the main living area has so many windows and sits at treetop height.  It feels open and spacious and right for our family.  I can’t wait to share the space with friends, both new and old (insert casual, trying-not-to-sound-desperate invitation here).
4. We have a great dog.  Bishop doesn’t get a lot of press here on the blog (or anywhere else for that matter), but he has handled the move like a pro.  He was so good on the 4 day car trip.  Seriously as unobtrusive and agreeable as a dog could be.  And he’s settling into his new home with no sign of the neurosis I was certain he’d develop.  I’m going to buy him a furminator.  This is a $50 dog brush that, by all accounts and Amazon reviews, works miracles.  He deserves to have his undercut thinned.  It’s hot here.  (I say that from experience, but not recent experience – we drove into Texas with ay 25 degree cooling trend and plenty of rain.  All that is due to end tomorrow.)
5. I’m ridiculously excited about the grocery situation.   It’s not just the tortillas.  (But it could be just the tortillas.  I bought some fresh today and we made quesadillas out of them for lunch.  I didn’t even have to think twice about whether or not I should hoard them instead!)  Huntington’s strong suit was not grocery stores.  But I now live in the land of H.E.B., which stands for Harry E. Butts, the founder, but the store now pretends it stands for “Here everything’s better.”  And it is.  I can’t describe or explain it to you, but if you come to visit us in our treehouse, I’ll take you there.

6.      There is still a lot of work to be done and details to take care.  Boxes must still be emptied, even the ones in the attic (feel free to ask me about those, just to hold me accountable).  I thought I’d found homes for all the kids toys but then I discovered 4 more big boxes.  We will be having 8 hours of mandatory playtime every single day so that I can be sure they really do play with all those things.  [Even the potato heads.  Why do they never play with those?  I can’t get rid of them – kids are supposed to have potato heads to play with.  Plus, they’re so funny on Toy Story.]  Besides the boxes, there’s the restocking of just about everything.  As things got crazy near the end in Huntington, I may or may not have purged many items.  And there’s all the set-up and “decorating” that I feel the urge but do not particularly have the skill to do, at least not very efficiently.  I’m thinking this will involve many trips to Ikea and Target.  And maybe I will finally foray into the realm of Pinterest as a procrastination method.  And, last but not least, we need internet service, a washer and dryer, a microwave, and new cell phones and service.  We’ve also got to find doctors, a dentist, a vet, the elementary school, and super fun things for the kids to do in the 6 weeks before school starts.

I think we’ve got this.

Leaving Home

Josiah ALWAYS smiles... except for pictures

...unless you tell him to make a sad face.

One week ago, we packed up the bags and boxes that were left after the moving trucks had pulled away, loaded up our two cars with eight people and drove away from Huntington, West Virginia, the place we had called home for 8 years.  And they were eight really good years.  Huntington was the place we began our ministry “for real,” the place we bought our first house, the place we had our 4 children, and the place where we formed deep and formative friendships while doing all those other things.  Although I’d had times of feeling pretty heart-broken over what we were leaving behind, it was interesting to me that I didn’t really feel sad that afternoon.  Maybe I was just too exhausted.  Mostly, though, I think I felt… ready.  Ready for the next adventure God has in store, because I’m sure he’s been preparing us for something.  And I know I felt grateful.  Really grateful for the gift of being, of living, among people who have been both encrouaging and challenging.  I’m grateful for the ways we grew in Huntington (and not just in number J). 

• ·         We learned the value of investing in our local community, in committing to the welfare of the city we’re in.
• ·         We experienced the gift of open and generous hospitality – the kind where people welcome you into their lives and are willing to step into yours.
• ·         We became pastors and hope to never take that gift for granted.
• ·         We began the hard and humbling work of striving to live what we preach.

I have the feeling that every place we live from here on out will be compared to Huntington, and either nostalgically or in reality, come up wanting.  These have been good and golden years.

I Hate Poop!

     When Amy and I got married we made a deal.  I agreed to do any household chore that she needed me to, as long as I didn't have to clean the toilets.  We have now been married for a little under 11 years, and I have yet to scrub the inside of a toilet.  I even hate touching the instruments that would achieve such a feat.  As far as I am concerned, there is nothing more gross than a toilet brush. "So here is what we're gonna do, we're gonna use this to scrub human excrement off of all of the nooks and crannies of the inside of the bowl and then we're gonna put it over here in the corner dripping wet with bacteria- ridden bristles and leave it until we need to do this again next week."  Great idea!  But, even though I have had success at avoiding cleaning the toilets, I am still the person that has to de-clog the toilet when the kids fill it with enough toilet paper to wipe an elephant herd.  Last time Amy said that she "didn't know how to use the plunger."  It's just like churning butter!
     Unfortunately, almost everything in my life revolves around poop right now.  For months now, my two oldest boys find the word poop to be the funniest thing they have ever heard.  I will admit that the way that Josiah says poop with an emphatic spit filled "p" at the end even gives Amy the giggles.  But, at the dinner table, we will be having a perfectly normal conversation about our day when Asher will suddenly move the conversation in an entirely different direction.  It usually looks sounds something like this . . . 

Me: "Serena, did you finish your homework."
Serena: "Ugh, I hate homework"
Asher: "Domework?"
Me: "Yeah, sorry about that."
Serena: "Why do I have to do homework.?"
Asher: "Pomework?"
Me: "Because that is what your teacher has asked you to do."
Asher: "Poopwork?"
Mom: "Asher not at the table!"
Josiah: "oooPPPPP!"
Let the giggles begin! 

     Hardly a day goes by when I am not nearly knocked down upon entering the bathroom by the smell of fecal matter hanging in the air.  My eldest two have the propensity to forget to flush after their BMs.  Nothing is more exciting than the sight of a very full toilet bowl.  How do they possibly fit all that inside their bodies anyway?  I am reminded of a late night infomercial, for a colon cleanser I once saw.  It turns out if you Google colon cleanser infomercial, as I just did, you will find Dual Action Cleanse. Here is the most memorable quote:

"I'll never forget the first time I saw my four-year-old daughter's bowel movement in the toilet. It literally scared me. She wasn't more than 45 pounds, but her bowel movement was about as thick as my wrist and about as long as her arm. And I thought, 'Oh my God.' I got scared. I was going to call my wife. I thought, 'How could something that big come of something—a little child—that small. And I thought, I'm six feet tall and I weigh 190 pounds and by proportion to my size compared to hers my bowel movements were very inadequate to say the least."

    While I will admit that I am surprised at the size of my children's poop, I have never quite considered it as much as this man!  And by the way - I do not endorse the product, though the infomercial is fairly convincing.
     For the younger two, poop is of course a hands on experience, and even more so now that we have made the move to cloth diapers.  We bought a sprayer attachment that connects to our toilet water line when we got our diapers.  This was supposed to prevent us from having to actually get our hands dirty.  Unfortunately, if the sprayer is turned up too high, you get water, and poop, right in the face.  You can just trust me on this one.  And while this may be easier than the swirl method my mother used, it does not prevent me from having to squeeze the water out of the diaper before putting it in its receptacle. 
     Most recently, we have been in the midst of a three day poop party.  Usually we deal with two dirty diapers a day, one for each boy, that number has increased to 6-8.  This morning, I had the privilege of being the stay at home parent.  By noon today I had cleaned 5 diapers.  But the best part was that we were running out of wipes and our boys were smelling like poop even when their diapers were clean, so I stuck them in the tub.  They love to play, and I was folding laundry so I left the room. From my bedroom, I hear Josiah's voice raised saying "Ah, Ah, Ah."  As I enter the room I hear him say, "ooPPPP!" I look down to see brown particles floating all around his younger brother.  I rip the boys out of the tub, standing them on the bathmat and then drain the tub, pull the toys, and wash the poop down the drain with the shower.  I put them back in the tub, clean the toys and leave them for a few more minutes while I finished up with the clothes.  But not five minutes later, I heard "oooPPPPPPPP!" I come back in to see twice the mess I just cleaned up and this time there are poop particles stuck to Micah's chest.  Cleaning process take two.  And lest you go away thinking that Micah was the culprit, I ask, "Josiah, did you poop?" "DJeah." 
     Later this evening, I was forced to plunk a poopy bottom in the tub once again because we are now officially out of wipes.  Did I mention, I hate poop?  

Going off the D.P. end

Today marks a leap off of the ship for me.  Today I say goodbye to one thing that has added nothing but joy and content and flavor to my life.  23 flavors to be exact.  Dr. Pepper, our love affair had to come to an end sometime.   You have been nothing but good to me, you have always been there for the quick pick me up.  We have shared good times together, you have always been my fountain drink of choice. My mouth tingles everytime I watch your sweet nectar envelop the ice.  It seems that our relationship was meant to be, 10-2-4 was a sign that we had finally found the right home. Your sweet aroma and the way that you tickle my nose when I drink without a straw will forever bring happiness to my heart, but alas, it's not me, it's you!

Two years ago, I took a hiatus from the glorious nectar only to find out that in two weeks, with no other dietary or exercise changes, I lost 8 pounds.  I have since gained back every one of those pounds (and the other 6 I lost that month as well, a special shout out to my good friend Rus for the grill that I now own from that weight loss adventure!) I daily carry with me an 8 pound burden of high fructose corn syrup.  And while this means that I am warmer in the winter months it certainly isn't helping me get up in the morning.  During that month of fasting, I slept less and felt more rested.  I can only figure that the absence of sugar and caffeine meant that my body was actually able to get a full night's sleep.
Yet this sweet juice that comes flowing from heaven, came calling my name again.  I slowly worked my way back in only to find that two years later, I am actually avoiding drinking water in favor of waiting until I can get a DP fix, sometimes that means late afternoon.  Or to solve that dilemma,after dropping my daughter off at school at 8am, I would simply take a small detour to have a DP before heading to work, drinking one at McD's and refilling my large Styrofoam cup for the road.  At some point, on one of these jaunts, I figured out that I had a problem.
Now, I will admit that as far as addictions go, this one is fairly benign.  I am not really addicted to the caffeine - last time, when I gave it up, I do not remember having withdrawals or needing to find another source of the drug.  Caffeine has little or no effect on my system. I remember taking a No-Doze in college only to fall asleep sitting at my desk.  The problem is that I crave the flavor!  When I want a drink, I want it, no need it, to taste like Dr. P.  My mouth waters for those 23 flavors of goodness and those little bubbles trickling down my throat.  No one should want something this bad.
And then this came out, and I knew something was going to have to give.  http://www.webmd.com/cancer/pancreatic-cancer/news/20100208/pancreatic-cancer-linked-sodas While this of course does not directly link a cause and effect, it was just another reason in the long line of reasons to alleviate the problem by eliminating the risk.  Therefore, as of midnight on January 7, 2013, I am Dr. Pepper free!  Of course there is no Dr. Pepper patch, is there? I have no recourse, no remedy but to quit cold turkey.  Goodbye D.P., you were my first true love, I will remember you fondly, and you will always be in my pancreas.  I am not saying I will not backslide and come running back to your 23 flavor embrace, only that I will strive to root you out, one glass of water at a time!