this is not my year

I think I've heard it said that whatever you're doing at midnight on 12/31 is something you can expect to do a lot of in the coming year.  At midnight 42 minutes ago, I was lying next to my son while he went to sleep much too late and praying that God would help me be better.  This shouldn't make anyone think that I'm a wonderfully pious person because the truth of it all is that I'm not... and that sad little fact occurred to me just then and so I said some prayers about it.  It hit me all of the sudden how selfish I've been being about a lot of things but especially (unfortunately) toward God.  Losing faith in one's church family is no reason to give up and stop trying.

There.

I said it.

And that's all I'm going to say about it.

I also want to go on a little about new year's resolutions and how I think they're pretty much a crock and I don't really do them, but I do have some hopes and thoughts about 2009 that I wanted to put down somewhere.

As I was lying in bed with my son (before I settled into any kind of serious thought patterns), I was noticing the general clutter of my bedroom and thinking about how nice it felt just a few nights ago to lie down in a very clean house.  It really brought me a lot of joy and satisfaction just knowing everything was in its place (for the most part) and that I had a clean house to wake up to.  Maybe that's a chick thing... I don't really know.  I'll admit that some days, I fart around and don't get the laundry done and sometimes the toilet could stand to be cleaned and it doesn't happen because I just don't feel like it.  For the most part, though, when things don't get done it's because I'm doing way more important stuff like sitting on the couch with my kiddo watching Blue's Clues or building something really tall out of blocks so he can knock it over or, ya know, playing peekaboo through the crack in the laundry room door.

My point here is that tomorrow my baby is going to be another day older and another day closer to not being a baby anymore.  And guess what... the laundry pile may be another day older too (and a little taller) and the toilet may need to be cleaned even worse, but those things are still gonna be there needing to be done.  And the day after my baby isn't a baby anymore... they'll still be there needing to be done.

And furthermore... in May I'm getting another little bundle to add into the mix, so I'm sure it will bring with it tons more way important stuff to do.

So, maybe someday I'll be the person who doesn't have several purses hanging on her bedroom doorknob and a bottle of nail polish sitting on top of a CD on top of the television.  Maybe someday I will be so on top of getting my laundry done and so there on getting my toilet shiny that people are gonna be like WHOA.  Maybe someday I'll hang up clothes when I take them off and wash dishes as soon as the meal is over and put things where they go instead of on the kitchen table or counters.  But I don't think this is my year for that.

Maybe someday I won't have a junk drawer that you have to talk into closing and maybe someday all of my closets and the garage will be in order, too.  I don't think this is my year for that either.

Maybe someday I won't lead people to believe that I have only ONE junk drawer...

I think what I'm getting at in a rather long-winded fashion (if you can only imagine that) is that this is not my year to strive for perfection of any sort.  I've let myself get way too caught up in worrying about attempting to keep the house perfect, making the perfect grocery list with all the coordinating coupons, and worst of all trying to keep up some grander illusion of myself than what I really am to fit into what other people think I should be.

Well... this is not my year for all that... and I'm not going to do it anymore.

And in 2009 I hope to...

...achieve the best version of myself and to be satisfied with whatever that is.

...be a good wife and mama based on my standards and what's pleasing to God.

...let God make me better and to seek that on a daily basis.

...be able to stop focusing on negative people and things.

...think/care less about what people think of me and my family.

...play with kiddo #1 a whole lot and produce a healthy and whole kiddo #2 (and then play with that one a lot as well!).

...read a lot.

...write when the mood strikes.

...and maybe learn to sew a little better.

With all that being said... happy 2009! And goodnight to all.

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postdiluvian post

I don't know if I spelled that long word in the title correctly, but I know what it means so I get points for it anyway.

I have to expound upon the day's adventure... because there always is one, you know...

My plans for today involved a lot of laundry, as much crocheting as possible (to finish up Christmas gifts), and wrapping presents in any spare time I had.  So after breakfast I got right on top of the laundry and did, lemme think about this... a load of colors and had a load of socks going in the washer.  The socks were washing away and I had already finished folding and putting away some stuff that had been sitting the basket waiting on me and getting wrinkly, so I wasn't in the back of the house folding anymore (unfortunately).  At some point, thought, I came back to the bedroom to do something (no clue what), and thought I could hear water running in my bathroom.  The bathroom door was shut which muffled the noise, so I figured I was just hearing water in the pipes from the washer draining.

I got a little closer to the door... and the water noise got louder.

I opened the bathroom door and there seriously had to be a waterfall happening... it was loud.

The faucet wasn't on, so it had to be something going on with the toilet or the shower.  So, I started into the bathroom to check it out...

... only to find myself WADING in water up to the bottoms of my pant legs.  I'm pleased to say that I refrained from cursing because (you're just going to have to take my word for it) I do not make a habit of using fowl language, but for whatever reason when I'm taken by surprise or am startled or am about to be rear-ended by a very large and quickly approaching red truck, it's the first thing out of my mouth.  I think I said "schneikies" (thank you, Tommy Boy).  Whatever the case may be, it wasn't anything worse than that, and I really felt like that was worth mentioning.  Maybe my subconscious is becoming better behaved...

But I digress...

So yeah, there was water pouring over the side of my shower stall.  Don't panic too much... it's just a step-in shower, not a full-on bathtub.  That really would have been terrifying.  Not that it wasn't... because it was.

The first thing I noticed was that I had set my foot down right next to my little electric shaver deal which was, of course, plugged in.  Thank the good Lord above that He was looking out for me and I didn't get electrocuted.  The next thing I did was either call David or turn the breaker off for the back part of the house... I don't remember what I did first.

Regardless... at some point, I called David and said something like, "There's water like pouring out of my shower, what do I do?" and his response was, of course, "Call your dad," which is what everybody says when practically anything goes wrong.  Computer crashing? Call your dad.  Transmission fell out on Plano road? Call your dad.  Having a mental breakdown because you're newly married and can't figure out how to live with another person in your space? Call your dad.  Bathroom flooding? You get the picture...

Another aside here... my mom will tell you that she is not electronics savvy and it's pretty darn often that their small collection of remote controls gets the best of her.  Every grandchild that knows how to speak so far knows the solution when Mam-ma's about to lose it because she can't get the TV and the DVD player to jive: "Call Poppy."

So I called my dad and basically all I had to say was, "There's water coming from the drain in my..." when he delivered the joyous diagnosis that the septic tank was backed up and I needed to call somebody to come pump it out.

Now there's a fantastic occupation.  How does one settle on septic tank work? It's like proctology or driving the dead wagon or working at Wal-Mart.  Four guys came and dug a hole in my back yard.  One of them literally sat on the side of hole and stared down into it... another one stirred.  Yes, I know... lurvely.

What is the dead wagon, you may ask? It's a large truck in which a man drives from farm to farm collecting any dead livestock.  I assume they do this year round, but it's really the most obvious in the summer.  And you, ya know, hold your breath when you see you're gonna meet him on the road... and, ya know, dead carcasses swell and split open and stuff like that.

I think I'd still rather do that than deal with other people's crap for a living.

Back to the topic at hand... obviously when I turned the washer off, the water eventually stopped running out of my shower.  It was such a mess though... oh my gosh, was it a mess.  And after the dudes came and took care of stuff (p.s, there was a root growing into our septic line, by the way), everything drained properly and did fine.  So, everything was happy in Carter land again.

I still had to clean BOTH bathrooms, though... since water backed up into the tub, too.  Errr... not pleasant, but oh well.

We discovered through all this though that Scotty is capable of sleeping in the daybed in his room.  I would explain how this relates, but it's another long tangent and I'm sure anyone who's reading this is utterly exhausted and probably a little (or a lot) confused by now.

There's my interesting story for the day.

Oh and...

Amount of laundry done = 2 loads 

Number of presents wrapped = 3

Amount of crocheting accomplished = zip, zero, zilch-a-roonie

Best laid plans...

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Political attitude ponderments...

I have my own pet soapbox issues and politics isn't one of them, but there are a few things on my mind that I wanted to expand upon. And while I realize that probably no one but no one reads my blog, I decided to go for it anyway. I considered posting a note on Facebook, but I didn't want to leave the impression that I was ranting in the faces of some friends out there with whom I don't exactly see eye to eye, so here - in the nice safe general forum of my blog - is the place I chose to verbalize.

I don't pretend to understand all the issues surrounding the recent election. I wouldn't dare say that I'm smart when it comes to political stuff, but I am happy to say that I feel more informed in these areas than I have ever in my life. Up to recently, I was unfortunately fairly apathetic when it came to politics because it just all seemed so big and vague and like none of it really affected me in the long run.

I guess this is a pretty common outlook for a lot of young people. Sure there are a lot of college kids who are all fired up and rockin' the vote and all that stuff, but there seems to be an alarmingly large number of kids out there who want to take the "I don't care" stance. Similarly (and this isn't just among young people, unfortunately), there seem to be a lot of people who want to say, "Well, none of this stuff is really that important because God's in control and we just need to trust Him... so I'm just not gonna worry about it anymore."

Don't get me wrong... I agree 110% that God IS in control and that doing His will and serving Him are the most important things in life, but that doesn't excuse us from caring about other things that we surely must face in our day-to-day lives. God isn't and never has been a puppet master and He didn't put us here to say, "Oh well, God will handle it." He expects us to know and to trust that He will care for His own and He doesn't want us to be afraid, but it is utterly foolish to just go along la-dee-dah blindly through the world we were sent to tell about Jesus uninformed and ignorant. If these things couldn't directly affect how we do serve God, then maybe we wouldn't have to care so much.

God gave us (and continues to give us, thankfully) the rights and freedoms we enjoy not to take for granted but to USE. We have freedom of speech to share with others the things that are right - whether it be things of a purely spiritual nature or things having to do with the right and wrong ways to live in this world and, yes, even conduct business and deal with governmental issues.

The fact that so many young people seem to have such a flip attitude when it comes to how they handle their rights is nothing but an ugly show of the selfishness that has infiltrated every part of our lives, and most frighteningly, our churches. How easy it is to think that I'll get up tomorrow and still be blessed with the same freedoms I have today and still be under the protection of our great God and this wonderful country.

I used to be able to go along happily in the "I don't care" group... and it certainly would have been easier to remain there. But then I got married, I started being directly affected by things like taxes and health insurance, and then (and perhaps the thing that opened my eyes the most) I had a child of my own. And I found that I couldn't not care anymore.

I know it's hard for some people to consider the real world if they haven't truly entered it yet, and maybe I should slack off and let them enjoy their ignorance for a while, but I really think they should consider some things about the future before they so firmly state that they don't care:

How would it be to have the government in your face every day telling you what you can and cannot do? Coming into YOUR home and dictating every facet of your life - from how many children you can have to whether or not you can ask God to bless your food before you eat it.

How would you like it if the few honest reports you can get in the media were taken away and you knew you were being fed absolutely nothing but lies?

How would it be to have to go to bed every night wondering if your family was going to be torn apart? How about having to wonder whether you were going to be able to step out your front door without getting blown away. What about having to watch your child be massacred because of something YOU believe and refuse to say otherwise.

I'm not saying that any of this stuff is going to happen and I don't want anybody to get the impression that I'm one of these crazies who think that Obama is a terrorist or anything along those lines. I'm not saying that because of the outcome of the election that these things are more likely. None of us know what the future holds and that fact would hold true no matter who was sitting in the White House.

None of this is to say that we should become so wrapped up in politics that we lose sight of God. I believe that we should instead be looking at these things and other issues that affect our temporal lives here BECAUSE of God and through the precepts we learn in His Word. The Bible does say that we are to be IN the world but not OF the world. We have to live here and we have to know HOW to live here, so we have to care to some extent.

So, all I'm saying is that there are a lot of good reasons to care. There are a lot of good reasons to not take our freedoms for granted. And while God IS in control and He so mercifully holds the end of all things in His hands, that doesn't excuse us from using the brains He gave us and it certainly doesn't give us permission to be so reckless as to say "I don't care" about that things that certainly do affect us (as well as future generations) so explicitly.

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School days

My pre-school days and school days kind of all run together since I don't really have a good separating point. I remember the summer before I was going to start Kindergarten because I had to get shots, for one thing, but I also remember going with my mom to the school I was going to attend, Richpond, to pick up papers of some sort I suppose. I don't remember much about that trip except that the school seemed enormous (it's not... I've been back since then). Before school started, though, and I'm not really sure when or why it all came about, my parents thought better of sending me to public school. I vaguely remember them discussing the possibility of homeschooling, but hey, I was 5 years old... I wasn't really concerned. The shots were over, I got to go shopping afterward, life was grand.

Anyway, my folks kept me out of public school and homeschooled me themselves that year... and for the next 4-and-a-half-ish years. That's why I don't really have a good separating point on before school and after school, since there weren't any huge changes in my life. The first year my folks pretty much built their own curriculum out of stuff they found at the Parent Teacher Store. After Kindergarten, they began using the A Beka Book curriculum, which worked out quite well for me.

My memories of the whole homeschool situation involve no hard-and-fast start or stop time, popcorn during classes, and breaks whenever the phone rang or my granddad stopped in for a visit. Other memories involve knowing without a doubt that school was going to happen every day, no questions asked (except for planned breaks and holidays), that what was supposed to be covered in a day would be covered in a day without fail, and that my mother had very high standards and goals that she expected me to meet... period. If the curriculum said we were supposed to find the Virgin Islands on a particular map, we would find them on that map... no other map would suffice. If the curriculum said we should go over every single multiplication table 14 times a day, we did (ok, it was never really 14...). I only remember one occasion when I was sick and was not permitted a "sick day" until I literally nodded off with my head on the table (Benadryl will do that to ya). I don't want to make my mom out to be cruel or anything along those lines, but she was definitely a driving force in my academic successes and every success I've had since those homeschool days is due in part to her great influence (and stubbornness... hehe).

In 1996, Old Union School opened. I was going to be starting 5th grade and was (supposedly) old enough to make my own decision, so my parents left it completely up to me as to whether I wanted to go there or keep homeschooling. My folks (my dad especially) were avid supporters of the school and my dad was one of the few who helped it get started, even serving as the school board's chairman for a few years. There were 5 students starting out, 3 girls near my age (2 of whom I knew from church, 1 of whom I had at least heard of from a sister church), and a boy and a girl who were younger (who I also knew from church). The 2 teachers were women who had been my Sunday School and/or VBS teachers and I had known both of them since I was born. I decided to continue homeschooling. I don't really remember much about my decision... I do remember that my mom had some questions and some uneasy feelings about me switching to OUS, although I don't recall anything specific now.

So, we started another year of homeschooling and went until October, when I decided that I wanted to go to OUS after all. My first day there was Halloween, October 31, 1996. I was 11 and I made the 6th student. As it turns out, my not-so-sure-about-this start would turn into the next 7 years of my life... and I graduated from Old Union in 2004, in a class of 2... I was the valedictorian, in case you were wondering.

I had a lot of good days at OUS, but unfortunately in some ways the bad outweighed the good, and my overall memory of my time spent there has a dark cloud over it. At this time, the school is a completely different place than it was when I was there, but I'm afraid some of the things which were such a frustration to me and my family while I was there still persist. I support the school's mission and I think the one-to-one teaching that they're able to have there is great. David and I support and will continue to support the school, but I doubt our children will ever be students there. This isn't written in stone and I know that it very well could end up happening, but as of right now, I can't see ever feeling totally comfortable with sending them there. Our children will most likely be homeschooled.

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More story...

I had happy childhood years and was always a fairly laid-back, easygoing child (as far as I can remember, at least). I was pretty much a loner, usually playing alone, and a lot like an only child since my only sister, Stacy, is nearly 15 years older than me.

I don't want it to sound like we had our own little family life separate from my sister and she wasn't included or anything along those lines. I adored her and wanted to be in her shadow (or drawing on her carpet with a highlighter) as much as possible. And I was, actually. I vaguely remember her living at home, but I don't ever remember her really acting like she minded me being around. I remember her getting ready for dates or to go out with friends and how she looked when she came out of her room all dressed and made up and hair fixed. I remember always noticing her clothes and particularly the way her perfume smelled. I still remember it actually and I think it was Calvin Klein... Eternity, maybe? That doesn't sound right, but it was one of those.

I think she graduated from high school in '88, so that means she started at WKU when I was nearly 4 years old. She stayed there only a short time, though, before transferring to EKU to be closer to her then boyfriend (now husband), Stephen, who was at UK. I remember vividly leaving her in a bleak-looking dorm room and driving 3 hours back to Bowling Green... and I was sad. Turns out, so was she, and she ended up transferring to UK shortly thereafter... only to transfer back to WKU after Stephen graduated from UK and moved back to Bowling Green. They got married at some point during all that.

Another early memory for me is the birth of my oldest cousin, Caleb (a cousin older than him has come along since then, but she doesn't enter the story until later). Up to that point, I had been the baby of the family and I do have some memories of always being the only one at my grandparents' house. I was thrilled at the prospect of a cousin and I remember going to see him at the hospital. I remember holding his squirmy screaming self and loving him to pieces. I still do.

The only other definitely-pre-school memory I have is going every afternoon with my mom on her newspaper route. I was obviously very clingy to my mother and actually chose to go with her on that route rather than to stay home with my sister. Granted, I did end up staying home on some days and I stayed with my great-grandmother on other days, but most of the time, I went on that awful route. Most days I ended up asleep in the backseat. I remember one day, I had the bright idea that I was going to wear panty hose under a pair of shorts I had been playing in all day. And for some reason I decided that I could just dispense with the underwear... it seemed kinda pointless after all. So, at some point during the route, my hosiery got uncomfortable and I removed it. I figured I'd be more comfortable and able to rest easier, but all it did for me in the long run was make me paranoid. Every time I'd doze off, one of mom's customers would come up to the car window for something and I was just convinced that some old codger would be able to see my tush.

This seems enough for now... more later!

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