HAPPY THANKSGIVING

This is the prayer we said communally at our congregation's Thanksgiving service on Tuesday evening. It spoke to my heart and I wanted to share it with you all.

O come, let us workshop and bow down, let us kneel before God our Maker.
We come in humility, opening ourselves to God's wisdom and strength.
We are the people of God's pasture and the sheep of God's hand.
We come with expectation, that in God's presence we may know ourselves and one another, and be truly at home in the world.
So this evening we offer thanksgiving for all the gifts that have been showered upon us.
We offer thanks not only for the bounty and abundance we have, but also for troubles that shape and sharpen our patience, for doubts that let faith moments shine, and for confusion that keeps our lives from being rigid.
We offer thanks for sufferings that help us share another's grief, for fears that mark real terror in the world, and for pains that open our eyes to joy.
For sorrows that join our hands to hope and for loneliness that leads us to the heart of God.
For all those gifts by which we have become more human, we give thanks.
Now may our thanks reach out and embrace the daily small ingratitudes of our lives.
Oh, come, let us worship and bow down.
Let us kneel before God and Maker.

AMEN! AMEN! AMEN!

We have a winner!

First place in the category of TALLEST cake goes go H-Bomb and Special K for their cake creation "The Heart of the Woods"!

Touch up work before judging!


You can see how much the beat out the others for TALLEST!




CONGRATS BOY!!!!

Why I Love My Family

As you may know, H-Bomb is a cub scout. Well, he's a Webelo now actually. He loves scouting and he loves doing projects with his awesome crafty Daddy.

Tomorrow is the annual "Dad and Lad Cake Bake" contest for the scout pack. H-Bomb and Special K have done well in the past, though they have not won the overall prize yet. I know they want it bad!

This year's theme was announced: "Into the woods." They have both been thinking about it for a couple of days.

Special K came up with an idea for the cake today (during church mind you, but I'm not scolding) and he pitched it to the boy after we got home. His idea is to make what looks like a hollow log--using all edible materials of course--and to put inside the log, visible through a hole, a pretty little cupcake. It's witty, right? Into the woods!

So he sketched it showed the idea to H-Bomb. The boy thought it was exciting but he kept suggesting additions that sounded weird to his dad. "So this is the tree her mom is in and we maybe could see her inside this log, right? Or is this like the tall thing Repunzel is in"?

What?? Dad had a weird look on his face trying to process this.

Then the boy said, "Oh! Wait! I thought you meant the musical, Into the Woods!"

This is why I love my family! Thank God!

God Bless America

"As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, we are not enemies but friends. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection."
President-Elect Barack Obama

TIME

Thank your Daylight Savings Time! I have NEVER in my LIFE been so happy to have an extra hour show up for the weekend. I tend to have overly busy days lately, and it is a source of much meditation. I would like to simplify my personal schedule as part of my overall movement towards LESS. I would like LESS time stress. I am not the only person out there who has super hectic days all too often--I know what some of your lives are like!!! But I have to say this was a doozey of a weekend for me and my family. I would like to share so that you can appreciate how much we loved that extra hour.....

Friday
6:00 pm Take Henry Trick-or-Treating
6:30 pm Take Henry in costume to visit Grammie
7:00 pm Go to football game at Midway High School
10:30 pm See Midway beat Waco High 26-14
11:00 pm Pick Gracie up from the Band hall and head home
12:00 am BED

Saturday
7:30 am Drop Henry off downtown in full Webelo Scout uniform for start of Homecoming Parade
8:30 am Drop Gracie off at High School to leave for out of town band competition
9:00 am Park on Baylor campus and find a spot to watch the parade (Penny the Boxer gets to come along, too!)
11:00 am Pick Henry up at end of the parade and go to West for a celebratory kolache!
12:oo pm Go home and do week's laundry plus all the housework I can fit in three hours.
3:00 pm Prepare car and candy for "Trunk or Treat"
4:00 pm Head to Church with Henry to set up the car for "Trunk or Treat"
4:30 pm Hand out candy to neighborhood kids and congregation families in our church
parking lot.
6:30 pm Clean up and pack up from "Trunk or Treat"
7:00 pm Stop at grocery store for dinner supplies.
7:45 pm Eat dinner--Kemper's delicious Tofu Piccata with home made pasta...mmm!
8:30 pm Put Henry to bed.
9:00 pm Grade papers.
10:00 pm Watch TV with Kemper
1:00 am Wait while Kemper goes to pick up Gracie from the High School (just back from that out of town competition!)
1:30 am BED

Sunday
9:00 am Out the door for church
9:15 am Meeting at church
10:00 am Ran away before worship (Sorry, Jesus! Love you!) to head off to see dear friend!!!
12:00 pm Arrived in Granbury, TX after two hour drive. Get to see Terence who is in from Northern Ireland! Hurray! (Thanks, Jesus!)
5:00 pm Leave Granbury and head back to Woodway
7:00 pm Arrive back home and eat dinner.
8:30 pm Put Henry to bed.
8:45 pm Write this note and put it on blog.


Whew! I am a TIRED mama now! And I still need to fold clothes and do some more grading. But I'd say this is nothing compared to how tired Gracie is! She went to school all day Friday, performed Friday night, traveled from 8:30 am -2:30 am Saturday/Sunday, and then came along with the family to Granbury today. Sleepy girl!!

36 Hour Vacation!

Our family specializes in the micro-mini-getaway road trip vacation. It comes from years of graduate school living! This weekend we did one of our signature trips with a 36 hour outing to Gruene, Texas and San Antonio. We had a blast, as we usually do when confined in near proximity for several non-stop hours. I am so lucky to live with these people!

Thought you'd enjoy some pictures.

Funniest Shakespeare Cartoon Ever. Bam!

Shed for YOU

At my church we put a lot of emphasis on holy communion, the receiving of God's gift of God's self in the form of bread and wine. This is good for me because I grew up Catholic and have a real attachment to the sacrament of communion. I'm a Lutheran style Christian now and this church doesn't teach the transubstantiation of my familiar Catholicism. Instead they believe that Christ's "Real Presence" is within the elements of communion.

As we share communion each Sunday, our pastor puts a small piece of broken bread into the open hands of each congregant and says, "The body of Christ, given for you." Another person then offers a sip of wine to each congregant and says, "The blood of Christ, shed for you."

A couple of weeks ago, I was that person carrying the wine and offering it to each of my sisters and brothers. I stopped at each person and said the words, "The blood of Christ, shed for you" over and over again. I said these words to my friends when they came to kneel for communion. I said them to kids and to old people. I said them to people in the church whose names I still don't know. I said it to people who have hurt my feelings. I said it to people who I've been snarky about.

As I said these words, they became a prayer. Not a benediction to my sisters and brothers but a reminder to me that God's grace is given luxuriously and freely to all who come forward with open hands. This is the reality of my faith. Saying these words made this reality so overwhelming present for me that Sunday.

Here indeed is the Real Presence of God in holy communion!

My Friday Night!

When did this happen?

Parenting

Here's the thing about being a parent: the kids are watching you and learning. Yes, we all know that children learn to speak and socialize and use a fork by observing the parental bigjobs (Terry Pratchett speak makes me happy!). But the little ones are learning a helluva lot more than that from us.

Sometimes this is beautifully enlightening, like when your child bends down to tenderly look a crying child in the face and ask if they are OK, and you recognize the gesture as your own.

All too often the realization that you are being learned from is horrifying, like when your child curses in public, or expresses insecurity about having big feet, or has an overwhelmed with schoolwork freak-out in which you hear your own voice coming out of her mouth.

Recently, my roomate H-bomb said something that made me recognize the trickledown of my personal desiire for LESS. He was doing a word problem for math homework, one designed to make the student use simple division. He read it out loud to me. "Adrienne has 150 CDs," the question began. Then, in sublime parenthetical judgement, he added "which is ridiculous" before continuing, "and she wants to store equal numbers of CDs in two containers. How many go in each?" He thought for a moment and then summized, "That would be 75 CDs each. Which is still too many."

:)

Less

This week we gave away a giant bag of clothing. It's all stuff that EK or I have kept around just in case we might have a reason to wear it....or to fit into it...or for it to come back in style. Meanwhile, the clothes we actually WEAR have to live much of their lives ignobly stuffed in a full closet or stacked on top of a full dresser.

The things I use and that work for me I will take good care. They will be shown kindness. The things I don't use are moochers living in my house past their welcome. They should leave.

My Recovery

Just so you know, I haven't accidentally taken someone else's prescription stimulants in nearly a week. Thank you. Thank you.

One day at time...

My Rehab

I slept! Yeah!

After being awake for 40 consecutive hours due to the accidental ingestion of high doses of anti-narcolepsy medicine, I finally felt sleepy and went to bed. I slept hard! Saturday I had low energy and today I could use a nap. Otherwise, I seem OK.

My SINCERE apologies to any and all of you who were subjected to my obnoxious, fast, and LOUD mania on Friday.

Today, I am once again drug free. Unless you count coffee--and then I'm in really big trouble.

I celebrated my recovery by attending church where I had the very good pleasure of hearing this mini-concert. The musicians are Rachel, Andrew, and Henry:

My Drug Problem

Hi! It's 2:30 am in Central Texas. Want to hear a funny story???

This summer I went on a three-week trip to Paris, London, and Stratford. Worried about the misery of jet lag, I packed some medicine to help me sleep and to help me stay awake. I brought along Tylenol PM tablets to help me go to sleep at bed time in my destination cities. And I brought some of EK's narcolepsy pills to help me stay awake if needed the first couple of days in Europe. EK takes one of these every morning and often another half later in the afternoon. They keep him from being on the verge of napping all day long. The med he takes is used by night-shift workers to help them stay awake when their bodies don't want to. And it's used by the military to help soldiers and pilots work for crazy hours before sleeping. It's non-habit forming and highly effective. I thought taking a half a pill might be a good way to handle sleepiness. I put about six of the stay awake pills in a used travel-sized bottle of generic ibuprofen and jetted off to Europe.

Turns out I only used the Tylenol PM on the airplane and I only took a half of one of EK's pills on the first day in Paris. I carried home the rest of the meds. Unpacked all that stuff at some point---it's a blur of happy messy returning--and thought nothing more of the pills.

Flash forward to tonight!!. Er...last night I guess. Struggling with a head cold and a cough I took a decongestant and (drum roll please) TWO generic ibuprofen pills that I found in a bottle in the medicine cabinet.

There it was! Did you see what just happened?

Should I point out that it is now 2:35am??

At first I thought my "second wind" was a jolt from the pseudo-speed or whatever they put in decongestants. I used the energy to do some correspondence, grade a couple of papers, surf some favorite blogs, write some entries elsewhere in the blogosphere.

When it got to be midnight and EK had gone to bed without me, I thought "this is odd!"

When I went and laid down in the bed because, after all, it was 2 am and I should really be tired, I noticed that my brain was working at high activity and my muscles were jittery.

And that's when it hit me!

OH HOLY CRAP I TOOK TWO OF EK'S STAY AWAKE PILLS AT 8:00 PM I DID NOT TAKE IBUPROFEN I TOOK MEDICATION INTENDED TO ARTIFICIALLY GENERATE AN ADRENALINE RESPONSE AND KEEP ME AWAKE FOR WAY LONGER THAN THE BODY NATURALLY WANTS TO BE AWAKE I AM THE MOST ALERT PERSON IN THE WORLD I DON'T EVEN REMEMBER WHAT SLEEPY FEELS LIKE HOW IS HE SLEEPING HOW ARE THE KIDS SLEEPING WHY DO WE HAVE ALL THESE BEDS I CAN FEEL MY BRAIN BUZZING IF I WERE AT WORK I COULD WRITE THAT BOOK CHAPTER THATS BEEN ON MY TO DO LIST FOR A MONTH I COULD WRITE THE WHOLE BOOK I COULD JOG I SHOULD JOG EVERY DAY WHY DON'T I JOB EVERY DAY I COULD RUN A MARATHON IF I REALLY PUT MY MIND TO TRAINING I THINK I'LL GOOGLE MARATHONS I THINK I'LL WASH ALL THE CLOTHES IN THE HOUSE AND REFOLD ALL THE TOWELS AND MAYBE ALPHABETIZE THE KIDS BOOKS IF I TURN THE LIGHTS ON DO YOU THINK THEY'LL WAKE UP I CAN SEE THE DARK I THINK I HAVE DEVELOPED SUPER POWERS AWESOME I AM AWAKE WOMAN HEAR ME ROAR I REALLY WONDER IF I WILL SLEEP BEFORE THE WEEKEND IS OVER I HAVE TO TEACH ALL DAY TOMORROW WONDER HOW THAT WILL GO I HOPE I DON'T TALK TOO LOUD OH BRAVO TV I LOVE BRAVO TV I COULD BE DESIGNER I THINK I'LL SKETCH SOMETHING....

Luckily I have lots of old Project Runway's on the TiVo. And the internet. And the dog to keep me company.

Wish me luck!

Less: jewelry

This is how much I had:

This is how much I'm keeping:


The rest has been organized and bagged for giveaways, donations, and yard sale.

Oh, well. It's a start.

Friday Night Lights

I attended my first ever Texas high school football game last Friday night. Does it surprise you that I had a really good time? 'Cause it surprised the heck out of me.

I went to the game to watch the marching band perform--my roomate Grassy is in the color guard and performs at all the games. But I stayed the whole time and watched the game. And you know what, it was fun.

It's not the very first football game of my life. I watched a good deal of Redskins football with my folks back in the 1980s (we lived outside of DC in those days) and I even attend a few 'Skins games at the old RFK stadium. I always liked yelling "Get him!" to the defense. But to be honest with you I only get about half of the rules of football. And I don't know the names of most of the positions. The only current pro players I know are Peyton Manning and Brett Favre (he's still playing football right?). So it really did surprise me that I had such a pleasant experience watching a whole live game without benefit of replays, loads of graphics, or announcers to explain the game progress.

That being said, I have to confess that I felt like a fraud sitting at the game. I felt like an observer in disguise to study the rites of another culture. Or like a guest at the religious service of an unfamiliar and slightly confusing church. Please don't misunderstand--I don't dislike football fans; some of my best friends are ardent football lovers. I just feel like an outsider to the whole activity. I guess its too late in my life for that to really change. I plan to go back to all the home games--my girl will be performing at them and I can't resister her!--and I hope to develop greater knowledge of the game. But I suspect this will always be a slightly odd experience for me.

Less

I have been feeling a very strong urge for less. I look at things that I own and don't understand why they are here. Relative to most middle-class Americans I don't really have that much stuff to start with. But its still too much. Why do I own so many DVDs? I haven't re-watched many in years but I store them alphabetically on shelves in my house. Why do I have so many coffee cups? Who the heck do I expect over for a cuppa? Everytime I try to put away the few cups we actually use, I have to deal with the ones that live permanently in my cabinet. Why do I still have earrings I bought in the mid-nineties but haven't worn in years? Why are they in my house? Why do I have to own a box for them to live in on my dresser? These things are not my friends, but I make such room for them. This has to end. Keep reading here for more on my movement for less. Ooo! And maybe some pictures!!!

Gustav

My brother and his wife are New Orleanians. They have safely left the city (with their cats and assorted friends in need) and are currently riding things out in Baton Rouge. Katrina upset their lives three years ago but thankfully did not cause severe damage or flooding their property. This time could be different. It's scary.

To distract them a bit from CNN, we e-mailed them some stupid homemade video. Several were of the pets. But I think we peaked with what we are calling the "Nutter Butter" series. You must watch them order!

Episode 1: Peace Out



Episode 2: Peace Out...Thirty Years Later




Episode 3: Meta "Peace Out"

DTB Mosaic

DTB Mosaic
Originally uploaded by totenbeard

This is me in a Mosaic!

My friend Sha posted this on his blog so I, of course, have copied him! All you do is type your answer to each of the questions below into a Flickr search. Using only the first page of results, choose your favorite image, then copy and paste each of the URLs into the mosaic maker (3 columns, 4 rows).

The questions:
1. What is your first name? (DeAnna)
2. What is your favorite food? (Oyster Po-boy)
3. What high school did you attend? (Woodbridge Senior High)
4. What is your favorite color? (lavender)
5. Who is your celebrity crush? (Nathan Fillian)
6. Favorite drink? (coffee)
7. Dream vacation? (Hawaii)
8. Favorite dessert? (tiramisu)
9. What do you want to be when you grow up? (a pathologist like Quincy)
10. What do you love most in life? (my family)
11. One word to describe you. (grateful)
12. Your Flickr name. (totenbeard)