Posts (page 2)

We all see them: those tables in the grocery store laden with samples and women in hair nets nudging you to take one.  As I walked through Krogers last week I saw one of those tables.  But what was on it makes me giggle to even write about it!
RUM SHOTS!!
No, I am NOT kidding! Parrot Bay rum shots to be exact.  The older woman at the table smiled, held one toward me and asked,  "Try one?" How 'bout ten? On second thought, no thanks!
Am I the only one who has never seen this before?
Hilarious!
Strange, but hilarious!

What's your favorite type of cheese? Or, if you don't like cheese, why not?
Submitted by Draegon Scribe.

Is there a cheese that ISN'T good? I haven't crapped in a year.  I love all cheeses.  Slices of wet Mozzarella on tomatoes drizzled in olive oil and sprinkled with fresh basil is a staple in my kitchen!

BTW, that Kid Rock video called Amen...I got it off my founding pastor's website.  I think that's cool.

Tomorrow is special.  I get to spend the day with my little boy.  The youngest of four, Cameron and I rarely get one-on-one time together.  Lately it has been especially hard because I have been fighting depression for months now.  I've tried to keep it from the kids and I think I am coming through it.  But it's been hard.  I think the winter here has a lot to do with it.  It's been so dark and we've been stuck at the house until I get my car running again (and the thing looks so good!).  I wish I was one of  those trooper moms who  just manage to fight through the tough times with smiles on their faces and cookies on the counter for the fam.  I am not. 

I've also been busting my butt trying to pick up writing gigs.  I've done it and found that my niche is SEO copy.  It pays well enough...
I picked up a ghost writing gig for a coffee table book and ended up in an all out war with the photographer and his assistant, threatening to keep their materials until I saw money.  That sucked.  They got their stuff and I got my money...as much of it as they felt like sending.  It's over and I'm glad, but it was a month worth of hassle that I could have done without.

I've also been mad at, well, at God.  Everything I've ever believed is being challenged.  Don't let anyone fool you.  I do NOT like a challenge! I'm too lazy.  I fly by the seat of my pants.  Challenges? Those are for the "other" people.  What does all this mean --- that I don't have to be "doing" anything for God to move on my behalf? I have such a Martha mentality that I must constantly be moving or doing...case in point:  Recently my husband and I attended our youngest daughter's softball practice.  It was freezing outside (surprise) so we sat in the car.  It was an hour and a half long practice.  I was beside myself.  My husband smiled and said,  "Just relax.  Enjoy."
Relax? I don't even know what that word means.  I'm surprised I can spell it.  I don't know how to BE.  The challenge in my life right now is to "be".  To let God be God and stop trying to save the world.  He already did that for those who can accept the Gift. 

I think I've gotten lost somewhere along the way.  I don't know what my place in this life is anymore.  I don't know where I belong.  My views of what ministry is have fallen apart thanks to the best pastor and group of people who really "get it".  Ministry is not what we do...it's what God does through us...we are human "beings", not human "doings", etc.  I also feel like a lousy mother because I've spent so much time glued to the computer in search of work that will help us do more than "get by".  I'm resentful that we've fallen just short financially for so long now.  (And I feel guilty after reading my friend Josh's blog about having enough...) I feel like a mess.  It sucks.  This is really random and I am really tired.  I'll try to write more later. 

In the meantime I really am stoked that I get to go garage sale hunting with my little boy tomorrow! It's rare that I have the car so it's a real treat. Plus, he loves garage sales! How cool is that?

Who was the last person you offended?
Submitted by May.

Apparently everyone in Elkhart County.

Sometimes I am reminded of just how few friends I have here in the Elkhart area.  I have my friend Christy.  Other than her, no one stops by - ever.  No one calls me - ever.  It's lonely here.  My friend in South Carolina calls me.  My friend in Mississippi calls me.  My friend in Michigan emails me.  I have a couple of motherly friends who keep up with me here and I appreciate them immensely.  It stops there.
When I am around people I am always smiling or joking.  It's who I am.  But when we moved here four and a half years ago I thought it would be different.  While I appreciate the attitudes here and don't miss the racism of the deep south I don't care for anything else here.  I don't want to be here anymore.  I want to go home.  The problem is - I don't know where home is.  I just know it's not here.
Sometimes I would just love for someone to drop by unexpectedly.  I do miss that about the south.  I would enjoy looking forward to the phone ringing instead of ignoring it because I know it's not for me.  I would love for someone to swing by to pick me up for coffee (I have no car) and I really love coffee.  I would like NOT to be the person to make plans for a change.

On April 2, 1950 Nancy was born.  She was a pale, lightly freckled blond with a penchant for mischief.  Four years ago we learned she had cancer.  She died 3 months later on my beloved step-dad's birthday just six months after he died suddenly and without warning.  She was young, beautiful, even sexy.
My sister and my aunt are very sad today.  They wanted to do something, get together, reminisce.  But I can't.  Because they are sad and I am not.  Sure, Dec. 20th, the anniversary of the day she died while I slept on the floor at the end of her bed makes me sad because I lost her.  Mother's Day makes me sad because I no longer have one and my dad doesn't notice the new tablecloth or come over just to decorate my little girl's room.  Then there are moments of pain in my life when I am no longer a woman but a little girl badly in need of her mom. 
But today is the day God saw fit to share her with the world 58 years ago.  I am happy to have known her and I have smiled at the thought of her more than once this morning.  If I'm sad about anything it's that my stupid scanner isn't minding right now so I can't share pictures of her.  That really pisses me off because even when I was a kid I wanted the whole world to see how beautiful my mother was.
One of my fondest memories was walking along the beach with her on Okoloosa Island in Florida.  These young guys, college age I am presuming, walked toward us to their destination on the beach.  They checked us out which was no big deal.  What was a big deal was that they took a second looong gaze not at me, but at Mother.  She was a blond knock out.  She was 51.  I was not insulted that they didn't look at me, rather proud that they thought my mom was hot.  Poor Mother was always backward and shy about her looks but she still managed to let a giggle escape.
When we learned she was stage 4 with colon cancer I drove to Florida to take care of her.  It was a frustrating time.  Mother was also, please forgive me, a little crazy.  I laugh as I say that because it's true and I hope I haven't offended anyone to say that about my mom.  I love her still but she drove us all nuts sometimes.  So much so that once my step-dad called me, exasperated.  He told me he loved her so much.  But he didn't know how much more of her he could handle.  He didn't want to leave her.  Did I have any advice? Please understand that my step-dad Jerry had to be absolutely at his wit's end to ever, ever make that call.  Once while he was visiting his kids in Georgia my mother  went shopping and bought a new house without telling him! Poor guy.  My only words to him were caked with heavy laughter as I replied,  "She's yours now, Jerry.  I'm not taking her back!"
But I would.
Anyway, as I was saying, I drove to Florida to take care of her.  As frustrating as it could be, dealing with,  "There's dust over there..."  You know, 12 feet down the hall and around the corner, couldn't I see it?  It was the best time of my life.  My fondest memories with my mom are those weeks I stayed with her, choosing to miss my little girl's eighth birthday because I knew she would have more, Mother would not.
One night in particular I was fighting exhaustion.  Taking care of a cancer patient is no easy task.  On this particular night Mother wouldn't go to sleep.  As she sat on the couch I asked her why she wouldn't go to bed.  "Because I'm afraid." 
"What are you afraid of?" I asked this because Mother had a hard time sleeping in the same house where she discovered my step-dad's body just months before.  I was also still coming to terms with her illness so her next words took me off guard.
"I'm afraid I'll die."
Rarely am I speechless.  But there I sat, on the floor next to her on the sofa unable to squeak a single word from my closed throat.  Quietly I rose and walked into the den where my step-dad's last beer bottle still rested on the end table.  Mother refused to get rid of it.  For some reason the t.v. was on, which was a no-no in Mother's house.  If you left a room you did not leave it with lights or t.v.'s on.  This evening on the television Kirk Cameron was interviewing some guy about a book he had written.  All I heard this guy ask was,  "What's the one thing you can't do in heaven?"
I thought a moment, had nothing and searched for the remote to turn him off.  Before I could do so, however he answered his own question.
"You can't witness to those you love."
I don't remember another word that passed between the two men on the t.v. screen.  Blaring in my ears was the thought of never being able to share Jesus with another person I loved.
I loved my mother.
Turning back to the living room I sat on the floor beside Mother and took her hands in mine.  My mother had the most beautiful hands.  My sister cried the hardest at the funeral that she'd never have the chance to hold them again.  As Mother and I held hands I somehow managed to find the courage to ask her,  "Why are you afraid to die?"  I couldn't believe the sound of my own voice or the words that had formed.
Quietly, she replied,  "Because I don't know if I'll go to heaven."
"Would you like that? Would you like to know you'll go to heaven?"
She nodded.
The rest of the story is that I prayed with my mom and she became a Christian that night of October 12, 2003.  And from that day until the day she passed she was a different person.  Still ornery.  But no longer scared.  And I carry with me the most precious memory in the world.
Not long after she died my husband found me standing in our bedroom crying. "I'm just so sad because I'll never see her again."
My husband, this guy with only an eighth grade education did something that took the wisdom of Solomon.  He took me by the shoulders, turned me to face the mirror and whispered,  "She's right there."  As I gazed at the young woman in the mirror I saw a reflection of the woman who raised me.  Who's resemblance caused nurses to step backward and question who was the patient even though they could clearly see who was lying in the hospital bed.  It is the most precious gift my husband ever gave me next to the treasure I had from God in the person of my mom.
I miss you.  And now I cry.

Check out the Kid Rock video called Amen.

What have you tried in life that you just weren't very good at?

Sales.  I love sales.  I love the art of the deal.  Unfortunately, I am just no good at it.  I once worked for a car dealership.  In a three month period I sold 2.5 cars.  Yes, two and a half.  One was a split deal.  I couldn't sell hot cocoa to a naked Eskimo in January.  Seriously.  

So I'm a little tired.  Have been a lot lately.  Since I was 18 I have had some kind of heart murmur.  The aortic valve has three cuspids.  Mine only has two.  Not a big deal unless the valve begins to harden and/or thicken.  That may be the case.  Lately my heart will beat like a fish out of water for HOURS.  It's ridiculous.  So now I am wearing a heart monitor.  If I were a thief it would have come in handy today at Krogers.  It set off the alarm and all I had to do was show a couple of wires and mumble,  "Heart monitor."  It was kind of funny because security got this "I feel sorry for you" look on their faces and waved me on.  I thought, man, I could have just lied or loaded my buggy with loot and they would've never known until somebody upstairs reviewed the store video! :)  Then it would have just sucked to be profiled on Good Morning America the next day.  Not that it bothered my little girl who asked if we could go to Wal Mart and swipe a Nintendo DS.  (Don't get any ideas, she's a good kid with a sense of humor as bad as mine.)
I've learned a couple of things this week, though.  One, I'm mortal.  That sucks.  I mean, if something happened to me (you know what I'm talking about) I'd be kind of pissed.  (As if I would be conscious of this life anymore.)  First, I know my husband.  Bless his heart, he's the best.  But the man can't sleep by himself, nor would he.  He'd be married inside of a year.  That would piss me off.  Because I figure she'd be younger, prettier and funnier than me.  Notice that in my narcissism I didn't mention first that I was concerned for my children.  In my defense, I've already tackled that in a letter I wrote to them this week, you know, just in case not only my heart, but I start flopping like a fish out of water.  Crude, ain't I?
Now I'm laughing.  My heart is fluttering so I've just pressed the record button on my monitor only to look to the right of my screen to see a "Take the Go Red Heart CheckUp" advertisement from the American Heart Association.  Not funny guys.  Not funny at all! (As I smile)
I asked my husband last week,  "Did I teach them enough?"  (referring to my children)  He smiled.  "More."  He didn't assure me I was going to be fine.  He just answered my question and it threw me.  I realized that he's scared.  I haven't seen him this concerned since my first bout with cancer (I've beaten it twice) when I refused to end my pregnancy with my daughter Laura to save my life.  My heart has never bothered me in this way before.  I've never gotten out of breath after a meal, so much so that I had to sit down and rest.  It's disconcerting.  I'm only in my 30's.  Hey, God, I was just joking when I said I never planned to get out of my 30's! I only planned to lie to people for as long as I thought I could pass it off.  You understand that logic, right?
What can I do? I pray.  I wait.  Then I look around my house and think,  "Man, if I die and Stan's family sees my house like this they'll find out that I'm a slob and just made it LOOK like I was the perfect house cleaner."  THAT really bothers me.  I'm an artist, and we tend to be disorganized.  I take it to the extreme.  I'm so ADD that I once forgot to pick my preacher's kid up from school and left my own baby in the back seat of my car in inner city Montgomery, Alabama.  (Didn't tell my husband for 10 years about that one!)  I don't have a junk drawer.  I have a utensil drawer.  Every other drawer in the house --- those are my junk drawers!!  I'll be caught:  Renee is a slob.  Fortunately I don't think there's the emotion of embarrassment in heaven.   (In case any of you wonder where I'll be residing in the after life.)
Totally unrelated to this subject, I've learned something else this week.  It's not just writers that tend to be crazy.  It's the  producers and developers and backers as well.  I've signed what feels like a million contracts lately.  One company liked my work so much they offered me hundreds of dollars per script revision.  Another company offered me thousands to rework an entire website.  I haven't seen a script yet.  Nor have I gotten the go-ahead on the web site.
A producer sent me one contract that was so ridiculous that I called her in California only to hear some smart ass 20-something on the line tell me in as condescending a voice as she could muster,  "I don't feel there is any need for me to hold your hand through this.  We are professionals."
Well, Miss Professional...I had the a friend of mine who happens to be involved in publishing look at your contract and he couldn't make heads or tails of it.  She coughs and adds some,  "I appreciate that feed-back" bullshit then has the nerve to say,  "It was pretty standard, right off the INTERNET!!!"
Are you kidding me? I just wrestled with a contract some kid in L.A. downloaded off the internet? How the hell did she access the "professional" writing site I obtain work from? I'm sorry honey, what did you say? I couldn't hear you over the crumpling of your bullshit contract.
Then there is pay.  I had to fight with paypal over some glitch with my account for a week just so I could get paid by a company in Colorado that I did some work for.  They really liked my work.  They are offering me more.  Great.  If they'd actually pay me it'd be better.  Haven't seen a dime.  Babysitting paid better than this.
So, that's my life this week.  I'm all over the map and I shrug because it's alright.  It's me.  It's my life.  And it's good. :)