It’s that time again – a Thursday!

I have now claimed this day to actually, indeed, collage my thoughts.  Aren’t you the lucky one?

Thursdays are good.  I like Thursdays.  I was born on a Thursday and even though “Thursday’s child has far to go,” and there couldn’t be a more accurate assessment of almost any particular day of my life (I love lists and yet, my list is never done), Thursdays, in general, are quite nice.  It’s like ~ the bulk of the week is behind us, the beauty of a weekend ahead, but there is still hope everything will get done, wrapped up, finis.  It probably won’t, but on Thursday?  The possibility seems obtainable.  *sigh

Plus, I pre-school Amelie Belle on Thursdays and each Third Thursday, monthly – I get to see my Supper Club peeps.

And, it’s spring.

Oh, how I have longed for you, sweet spring.

“Is the spring coming?” he said. “What is it like?”…

“It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine…” ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

Brought to you by the number 4

Amelie Belle turns 4 in a few days.  So today we did lots of “4” activities.  We baked cakes, we painted, we danced, we traced letters and free-styled some art, we taped and glued and sang and read 2 books and counted and reviewed shapes.

I am learning so much in pre-school!  :)

“Holy Grounds”

“…and the sound of a stirring rod batting powdered cream into a small quantity of coffee…”

I read this hilarious blog post about all the weak, barely-brown, super-hot, white Styrofoam cups of coffee we church types have consumed in fellowship halls, foyers and church basements for, lo, these many years.  But the writer sees something more there:

“It’s a material appearing of the Church universal, a visible sign of our invisible communion with one another and with God himself. I can walk into any fellowship hall, head for the refreshments table, and mix myself a sweetened milky-brown cup of coffee that puts me in touch with millions of believers around the world as they gingerly sip the same drink.”  -Martyn Jones

I know I have cupped many a white Styrofoam vessels of coffee among the saints, left my own fingernail imprints about the rim, and maybe even spilled some on the indoor-outdoor carpet of questionable color, purchased for just such occasions. It is bland, but it is the cup of fellowship, week in and week out.  READ HERE

THEN my daughter Stephanie sent me this

An even funnier blog post about how to tell if you were raised by religious parents (directed at my kids’ generation).  I was terrified to read it because I feared I might find myself as a parent in there.  Well, I totally did!  I laughed until I cried, though, and then read it to Dave and laughed even more.  He lists 21 possible tell-tell signs and we may or may not have been guilty of 19…or so.  {CLICK HERE}

5. Every time you heard a loud rumble of thunder in the middle of the night you thought it was The Rapture.

6. If you grew up in Church of God, your college options were either Lee University or Lee University.

12. The only R rated movie you were ever allowed to watch was The Passion of the Christ.

13. You had a cassette tape labeled “Michael W. Smith” but it was actually an MC Hammer mix tape because you would never be allowed to listen to that.

I totally saw my childhood C of G tribe imprint in this list…And, it is kind of amazing my own kids turned out.  Haha.

The Kelley kids on keyboard

Where have all the flowers gone?

What the ever-loving heck?  Why can I open a name-brand bag of frozen, chopped broccoli and find only 5 or 6 small-sized florets with a huge pile of broc-stalks?  I realize broccoli has stalks, I just refuse to believe that I am paying for only 5 or 6 small florets of broccoli.  And dang the corporate executive who thought that since I was buying a bag of stalks anyway, I should just as well get some below-the-stalk pithiness, too!  I am not a woodchuck and don’t like gnawing my greens.  I don’t have all day to masticate, people! The lesson: BUY FRESH!

My Super-Power: Leveling

When I am sitting up straight, completely straight as far as I can tell, my head is sort of leaning to the left.  It just is.  I was actually born with this totally bent-neck-head thing and they corrected my newborn-neck with sand bags on either side of my head and me screaming for hours.  I don’t like anything pinning my down now, either.  So, I am crooked.

My whole life, photographers would say: straighten your head.  When I told them it was, they’d “manually” adjust me and it would feel like I was going to fall over on my right side. I’d lose all perspective. It feels so wrong.

Somehow in spite of this “leaning” challenge, I can tell if something is level to within a 16th of inch.  It is true.  I can be walking down a hallway, 40 feet away, see a group of men hanging a poster, satisfied that they have just perfected it, and tell them exactly how far off it is – and which direction – to within a 16th of an inch, no kidding. Boom!  No one likes me around when there are posters to be hung.

What does this particular super-power mean in my everyday life?  That I have to walk through every room of my house daily and try to ignore the things on my walls, because every. single. thing. is. slightly. OFF.  But in totally different directions.  Jesus, have mercy on me!  Makes me crazy!

Sometimes a super-power just doesn’t pay.

The picture I wasn’t going to show.

Because:  Amelie = adorable.  All of the pictures in the background = crooked.

But it is spring.  It is spring…