Jellicle Time

Aside from the normal excuses I give about not blogging regularly, another event has cut into my typing time, and it involves fabulous feline fun. Disclaimer here: I'm not a cat person. I'm not even much of a dog person. We have no pets--which probably isn't that surprising, given the number of kiddos we have--and if we do ever get a pet, it will be years from now, and it would have to be the absolute right time and right dog. I've pretty much ruled out getting a cat for many, many reasons.

All that being said, I don't dislike cats. I've taken care of them before--our neighbors had my sister and I take care of their five cats when they were gone on vacation, and they were pleasant enough when they weren't hiding (the cats, not the neighbors). I pet them if they'll deign to allow it when I visit friends or family. But cats tend to be distant. They're particular. They don't lend themselves to blind loyalty or random snuggling with the nearest human unless they really want and need some love (see Socks when baby Charles shows up). And now I have a reason to possess a renewed respect for these aloof-yet-sophisticated animals.

T.S. Eliot wrote a wonderful little book called Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats in the 1930s, and Andrew Lloyd Webber used it to write the blockbuster musical CATS, which premiered in 1981. Our local theater organization, the Calumet Players, decided last fall to tackle this gigantic show, and it's currently completed its first weekend run.

And who's involved with this production? Well, many awesome and talented people. And me.

Yes, I'm actually playing a cat (her name is Jemima). And would you believe it? It's been amazingly fun!

If you're available next weekend--like, within fifty miles of here--you should come see the show. Not because I'm in it but because you'll love it. Even if you don't fancy yourself a friend of cats. Trust me--I know!

Quite the transformation is an understatement.

Newsworthy Rats

So Papa and I decided a few months ago to begin a subscription to The Wall Street Journal. We've done so in the past, but stopped them due to major, major delivery problems (like the paper not coming three days out of six) and budget issues. We love the paper; we just like getting it when it's not too much of a budget crunch or when we, you know, actually get it. We'll determine in the next few weeks if the current delivery practice of our unknown paper carrier continues (he or she lies to drive onto our front lawn to leave the paper on our porch. And in Minnesota midwinter, the tire tracks on the front lawn are a little, um, obvious and presumptuous. In other words, WHO DOES THAT?! We've tried to report him or her, but still the tracks remain. So it goes in rural America, at least here, with us, with this newspaper saga).

Now that this post has included so many parentheticals that you're wondering what the point it, it's this. One of the reasons we love getting a physical newspaper is because we can share it with the kids. Yes, they're young, and most of them can't read. But they like looking at the pictures and discussing them, and it's far more enjoyable to hold a paper newspaper than to read it online (or at least Papa and I think). So last week, when I read this article about rat-throwing at a local festival in Spain, I knew we had a winner. The boys loved the article, Little Professor so much so that he proceeded to read it out loud several times several days later. There's innocent glee when a five-year-old snickers as he reads, "Despite animal-rights activists' objections to the practice, locals last year once again threw caution to the wind—along with rodents." If this encourages my children to read and learn about the world, then I just might be able to tolerate the tire-tracks on the lawn--for a little while, at least.

One Thousand--Ahem--Boons

No, really, Sister--thank YOU. Nice hat, too.

Maybe you've heard of or read Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts. It's a beautifully written read--thought-provoking, lyrical, laughter-inducing and certainly tear-inducing. It also, from my obviously Lutheran perspective, ultimately ends up heaping law upon law on Voskamp herself and her readers by concluding that we have to give thanks in all circumstances. Period. So DO IT, good Christians! Always! No excuses! What I began reading with so much hope and delight ended with me slinking back to the library dropbox, wondering what went wrong.

And what went wrong, of course, is that we can't actually give thanks in all circumstances all the time or even act like doing so is some act of penance or some act of works-righteousness contributing to some partnership-with-Jesus contract deal. And since we can't, because we're poor miserable sinners and we generally know it (thanks for this, Adriane!), this book that tries to emphasize the good ends up shackling us with more impossible expectations rather than giving us the Great Thanks-giver Himself. Because ultimately I need to know that Jesus could give thanks all the time because He was God, and Jesus loved me even unto death, and His vicarious atonement isn't conditional on any merit on my part, like giving thanks always. Otherwise His work wouldn't be, well, a something-for-nothing gift. I realize the hyphenated adjective there is superfluous, but it's amazing how many people think of "gift" as more like the beginning of a bartering deal. "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine. By the way, I've got an ingrown hair problem, but you're cool with that, right?" Thanks, but no. I'll take my birthdays and Christmases and back-scratching and Jesus without the sides of conditions. 

All that being said. Here I give you One Thousand Boons, my list of decidedly less--no, significantly less--than one thousand benefits that I* never, ever list when I'm coming up with things I'm thankful for. Enjoy, and go about your blessed life with all of its gifts and boons.

(*or anyone else, unless she's--or he's--crazy or warped. Join, please!)  

• The Friends of Meinders Community Library Annual Book Sale.  
• A room in which to lock myself into for five minutes of privacy. 
• That my belly button isn't in the middle of my head (that would be awkward).
• Angelika, who came up with those last two while 1) yelling at her kids through the locked bathroom door to give her some peace for five minutes and 2) explaining how truly awkward a belly button on the noggin would be. Yes, she's joined. She's actually probably a charter member.
• Accidentally dropped M & Ms under the kitchen table. That I find days later. (Surprise chocolate!)
• Bath salts and a sleep aid. Not used simultaneously but in tandem.
• And a glass of Riesling.
• The flip-down mirror by the passenger seat for mascara-application, hair-fluff-checking, and last-minute blotting of baby-stained clothing. Better than a personal stylist, IMPO.
• Bedtimes. For small children.
• Natch that. Sleeping children. 
• Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, and Sister Carrie. To remind me that my life is actually pretty s-ah-w-eeeeeeeeeet.
• Ear plugs.
• Ice packs.
• Three-packs of kid underwear.
• My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less Than Jesus' Blood and Righteousness. And that's a for-real boon.

Who dun it?!

We have a mystery at the Olson homestead. In the midst of making brownies, Papa discovered that someone filched the mixing spoon. Do you have any idea who it might be? We're thoroughly and seriously investigating this chocolate confiscation. And if you've got any leads, we'll save a delicious dessert for you!

By the way, has anyone seen our little Pearly Girl?

Dough-NUTS!

Does anyone else resent those humongous glazed donut packages that are discounted at the grocery store? I mean, heroin has nothing on these things. They look ridiculously unhealthy. They literally drip with killer amounts of sugar and carbs and other unhealthy preservatives. And yet, and yet. Lord, help me.

Old Socks

For years, I've kept old socks for cleaning. That's about the extent of my creative capabilities to recycle productively. Anyway, as I scrubbed the bathtub with an old sock this morning, I was overcome with a quiet bit of contentment at using that old, ratty thing for something helpful. And it got me thinking: have you ever used something old in a productive, satisfying way? And using old people doesn't count here.

Maybe someday.

Regifting, Kid Style

While I spent the morning a week or so ago doing the picking-up/dusting/vacuuming workout (Pilates has nothing on this), the boys discovered their imaginations. First they built a train with an assortment of building squares (the base), some mini-chairs (their seats), and a cardboard box (the toilet. But only just pretend, explained Negotiator P). Then they decided to play a variation of Christmas. They woke up and discovered presents! I heard little shrieks of, "Look! I got a United States puzzle! And you got a work bench!" from downstairs and had to check it out. This is what I found.

"Mama, can you take my picture? I'll pose. Cheese!"

Superman, with extra-awesome hair, explains his haul.

The pile of gifts.

It's what I always wanted!

Three minutes later, I discovered that 1) Superman S had put the last 25% of the toilet paper roll in the toilet (the real one). We had to have a little talk about not playing with the TP. And 2) Pearly Girl C shut her finger into the cupboard door and started bleeding and crying. Gifts indeed.

Neither Hot Nor Cold

There's no such thing as lukewarmness in regards to faith in Christ as our Saviour (at least, not if you want to avoid some serious spitting.) I'm pretty sure distasteful lukewarmness also refers to refrigerators, which are beyond worthless when they're neither hot nor cold. We've been experiencing the wide variety between the two this week, as our thirteen-year-old fridge sputtered, lived a little longer (thanks to Papa), and finally went kaput in the last week. Now the empty, dead monolith sits ridiculously impotent in the middle of our kitchen while we wait for a new-to-us one to be delivered tomorrow. All I can say is that Minnesota winters in January will never qualify as lukewarm--and thank goodness for it.

Don't worry, guys--God has marked you as BLESSED.

Innovate, Motivate, Impact, Yada, Yada, Yada

I generally enjoy tutoring college writers. I can deal with the early hours, the sometime monotony of assignments, even the predictable grammatical errors. But what makes me crazy is the downright predictability--nay, the inevitability--of students in certain professional fields to fall hook, line, and recycled terminology for the allure of buzzwords. For instance, I just read an analysis by a business student that purportedly showed how a particular business utilizes innovation. Except the entire ten pages said nothing. Literally nothing. And worse than reading ten pages of nothing is reading them at six a.m. and knowing some poor shlub is actually forking over hard-earned money (or going into ridiculous amounts of debt) to write such meaningless pulp. I could rant about how colleges, not-for-profit but especially for-profit institutions, take advantage of unprepared students by admitting them, taking their money, and sending them into the world with a piece of paper but no more skills to attain and retain gainful employment than I could send my four-year-old into a realtor to successfully discuss home inspectors as a negotiation detail, but I'll pass on that. I could rant about how fields of study in institutions of higher education ("higher"! Hahahahahahahaha!) like business become so encumbered with generic language that students can master the code but can't actually say anything meaningful whatsoever. Please note that I'm not anti-business; I'm anti-jargon.

But there's hope. When I googled "weasel words," this gloriously refreshing site came up, with the following descriptor on its homepage: "This site is for people who have silently wept into a crumpled copy of their company's mission statement, for teachers who want to work in classrooms and not customer service points, and for all those who have been underpinned by an innovative, value adding, creative, sustainable, diverse and optimised framework."

Thank you, Don Watson, for saving my sanity this morning. 

 

Who needs a dog...

...when the crumbs on the floor are consumed by your children?

And for S, this jar with its contents all over the floor = INSANE happiness.

Our Favorite Things

We Olsons love many things.

We love the Green Bay Packers. Duh.

 

We (well, you know who that means) love Lightening McQueen. Double Duh.

We love cupcakes. Yummity-yummity-yum-yum-duh!

Yes, there's many, many things we love.

 

Like nearly identical copies of the same picture. 

  

 Like looking everywhere but at the camera.

  

Like cuddling with each other. 

Yes, Papa and I especially love our wonderful kids.

On the Twelfth Day

In the car today, in an effort to distract from an impending meltdown, I asked the boys if we should sing "The Twelve Days of Christmas," which has been one of their favorite Christmas songs this season (along with the hymns "Joy to the World," "O Come All Ye Faithful," "Of the Father's Love Begotten"--also known as "Evermore and Evermore" to P--and their favorite, "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing"--also known as the "Mommy, Mommy! They Sing This on Charlie Brown Christmas!" ditty). Anyway, after the first verse, P decided we needed to change the words.

So we did, just for fun.

Apart from the third day, which was my contribution, and the twelfth, which was S's--always thinking about food, that one--P came up with the rest. And you'll notice that in his version, your true love ends up with a lot fewer birds.


Kudos to Grandpa E for introducing P to this phrase, which made the cut, as P thinks saying this is just hilarious!

Hope your twelve days of Christmas have been lovely!

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me...

12 Pretzels

 

 11 Bulldozers

 

 

10 Barns

9 Ramones

8 Yummy Brownies

7 Chocolate Bars

6 Tow Maters

5 Doggy Cash*

4 Vacuum Cleaners

3 Olson Kids

 2 Vietnamese Dong

1 Partridge in a Pear Tree

*This is P's phrase, which I think is a combination of Dong and cash. He thinks it's hilarious, and he usually follows it up with "I need some Vietnamese Dong." But this is what he says, so I had to get creative with the pic.

Annoying (and Some AxE-murdering Weirdness).

So today we've had a few annoying things happen. Nothing earth-shattering--just out-of-the-ordinary stuff that deserves a blog post (for those of you bored enough to read about it).

First, I've been working through an issue with one of our savings accounts. I got an unidentified deposit in May, and being the good Christian that I am--insert guffawing laughter here--asked the bank to do some research as to where the funds came from. Long story short, some bureaucratic underling at USD made the stupid mistake of looking up my name instead of cross-checking social security numbers, so some student worker missed out on $200 while I--three years from the last time I worked for the South Dakota Board of Directors for SDSU, a completely different school--got magic money. So, she finally asked them where the dough was, they looked, realized they screwed up, and--oh! they needed my written permission to take the money back.

I love how mistakes work.

So today, after conversations and emails with the bank, I called the USD Human Resources chick, then emailed her and the bank what they wanted, and Papa and I decided to close the account and open another one just so the SDBOD can never, ever make this mistake again. They can't delete my info--my precious, identity-stealable-info--due to "record retention regulations" (how's that for alliteration?), and they can only "put a block on my profile," so we figured this was the next best protection we could take. So... somebody in government makes a mistake and someone else spends probably three hours fixing it? At a full-time government salary with benefits, how much did that $200 mistake really cost? And that doesn't count the bank worker time or my time being all altruistic and honest. I mean, don't I at least deserve a medal or something for being so cooperative?

Ha. Hahahahahahaha.

Second, Papa can't find his wallet. This happens fairly frequently, but he looked for an hour and still can't find it. Update: he found it at church. Under some papers. After going and looking there twice, in between telling me how annoying it was that he couldn't find his wallet, thus couldn't go get some stuff, thus couldn't mow the grass... well, he's mowing the grass now, and all's well that ends well. Especially if you end with your wallet in your pocket.

Third, I got a text this afternoon from someone telling me how they're probably going to sign soon on a house and be homeowners again by August 19, and thanx for all my support!!! Um, no problem. Because I was sitting at my computer while I told Papa about this, I decided to do a reverse phone lookup, even though I figured the message came from a cell phone. It did, but the free service identified the town where the number (or the owners of the phone?) came from was Villisca, Iowa.

So I did what any God-fearing American would do and googled Villisca, expecting a map to pop up first--and I got the website for the Villisca Ax Murder House. Um, yeah. In 1912, in said house, the Moore family (two parents, four kids) and two other kids were brutally slaughtered (I'd say "axe murdered," but that's pretty self-evident, and then it brings up the whole debate as to whether ax should be spelled with an "e" or without. The "e"s seem to win it, but maybe those folks who run the House get dibs on correctness). No one ever solved the mystery, strange things take place on the property... and the house looks like the major tourist destination for central Iowa. Talk about information I did not expect to learn today.

I was hoping this guest would be wearing the "Where Skeptics Become Believers" shirt, but no luck. I like the overalls, though.

On the bright side, the temperature dropped back into the mid-80s and, most excitingly, our living room furniture was delivered this morning! Post soon about that non-annoying, non-weird stuff.

Highlights of VBS...So Far

The only prop potentially better than a felt board.

 I'll admit it; I was not looking forward to this week. And then it happened. And now we've got one day left and I'm actually disappointed (even if Papa, especially, and I are exhausted). Maybe next year we can go for four three-hour days!

•  It's summer, Bible stories and hymn-singing, treat-eating and little-one quality time... what's not to love? (Despite all my misgivings?)
  
• Finding uses for colored Popsicle sticks.   
• Teaching the Creation narrative and Jonah's hair-raising adventure to non-readers by reading from the Bible and using a giant felt board. Felt boards ROCK. And ours has about a zillion pieces. I should have taken a picture--truly, the lions were laying down with the lambs. And fish were in the sky. And trees were perilously close to mid-seas. And God evidently created lots of reptiles and not a lot of mammals. But these felt boards make for some gorgeous masterpieces!
• Seeing how kids (mostly) get along right away, make friends, and help each other out. And occasionally get so crazy wound-up they run in circles, literally, with each other. 
• Making friends with a 7-year-old over mac and cheese while she tells me about her baby doll who talks--and says "Poo" which means she poops. And she tells me this twice! Because I might have missed that detail the first time around. I LOVE kids! (And you all know I really do--there's never any guessing what they'll be saying next!)
• Watching teen leaders adapt to the 110 degree heat index by moving "Games" inside (who plans on inside games in July? Only in... Minnesota?). The result? Our eldest, P, kind of playing bingo the first day and saying, "Are these little pieces candy?"--after he'd already put three of the plastic things in his mouth. Today, onlookers--and participants--laughed non-stop as the little ones tried to play Twister one minute (hilarious anytime, but especially with kids who don't quite get the directions) and "Duck, Duck, Grey Duck" the next (which involved a lot of running down the halls and group chasing). P had another one-liner: "I didn't know I could do somersaults in church!" Yeah, Buddy--try that in the nave one Sunday! :)
• Visiting with church members for hours every night, because we have as much help as we do participants. 
• Listening the kids belt out, "But now has Christ ariiiiiiiiiiiii-sen, ariiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-sen, ariiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-sen!" from "This Joyful Eastertide." Thinking, "God must find no greater joy in praise than from the mouths of children." What a gift to hear it!
• Having everything come together at the last minute--and even if adults can tell the difference between super-organized, super-prepared, and super-by-the-program, kids can't.
• Hearing a kid say, in the brief silence following the final "Amen" after we'd all just completed the "Close of Service" devotion out of LSB, "That was fun." Whether she meant following a short quasi-liturgical service or the whole VBS she-bang, I don't know--but that was a definite highlight.

Give me the phone, Mama. I need to sing to Grandma.

Top Three Items Worth Nothing 99% of the Time--But Worth an Ounce of Gold (in March 4, 2011 $) When You Need Them (In No Particular Order)

3. Earring Backs. I lose a couple of worthless earrings (that always include only one of a pair) within one week at least once a year, and then lose no more earrings, even if I'm trying, for the rest of the year. I keep the backs of the single earrings so I'm prepared--HA!--for those inevitable moments when, like Superman swooping in to catch Lois Lane, I can save the day (or at least a decent pair of earrings) with a spare back. But not tonight. Not when I'm 600 miles from home with only one pair of earrings to my name (hey! I packed light! YES, it CAN happen!)... and maybe not even that, if I can't scrounge up another priceless back somewhere.

2. Socks. Thanks to all those cannibalistic laundry machines, the world boasts countless single socks (now that's a church sign I'd like to see: "Lonely? Feeling Depressed? Come Join our Sock Divorce Support Group (Cotton Only, Please)") that could instead be headlining on The Morning Show as medal-laden heroes of Chris Dubois's toes.

1. Pens. When I cleaned out my purse last week, I counted no fewer than 17 pens. Which is super helpful when I need to write down doctor's appointments, friends' baby due dates, grocery lists, best-seller inspirations, and other completely, utterly vital information that cross my path at pivotal moments when I've left my purse at home in favor of a diaper bag. It would've been nice knowing ya, Mr. Pulitzer Prize.

In most circumstances, this is known as a choke.