Something Borrowed

From the lack of updated posts, you may infer one of two things: 1) My discipline is severely lacking. or, 2) My time has been filled with other things. I prefer to believe the latter, even if it’s only 75% true…

Life is in total limbo at the moment. I have been working in various capacities, and while I dislike having large eight hour chunks of my day just disappear, I also find that an increased income is a positive thing. Suddenly, a whole world opens up to me—Now I understand the silly grin people get on their faces as they giddily announce, “I have tomorrow off!” It’s so exciting…

I’ve been nannying. That is to say, watching two small children for several hours a week. 16, to be exact. But with everything else, I end up working about 28.5 hours per week. Anyway, spending that amount of time with people under the age of 4 can lead to various adventures. If you could call them that. Strange things happen… I learned the hard way that child number one can pick the lock to the bathroom door. Both kids disappear around the corner, and I say, “Where is Parker?” The response came back faintly, “I locked him in the bathroom!”

One day, I stepped into the other room for a second, and hear an anguished wail coming from the bathroom. Running in, I see the older brother throwing something into the toilet and flushing it, telling his brother, “You are a big boy now!”  I snatched it out, sternly admonishing, “You may absolutely NOT flush your brother’s pacifier down the toilet!” There’s a sentence I never thought I’d say.

Another thing I never thought I’d do? Be one of those people who held their hand out to a kid and said “Spit it out, now!” Yet I find it happening all the time. My principle has always been to tell the kid to go spit the toys, dirt, candy, car keys (yes, I found car keys in.his.mouth.), pacifiers, etc, somewhere else. Either the trash can, the sink, or anywhere BUT my hand. Yet, when a child who is allergic to dairy comes over and I discover that he has butter melting on his tongue, my immediate response is to stick out my hand and ask him to do just that. When he doesn’t, and instead swallows it back, I arm myself with the epi-pen and wait in panic for anaphylactic shock to set in…

The very first day, I discovered that my Kindle is resilient to the point of surviving having my caramel macchiato poured out on it. Last week I found that cupcakes still turn out okay, despite having a three year old dump half a jar of canola oil into them. Siphoning that off took some time…

The questions 8 year old kids ask still surprise me, too… “Emilie Edwards, are you married?” Of course, I said no, then asked why. “Oh. Well. I just thought you looked married.”  Then, upon hearing his mom congratulate me on “the new baby”, he looks over in shock and says “A baby!?! That was a really fast pregnancy. I didn’t even know!” Should I be flattered or offended? ;-)

Four year olds come up with stuff as well. “Why are you using a straw with your tea?” I respond, “Because I thought it looked fun,” and then she burst out laughing… “But you’re an ADULT! Adults don’t DO fun things!” Later, when we were eating chips, she looks at me and starts laughing again. I asked her what was so funny, and she says “YOU! YOU are so funny!” To which I say, “I was eating a chip, how is that funny?”  “But your FACE was so funny!” And here I thought my expression was just normal…

However, I am in the midst of a shift—I just got hired at a coffee shop, so I start training there on Friday. I’m quite excited…. considering the fact that I’ve wanted to do that FOREVER! And, although the realization that I can’t live the rest of my life on that kind of vocation does send me into a panic attack once in a while, I still am happy to try it for a couple years! :-) Hopefully I am good at it/enjoy it.

My parents went to the Shepherd’s conference this last week—without me. So much for enjoying Palm Springs… :-P Being without them was weird, but we managed. I am a little bit of a fatalist, though. As soon as they drive away to the airport, I begin to think things like “What if the plane crashes, and they both get hurt? how will we manage?” Or, as I’m driving and the van sounds suspicious, ‘What if it breaks down? Clark doesn’t answer his phone at work, and everybody is GONE! What will I do and who will I call? I can’t fix a VEHICLE!” However, none of those catastrophes occurred. The house didn’t burn down, we didn’t run out of food, no vehicles broke, nothing. They’ll be home in two hours and “all will be right with the world.” A lot happened in the week they were gone! I was offered two jobs, Clark got another job, I got half-laid off one of my current jobs, and we made plans for our family vacation. Men from our church filled the pulpit, and that’s a new thing—normally we bring someone else in. This morning was productively spent getting laundry run, doing dishes, sweeping and vaccuuming, cleaning out the fireplace, cleaning the bathroom, and doing all kinds of other things so mom doesn’t come home to a disaster! Now, I am quite ready to go sit and relax, and work on a book for a while. Next update will hopefully include pictures, and if I wait long enough to post, they’ll be pictures taken by a Nikon D90. Happy thought!