Soooo long since my last post. Soooo busy with school work, homework (mine and the kids), and housework (including working around a few updates).

I felt the need to write today after having an interesting "conversation" with my 3 year old son. We were living with my mom for a couple of weeks while our only bathroom was under construction. Keep this in mind as I convey the conversation:

Him: I want to go outside.

Me: Not now, Mommy needs to lie down. (I have had little sleep and I have a migrane coming on with class in a couple of hours.)

Him: I want to go outside.

Me: No.

Him: Yes.

Me: [his name], I said No!

Him: Grandma said Yes!

Well, you can imagine by this point I am trying not to laugh. The tiny kid played the "Grandma card." I telephoned my mom and she told me about my nephew when she was visiting them a few weeks earlier.

He wanted something from his parents and had asked each of them. After trying both and getting a no, she heard him calling, "GRANDMAAA!" The little child played the grandma card.

Then "Grandma" chuckled and said, "This is what I live for."

I have 2 words, "Thanks, Mom."

Oh, and it didn't work. They didn't get their way.

I have come to the conclusion that the reason my plans for my life never work out is becaue they would work. Yes--you read correctly. And I believe that my plans would work--IF I was not required to be tested. It's like the proverbial algebra problem. You are going along everything is GREAT and then WAIT--what do I have to do with this negative again--Oh that's right--turn it into a positive.
It seems so tedious and exhausting at the same time. One negative after another and sometimes the same ratio is attached. Like when those kids you almost died to have--or at least you thought you were dying at the time--wil NOT go to bed with out threat (even though you know you would die to protect them if necessary). But its not just one night, it's night after night, after frustrating night.
You feel like you must have failed somewhere and continue to feel like you are continuously failing because you cannot for the life of yo (or them) figure the missing factor. It's tedious . . . it's frustrating . . . it's exhausting . . . it's --negative--oh, wait. I need to turn that into a positive. How? Two negatives make a positive: You haven't died yet and neither have they.

"See a need, fill a need . . . "

So what do I need? I need peace that no one or no thing (especially that donut I just ate) is able to fulfill. Don't we all need and/or want that?

In my spare moments, rare as they are, I find myself looking through my books looking at the titles eager to read and think about something other than dishes, diapers, bills and the economy of the nation.

I love books. That's why I am an English major. But, lately I have been looking at my plethora of books and finding no fulfillment in them, nothing that will lift my heart after it has been dashed to pieces. It has been dashed by simply looking at the news. Someone has gotten in a fight with a machete, someone has been brutally beaten, someone has hurt an innocent child . . . the list could go on and on but this site is supposed to uplift not make one feel down trodden.

Though each title looks tantellizing nothing strikes the "gotta read it" cord. So I sit down on my sofa to think and ponder (and maybe sulk a little) then turn to look out my window. Between the couch where I sit and the window is an end table and on that end table are three things: a lamp, an alarm clock, and my scriptures. Ahhh, I can feel the cord ring. I pick it up and read. Only a few minutes go by and I am feeling refreshed and relaxed--well, times up the children call for my undivided attention.