Category Archives: Humor
A Funny Thing Happened on my Way to Becoming a Grandmother.
As the mother of five, grandmother of eleven, great-grandmother of seven, and incidentally, the owner of a nicely framed diploma in psychology, I want to share some gems of wisdom gained the hard way, trial and error, with an emphasis on the error.
1. When you do co-create another human being with God, trust God a little! He stays involved. He gives human babies to human parents. As far as I’ve been able to tell, perfect beings like angels, don’t procreate.
2. Go ahead and read the child psychology books; they can help you hear where your child is coming from. But don’t take them straight. Mix them liberally with books by Erma Bombeck. There’s nothing better than a sense of humor for keeping life in perspective.
3. Do pray unceasingly for your first child. This is your practice one. God will have to invest a lot more in that partnership.
4. Accept the fact that on your first child you will spend a lot of Saturdays with your pediatrician. There is an unwritten law of nature that children only swallow dimes on weekends.
5. But know that when your second child swallows a dime, you will just calmly feed them bread and watch for the dime to make its journey back to daylight. With the third child you won’t bother to watch for it unless you know it was minted before 1945. And your fourth child won’t swallow dimes, because they will already be full from eating the dog’s food.
In my experience, the real fun of parenting came about child number four and the sheer joy with child number five. But then, I always was a slow learner.
Seven Basic Facts to Help You Enjoy Your Children
1. You don’t have to enjoy all the rigors of baby care to enjoy children. Infancy doesn’t last long.
2. A child can fix a reasonably healthy breakfast for themselves (and you) by the time they are five. (Their spouse will thank you for it someday.)
3. Their first grade teacher will toilet train them if you don’t get around to it. (Though they will undoubtedly not thank you for it.)
4. The child that you bat heads with from birth to puberty will astound you by winning awards and honors in high school. (The flip side of stubbornness is perseverance.)
5. Out of five children fed the same kind of food from birth, – no matter what you do – Two will eat only hamburgers and pizza until marriage. Two will eat nourishing and well balanced meals in reasonable amounts. One will eat everything in sight in over generous amounts.
6. Almost nobody normal enjoys their own Junior High age kids. But, God can give you enough grace to keep your homicidal tendencies reasonably repressed, and if you hang loose, they become interesting people and friends somewhere between 21 and 30. (Don’t let anyone tell you that God isn’t still doing major miracles.)
7. And best of all, some day when you are holding your brand new first grandchild and find tears of complete joy streaming down your face, you will realize how very carefully, if sometimes painfully, God has taught you to love unconditionally.
Pentecost
Pentecost Sunday just cries for the Spirit,
at least a tongue of fire or two,
or a sweeping wind that blows our minds
free of habit and ritual and rules.
So, I found a little brick church
with the name of Power and Praise.
Well, I started out pretty lively
clapping to drums with hands raised.
I thought I was blending in nicely
for a gray haired Presbyterian.
But, perhaps I should have drunk more coffee,
since after forty minutes, I ran out of steam.
I thought it might be time to sit down,
but then, a lady, who had to be over eighty,
began dancing blissfully in front of the pews.
Smiling and spinning gently around,
she looked so joyful doing this,
I found it hard to resist joining in.
But the music stopped, as we all sat down
for a seventy-five minute sermon
on the deplorable state of the world.
Though it was a bit of a downer,
with most of it I actually agreed,
until the preacher spoke about women,
who wear pants and short hair.
He said women only did this,
so they could attract other women.
That’s when I noticed I was the only woman
in the entire congregation
wearing pants and short hair.
I tried to hunker down low in the pew,
so no one would notice my pants,
but that wasn’t much help with my hair.
Thank God, I hadn’t joined in the dance.
But to give credit where credit is due,
the preacher admitted he’d been wrong before
and he might be wrong once again,
so we all should keep reading the scriptures
to let God, Himself, teach us the truth.
But though I keep searching the bible,
I haven’t found anything there
about women wearing pants or short hair.
I’m pretty sure I didn’t tempt any women,
nor did they me, as a matter of fact.
So, though, I’m a failed Pentecostal,
I probably wouldn’t be a good Lesbian either.
Not Forgiving, Creating God in Your Own Image, Awful Thoughts: Quotes from Anne Lamott
“Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.”
“You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you hate.”
“I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud, because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish..”
“I do not understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.”
“I think joy, sweetness, and affection are a spiritual path. We’re here to know, love, and serve God, and to be blown away by the beauty and miracles of nature. You just have to get rid of so much baggage to be light enough to dance, to sing, to play. You don’t have time to carry grudges; you don’t have time to cling to the need to be right.”
Quotes from my favorite author, Anne Lamott. Accessible at Anne Lamott Quotes or her books:
§ Operating Instructions: A Journal Of My Son’s First Year. Pantheon Books. 1993
§ Bird by Bird : Some Instructions on Writing and Life. Pantheon Books. 1994.
§ Traveling Mercies : Some Thoughts on Faith. Pantheon Books. 1999.
§ Plan B : Further Thoughts on Faith. Riverhead Books
§ Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith. Riverhead Books
§ Some Assembly Required: A Journal of My Son’s First Son. Riverhead Books. 2012.
A Country Education
When we moved to our hundred acre weed and rock sanctuary, I happily dragged the children through the woods on hunts for nuts, lichen, and pods for ecology crafts. We waded the creek finding smooth stones and fossils, even coral. In the snow, we went looking for animal tracks. And in the dark of night we drove the jeep through fields to find the perch of the Great American Owl, that we spotted flying during the day. I often enthused about all the amazing things, we were going to learn by living in the country.
One day, my first grader announced, “Mom, you were right. I’m learning a lot of new things in the country.”
Delighted, I asked, “What kind of new things?”
“Well, before we moved here and had to ride a school bus, I didn’t know hardly any cuss words.”
That wasn’t quite the answer I was hoping for.
Later, I realized that in my eagerness to get back to nature, dragging my family with me, I might have gone overboard a bit. A friend from church invited my first grader to go swimming with her first grader at the Country Club. She later laughingly told me she figured we must swim in a creek, because my son asked whether he should leave his tennis shoes on for swimming.
I told her I was surprised he didn’t throw rocks in to chase the snakes away.
A lot of things are different in the country.
I love this sort of delightful serendipity. It’s what I tried to describe in my blog, “God Does Sweat the Small Stuff.”
Raising 5 Kids With Disabilities and Remaining Sane Blog
I coordinate activities for students who are blind, and I always try to make sure that everything is accessible for them, that is, multi-sensory and in the proper large print or Braille format. I got a little more than I bargained for last Saturday when we had a Happy New Year Party for them. Because it was AFTER the new year, I gleefully shopped for party supplies that were 75% off. (Gee…if I used the same theory and we celebrated Christmas AFTER Christmas, I would have saved a ton of money…but I digress…)
Knowing that the children love novel items, I purchased a large supply of “crackers” or “poppers”, such as in the above photo. During the party I thought they could pop them overhead, and feel the confetti rain down on them. I was mortified when the first popper was popped. It had little toys in it; a little…
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Accidental Sex Education Field Trip
I’ve written about my adventures teaching in a four room rural parish school, but not about the adventures of the young new parish priest there. Father Joe was an enthusiastic new priest, full of energy and wonderful ideas for our school and parish. Some of which turned out well, and others, not so much.
He and our principal, an elderly dumpling-shaped, cheerful little nun, took a busload of seventh and eighth graders to tour the Huntsville Alabama Space Museum. The day went well and on the return trip Father scouted out a restaurant for his hungry students. They stopped at one that had the innocuous name The Family Restaurant on a large sign over the building. Father went in ahead to check out the food and how they were set up for a crowd. It turned out to be a busy buffet, but the manager assured Father Joe that the students could all sit at tables pulled together and if they waited just a few moments, the line at the buffet would be clear for them.
Of course, as soon as everyone got settled in, there were numerous bathroom requests. It was decided that the boys would go downstairs to the bathrooms first. Then, when they returned, the girls could go. Eventually, some of the girls began to complain when the boys never returned, so one of them was sent to check on what was holding up the boys.
Very quickly the girl raced back breathless and saucer eyed, yelling loudly, “There are women with no shirts on down there, carrying trays back and forth across the hall that goes to the bathrooms.”
Father Joe gasped, Sister turned pale, and the manager came running over to explain that there was a topless bar downstairs. Father Joe, turned to Sister in panic, pleading, ” I can’t go down there. You’ll have to go get the boys.”
Sister set off, her small plump body quivering with righteous indignation. As she marched with head held high past the bar, she spotted her students peeking out from the bathroom. Pouncing on the closest, she pulled him out by the ear shouting fiercely, “All of you, get upstairs right now.”
As she prodded the sheepish boys hurriedly past the bar, she heard a waitress yelling excitedly, “There’s a nun out there. There’s a nun out there.”
Quickly, they shepherded their snickering troops back out to the bus stopping only at a MacDonalds for take out and a bathroom.
Knowing that word would spread like wildfire throughout the parish before Sunday services the next day, Father Joe bravely diffused parental indignation by preaching on the misuses of the word, family.
Halloween Riot
I taught first and second grade in a four room rural Catholic School. The principal was an elegant sister in the traditional Dominican white habit, which she gathered close around her whenever she entered my classroom. I was into nature and had pretty much filled my room with birds’ nests, rocks, weeds, feathers, fossils, pet insect-eating plants, and other dust catchers. This left little room for art supplies, which sort of spilled out of my “Fibber Magee’s Closet,” whenever I opened the doors. There was a small glass window in our door to the central hall and whenever the fire inspector came by, Sister would stand with her squared off headdress blocking the window and the fire inspector’s view of my room and closet.
On Fridays the parish priest would come after lunch and teach my class religion. Halloween fell on a Friday my first year there and since we were having a party right after Father’s class, I conspired with him to be prepared for me to come bursting in dressed as a witch, screeching scary things. I didn’t think to warn anyone else.
I do a very scary witch. (Perhaps some type casting involved?) When I slammed open the door doing my witch thing, it set off a panic. Some children dived under their desks, knocking a few over noisily in the process, others fought to get into the over-stuffed closet, and one or two climbed up on the windowsills. Every single child screamed at the top of their lungs.
Their older siblings immediately fought their way out of the other three rooms to come to the rescue of their little brothers and sisters, totally filling the central hall and leaving their teachers (and the principal) blocked into their classrooms. Bedlam reigned.
No one was hurt, order was restored, children were calmed and consoled, and the teachers called it quits on classes for the day.
I really am a well-intentioned fun person, but I’m pretty sure my principal considered me a mixed blessing.
Jesus, the Kindergarten God
Prejudices can be peculiarly transitory.
I remember a rather adversarial conversation in my early thirties with an elderly priest of the fire and brimstone persuasion. He finally said angrily, “I’ve been doing this for over forty years.” And I thought to myself, “Exactly. That’s the problem.”
Now that I’m a senior citizen, I tend to distrust the opinions of anyone under fifty. It made me nervous that our new insurance agent was about our grandchildren’s age, so I took to calling him the Kindergarten Kid.
One morning while reading the scriptures, I told my husband that if Jesus came back as thirty-something, I’d have a hard time taking him seriously.
My husband quipped, “You mean kind of like a kindergarten God?”
One Thousand Days Without Sex
Got a “like” from a blogger titled “Onethousandsingledays,” so I checked out her site.
Her blog is about her decision to do without sex, kissing, or dating for one thousand days. (Though going out dancing is allowed.) She has some pretty interesting reasons for this.
Turns out she started blogging about the same time I did, three months ago. She now has 4,044 followers and has had 90,794 views. I have 32 followers and 1,067 views. Hmmm.
She seems to think things like twitter helped. Somehow I don’t think twitter will help me as much.
At 75 I don’t think many people will care about my next thousand days without sex or for that matter, my past one thousand days. However, I might could save her a lot of time.
Follow Your Own Weirdness
The title quote is from Ray Waddle, a writer.
Poets are prophets. They can speak things they don’t know yet. From a talk by Shelley Warren.
Altered states are easy, altered traits are difficult. From Rabbi Rami Shapiro.
And to keep a perspective…. two passed on by my son Steve:
Shhhh! is the sound of no one caring what you think.
and
No matter how great your sorrow or how great your pain, one billion, three hundred million Chinese don’t give a _______.
And a memory of a moment of truth from my youngest son, Tommy. When he wasn’t quite three yet, I tried to get him to speak for a tape recording to send to my mother, who lived in another state. He stared silently at the recorder, so I encouraged him to say who he was. He not only remained mute, he became obviously upset. Finally he burst out in an anguished voice, “I’m somebody! I’m somebody!”
A universal cry, I believe.
Laughter: Carbonated Grace 