A happy week

This week has gone by too quickly. Our Thanksgiving was spent at Jon's parents house- complete with 15 grandkids (2 still inutero) and I think 20 adults. Margaret spent all of her time either preparing food, washing dishes, or taking care of all the grandkids. Clearly it was a restful happy time for all the adults, except for Margaret, who is still recovering. Jon's Uncle Linder prepared mountains of cookies and the turkey, which was a great big 25 lb feast for the eyes. I prepared a big batch of creamed onions and a 4 layer pumpkin luscious cake. We finished off the evening with a game of Texas Hold 'Em where all the Hodges players were beaten quite badly by one of Dewey's aerospace students. This girl was a capable player, and because she is from Iran, and speaks Persian, at her request she was dubbed the Persian Princess. Fortunately, none of us lost any money, only little plastic poker chips. So it was a game easily recovered from.

Friday afternoon Aunt Louie (aka my sister Melissa) came and picked up our 6 children and took them to her house. She obviously left her Jetta and drove the Suburban. This was very upsetting to Oliver who had wanted to ride in the Jetta. Melissa tried to explain that there weren't enough seats, and it took awhile for that to settle into his brain. Now he pays attention to car sizes and which ones might fit our family. Anyway, Lou departed with the offspring so Jon and I could have 24 hours of pretending to be yuppies or dinks, or whatever other delightful name referencing married adults with plenty of time and no children.

Jon settled into reading every imaginable article he could find on Ron Paul (presidential candidate- see www.ronpaul2008.com) and I took a nap. Actually, I laid down with my eyes closed for exactly 53 minutes, but did not succeed in sleep because I could not turn my stupid brain OFF!

Then we went to the Shakespeare Tavern to have dinner and watch King John. It was a wonderful play. Unfortunately I did as I have done on our last three outings and fell asleep the last 15 minutes of the show. Actually, we went to a dinner party earlier this week and I stayed awake for all of that- though I did come home and fall asleep immediately afterwards. I should remind Jon of that.

This morning we decided to celebrate 12 years of marriage with breakfast at the local Waffle House since we had breakfast at Waffle House the morning after we were married. We sat at the counter, and learned that they were having a very exciting morning. Apparently the entire cooking range caught on fire at 7am. The waitress was recounting hustling the people out of the restaurant and one lady sitting 8 ft from the fire said," But I'm not done eating." I really can't imagine risking life and limb to finish off a Waffle House meal--maybe something from Emeril's or Canoe, but not Waffle House. Mmmmm. Speaking of Emeril's, last year for our anniversary we stayed at the Ritz Carlton in downtown Atlanta, and walked down the street to Emeril's for dinner. I had this amazing appetizer of perfectly prepared raw salmon on little cups of Bibb lettuce with sort of fried yummy bit that was crunchy and flavorful on top. That was clearly a more expensive anniversary celebration. We are currently in seriously frugal mode, so we've come down a few levels this year. A play and waffle house breakfst. :-) This morning I was half way hoping that nice little man from India was going to roll in a cart with piping hot dark coffee, freshly squeezed orange juice, poached eggs and a platter of heavenly pastries looking fresh from Paris. However, he was busy at the Ritz Carlton, and we woke up at home sweet home. One thing that was delightful for 24 hours was being totally kid free. We could have adult conversations at a normal speaking level (as opposed to whispering or not talking about anything of substance because the children are present, and then forgetting to discuss things when you go to bed). And we were not awakened by the sounds of Oliver antagonizing someone at 7am. This more than made up for no Ritz Carlton.

Now back to my tale of the Waffle House. I was amazed how fast they cleaned up the place, because at 10am the place was humming and you'd never guess there'd been a fire. That said, I think that everyone who eats there for the next 3 months will know all about the fire from the waitresses. We also learned that almost everyone working there is related. One waitress has been working there 20 years! I think it would be fun for a week or two, maybe even a couple months, but I'm unable to get my mind around 20 years of waiting tables at Waffle House.

Jon had a huge breakfast- eggs, hashbrowns, sausage, waffle, toast, coffee and OJ. I settled for something a little less artery clogging: hashbrowns and two eggs. There was a #10 can on the back of the griddle with an odd looking yellowish mass afloat in a sea of grease. I asked what it was, and was informed it was the grease they ladle over all the food as it cooks. YIKES! I think for health reasons we better stick with once every 12 years for the Waffle House experience. Once the can of gelatinous grease had melted completely, it was poured into a stainless steel pot that was set into the center panel of the cook center. It did look a good deal more benign there.

After breakfast we went to have my haircut fixed. A couple days ago I went to my regular salon for a cut, but my stylist had moved to Kentucky, much to my immense sorrow. I decided to go with the rather effeminate guy who works there, wrongly assuming that such a man would be perfect with cutting hair. When he finished with me, I looked about 10 years old.Also the general shape of my hair and head was akin to a pyramid. Not really the visual affect I was going for. And toward the end of the cut, he was so utterly distracted checking out other patrons as they walked in, that truly I thought the end of the flat iron was going to end up in my eye. I was literally dodging the flat iron. The next day after washing and fixing my hair, I realized that this was not something I could live with for any amount of time. I called my sister and then her stylist, who squeezed me in for a Saturday appt. This man was quite straight having a wife and three children (#3 is still inutero). He also kept any chatter to a bare minimum being very focused on my hair and my face. Geometry and mathematical equations were clearly weighed into this haircut. The results are more than fabulous. I love my hair now, as does Jon, though he would have preferred paying for my hair to be cut once this week instead of twice. I decided to forego buying hair products, but I did have my eyebrows waxed. Also, so worth it. I have added 2 people to my favorite people list. My new stylist and Becca who handles waxing eyebrows. I'm considering having a little burial ceremony in the backyard for my tweezers- my constant torture companion for over a decade now.

We went to go run some errands after the hair cut, and spent a ridiculous amount of time walking around Walmart trying to find something to buy Oliver for his birthday. Here is the dilemma. We have had three children turn 5 already. Which is a total of 15 birthday parties (at least) and a good many Christmases. So we have plenty of junk and toys from those occasions. After tripping, picking up, and vacuuming up little dumb toys for 11 years, we can only look with scorn upon these items nicely packaged in stores. And bringing ourselves to spend money on these items- almost unthinkable. But of course, Oliver has never turned 5 before, and quite frankly the child spends the entire year gauging how much time remains until the big day. We did finally settle on some items which we hoped would deliver some sort of birthday joy. Once we got back home, Lou was there with the kids happy to relinquish her charges back to their rightful parental units.

Poor Oliver assumed that we had forgotten his birthday, and hid away in the backyard for awhile. I finally found him trying desperately not to cry and guessed the problem. I explained that we were having a big birthday party after church tomorrow- but he wasn't totally buying the story. I quickly wrapped his gifts and set them in the kitchen so he could see that his gifts were ready and waiting. This did help things, and then we allowed him to open one gift. It was a winner. A ornament shaped soda bottle of coke with Santa on the packaging. He was thrilled with his own special soda bottle (praise God for sheltered homeschool kids-who don't get out much). He joyfully put it in the fridge, and drank it with our special night before birthday party dinner--Little Ceasar's Pizza.

So that wraps up the week. I needed to get a lot of work done this weekend and didn't. But that's all right. There's always tomorrow. Oh, one more thing- Vivian returned home with pigtails, and really looks like a kid-not even a toddler. It seems odd that she talks only gibberish with a few meaningful words thrown in.

Please pass the bee barf

Tonight we had random dinner because Jon was at school, and I would rather do something other than actually make dinner. I was spreading some honey on my buttered bread, and Oliver said, "Mom, what is honey made out of." I enjoyed, immensely enjoyed explaining to him that honey is bee puke that somebody puts in a jar. I kept remarking how delicious the throw-up was while I ate the bread. I'm not sure that Oliver will ever again eat honey. He was thoroughly grossed out. :-)

Jumping Rope

This afternoon Caroline was jumping rope in the cul-de-sac. I asked for the jump rope and did some little rope tricks, etc. Nothing amazing, but the children were blown away by my jumping rope technique.

"Mom is the greatest!"Charles yelled, while Jonathan and Caroline fought for turns to try next. They failed miserably, and simply gazed in awe as I retrieved the rope and began again going through my tricks.

What can I say? On the island of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

Saturday morning

This morning Jon and I were in the kitchen chatting and Jonathan, the brave, walked in to talk to us. "Mom, Dad, I want to tell you this funny thing that happened yesterday." Jon and I exchanged looks. "Really?Really?" Jon said with mock enthusiasm. Jonathan, being accustomed to such treatment continued.

"Yesterday, when we were playing tag, Peek--" Jonathan began. "Peek? Like peek a boo?" I interrupted. "Or peek as in peek a pack of pickle peppers?" Jon added. "So anyway, Peek realized that I was standing off to the side as if I had been tagged--" Jonathan continued his story.

"Tagged as in tag sale?" I asked and sipped my coffee. "Uh, huh, really, wow this is a really exciting story," Jon added. Jonathan kept talking as if we were silent and attentive. "Peek suddenly stopped, touched me and said, "you've been eliminated." Jonathan finished the story and stood grinning broadly. "Eliminated- that was so funny."

Jon and I stopped drinking our coffee and we both turned and looked at him in silence for a few seconds. "Oh, so eliminated is the punch line? That was really funny," I said. Then Jon and I looked at each other and I said, "one, two three--" and we burst into laughter.

Anyone who thinks home school parents aren't preparing their children for the real world are wrong. Dead wrong.

The Jan. 14th Rally

All things considered, I'd say my progress on the Jan. 14th rally is decent, and I'm currently in only a mild state of panic. It is a very scary thing to plan something of this size by oneself. It could be a complete and total bomb, or an incredible success. Of course there are the various levels in between--

My family is watching a movie; a very dumb movie. The spoof on Noah's Ark; I don't remember the title, and it isn't important for the purpose of this blog entry. I'm very tired, and could either watch the dumb movie for the sake of being with the family, or go to bed with a hot mug of tea. I'm leaning toward the latter. Besides, I'll be with the clan for an entire week!

Oh, and my 12 year anniversary is next weekend. 12 years married to my best friend. It is going by too fast. If we live to be 95 (Jon is 7 months older than me), that only leaves us 64 more years to be together, and that is not nearly long enough, especially when you realize that you never cease existing. That whole "no giving or taking in marriage" thing that Jesus mentioned in relation to heaven is a serious bummer to the very happily married.

One more thing- whoever anonymous is that said Bible- for the Bible and Spade, thank you. Bible and Spade is the greatest archeology magazine. When I'm old and gray with plenty of time for reading, I'll subscribe. I hope they'll still have low quality printing- it adds to the charm of the thing, I think.

Really, Really Gross

Last night, I sent the kids upstairs to brush their teeth. It was really cold outside, and every year when the weather gets really cold, a couple of those big crunchy wood roaches roam in looking for warmer weather. Well, one was in the bathroom. I could hear Oliver's squeals of delight along with Caroline and Charles coaching him in his effort to grab the fellow.

Suddenly, there was a blood curdling scream, followed by panicked crying. It was definitely Oliver. But what was more strange was that Charles and Caroline were laughing hard. I raced upstairs, and there stood Oliver, looking very stiff, panicked eyes, unable to communicate in words. "What happened?" I yelled at the giggling duo. They recovered themselves enough to say that when Oliver grabbed for the roach, it suddenly jumped onto his hand and ran up his sleeve.

Oliver was wearing a turtleneck, and I did not relish the thought of attempting to locate and extricate the roach from the shirt. Roaches TOTALLY gross me out. So I decided to raise the shirt a bit and flap it to see if the bug would come out. Well, the bug got moving and Oliver was shrieking in complete terror. I guess it is one thing to hold a roach, and it is quite another to have it scurrying around your body. Finally, FINALLY, the dumb thing fell to the floor, Charles immediately grasped it and threw it in the toilet, and I flushed.

Oliver looked very solemn, and a little sheepish. He sniffed in silence and I gave him a long, bear hug. Poor little chap.

A mug of hot tea and a pile of paper work

Tonight Jon is working at the dining room table on office and school work, and I'm plugging away on the backside of the house at my roll top desk with a big hot mug of Earl Grey tea, which is rather inspiring. I'd rather be inspired to sit on the sofa ten feet from here, with my feet propped up on the coffee table (which I do not own, but have picked out of the IKEA catalog. Jon said that had I not acquired a $600 cell phone bill thanks to Pro-Life Unity, I would have the coffee table. Oh, well), anyway, with my feet propped on the coffee table and reading a delightful volume of Plutarch or perhaps rereading the history of Eleanor of Aquitaine- which is also very lovely. I did discover one remnant magazine of Biblical Archeology under my bed last Friday. My favorite archeology magazine is "____ and Spade." I know that is cheesy- but I don't remember the first word. Bible and Spade, book and spade, earth and spade- it escapes me.

Instead of reading, I've been taking care of lots of little details, and I'm now supposed to write an article for the www.georgiahla.com website, but have hit a brick wall. Nothing interesting is coming forth. Thus, I'm here, "warming up" on my blog.

We have a new system around this house, after I spent three days cleaning, scrubbing and organizing last week. Here is the new motto/system: "We are too busy to have a dirty house." So once a day, I route the troops for one hour of vacuuming, dusting, mopping, folding, and de-cluttering, besides making sure that beds are made, trash taken out, and towels hung up in the morning when everyone is getting ready. The results are really inspiring. There is one completely trashed room in our house- what used to be the school room, which was for a time Grandpa's room, is now the upstairs laundry room. It is the catch all for everything, including vast quantities of clothes, ironing, mismatched socks, prolife activism stuff like fetal models, posters, back drops, brochures, etc. I am hoping to get this room tackled this coming Saturday, and then all of the house will be nice and clean.

After Oliver got up this morning and had his oatmeal, hot chocolate, and Emergen-C drink,he donned his overalls, and headed out to hunt lizards. This is becoming an increasingly time consuming task for the simple reason that the lizards are very cold and not really moving until almost noon. Oliver went out the door at 7:43am and he caught two very small lizards at 11:17. Yes, my spastic, over energetic, would be diagnosed with ADHD if I allowed that sort of thing, stayed patiently in the neighbor's bushes all that time waiting. Oliver came into the house very, VERY pleased with himself and his twin lizards. I don't know that they were twins, but they were very small, and caught at the same time. We went to go pick up Charles from school, and Oliver happily sat in the very back caressing his little creatures. He was delighted to be able to allow Charles to hold a lizard and still have a lizard to hold himself. When we returned home, Oliver returned to Bo's bushes, in the squatting position. About an hour later he came trotting across the back of the yard, came into the house, slammed the door shut, threw himself to the floor and all the while in hysterics. Apparently, he found a third lizard, and in his excitement released lizard one and two, and thus lost all three lizards. Usually, I do not allow crying over something this trivial, however, I really felt very sorry for the little chap.

Vivian has a cold. She is very cranky with her cold.

L-L-Lizard

Yesterday, Oliver was doing what he does everyday of his life. He was in Bo's bushes searching for lizards. I told him to get out of the bushes several times, but I was busy scrubbing the house down, and quite frankly, when the highlight of your life is lizard hunting, shouldn't everyone leave you alone?

Oliver caught this really big lizard. Bigger than all other big lizards ever caught by the Hodges boys. And he was a very fiesty lizard. Oliver brought the lizard to me proudly. Jonathan was so excited that he asked to hold it, Oliver handed it over, and then Jonathan panicked a bit and ended up dropping the lizard. Oliver stepped back as Jonathan attempted to catch it. Then Oliver pushed Jonathan aside, pounced and caught the lizard immediately. Highly entertaining.

That lizard was a grayish brown color in the early stages of his Oliver relationship. After dinner, when I really paid attention again, I noticed the lizard was a brilliant green. I said, "Ollie, come here and let me take a picture." Oliver trotted right over, very pleased with the prospect. As I peered through the viewer I decided to tease a bit. "Why don't you let the lizard bite you nose, and it can hang from your nose for the photo." Immediately Oliver put the lizard to his nose saying, "Come on, open your mouth and bite!"

Oliver is marine material.

Mom, you are disgusting

I should be doing about a dozen other things besides updating this blog. But, oh, well.

When I was a small child, visiting my dad, the food choices were either exotic or low class- depending on how you look at these sorts of things. One dinner which Jason and I enjoyed immensely, was sardines lined up on a piece of buttered bread. Yummy. Sometimes dad would go to this very particular butcher, and have the highest quality sirloin ground up. We would go home and dad would mix it with various things, shape it into patties, place it on wheat bread with thick sliced onion and plenty of freshly ground black pepper, and voila! Dinner was served. I never thought anything about what I ate, except that I was always hungry and I enjoyed everything.

Occasionally, I get a hankering for a nice tin of sardines, bathed in oliver oil, lined up neatly, and waiting to be a tasty snack. Also, steak tartar, or pickled herring, smoked oysters, mmmm. All a culinary delight to me, and an object of scorn and disgust to my picky offspring. I guess I should have served them up such things when they were Vivvie's age. Maybe it isn't too late to work on Vivian. I do have a leftover sardine here.....

Another day

I'm rather overwhelmed to say the least, and at a general low point. My girlfriend brought me dinner for the family yesterday. It was really great. In the big bag of dinner items, there was this amazing layer bar about 3 inches square, with a thick buttery graham cracker crust, coconut, chocolate chips, and then walnut halves across the top. I hadn't eaten breakfast or lunch because I wasn't hungry. And looking at this bar, I still wasn't hungry but I decided to take a little tiny taste....which was followed by another little tiny taste, and then a bite, until only half the bar remained.

Oliver watched me take a bite from the very back of the suburban and said,"mom, what are you eating?" To which I responded," A little taste of heaven." Oliver thought about this and said," Well, I want a little taste of heaven!"

I thought Jon only had one class remaining after this semester, but it turns out he has two classes. Some weeknights he won't get home until 10pm. Joy.

Charles has been saying a lot of funny things, but whenever I sit to hastily type out the stories, they leave my mind entirely.

I haven't been home cleaning, cooking, shopping, organizing, etc., for a Saturday in months. I think the last time may have been pre-June of this year. Jon and I decided that this Saturday, we would forget that hundreds of babies will be slaughtered and 5 people will actually care enough to go out to the abortion mills--in order to get our household into some semblance of order. With this decided, I looked at my calendar for Saturday. I had already committed to being at a community event in Atlanta from noon until about 6pm. Sigh. Well, at least we'll have the morning.

I LOVE people who call me and keep me on the phone "solving" all my problems. "What you need is a house keeper....what you need are volunteers to make phone calls everyday....what you need is someone you can train to take your place half the time and give you a break....what you need is a secretary..." These type of people should be gathered out of the general public and put on an island together. They'll all sit on the beach talking about what they need and die of starvation 10 feet from the coconut trees.

The nice thing about being at rock bottom is that you can only go up. I really thought I was going to get a flat tire yesterday, just because it seems like a good time for everything to go wrong. I didn't get the flat tire, which confirmed in my illogical state of lowness that I truly am at the bottom.

Thursday with Gloria

Gloria is a mother I talked out of abortion at Atlanta Surgi-Center (although according to DHR, Atlanta Surgi-Center stopped performing abortions in April when they gave up their ambulatory surgical license) in early August. Yesterday, I took her to Hosea's Feed the Hungry to get a supply of food and some coats for her children. Gloria has 8 children at home.

When I was in the parking lot, Afemo and his wife Elizabeth (daughter of Hosea Williams) drove up. I had met them at a CareNet fundraiser dinner a few weeks ago when I served as greeter with their daughter Juanita. Afemo was very nice, and said he would come and speak with Gloria personally, and make sure that she was well cared for.

After an hour, Gloria's two youngest children were getting restless and hungry, so I went and got some fried chicken and biscuits. Well, I couldn't exactly bring fried chicken into a room full of practically homeless people waiting for food assistance, etc., so I asked Gloria and the children to come outside. We settled in at the back of the Suburban and I helped Tayman (nickname) with his food, etc. Afemo came out to make sure we weren't leaving. Gloria was still waiting to be seen, so Afemo talked with her about her situation. Afemo is a professional actor, and Gloria recognized him. She was so pleased that he cared about her and her family. Then he took her hands and said he wanted to pray for her. I joined the circle, and he prayed this amazing 15 minute prayer. It was very moving. I had tears running down my cheeks and then my nose was running- which is rather awkward when you are standing in a prayer circle. Do you drop hands and wipe your nose with your sleeve and then hold hands again? And won't that seriously gross out the person stuck holding your hand? That and all the other obvious questions began to surface. I regrouped without dropping hands. :-) After Afemo was finished praying, he stuck around and chatted for a few minutes, and I thanked him for taking the time to pray for Gloria.

This cute wee black man named BJ handles security over there. He's nearly 70, and a friendly, energetic chap. He was very pleased to meet me because I'm a friend of Shealita, who rescued BJ from a horrendous living situation. BJ brought the two little boys some match box cars and fall jackets. Tayman was talking to everyone like a little magpie by the time we left. He was very happy.

When I took Gloria home, she was encouraged and ready to move forward. Things are tough for her. Her mother died when she was 12. She got pregnant a year later and dropped out of school. Her father died that year as well. Her grandmother took Gloria and her sister in, and cared for them as best she could. Gloria doesn't have a support system, no education and no job. She feels like she's at the mercy of her surroundings. My greatest hope for her is that she will recognize how God is working in her life, and that she will rest upon Him for salvation. Her life is going through great changes, and she is getting help and support now, all because, by God's grace, she stood in a parking lot at Atlanta Surgi-Center in the blazing hot sun, and chose life for her baby.