Random Musings

4 floppies FULL of e-mails 7 months of weekly long-distance phone calls 11 years of friendship and 9 WONDERFUL years of marriage! Happy Anniversary, Babe!

Growing up, I often heard people throw out comments like, "Well, she just lost her will to live." "He's quit fighting. It won't be long now." and everyone solemnly nodded, as if we determine our time to go or stay. There are the stories that make you pause and ponder the connection between our mind and our soul. For instance: A lady from my hometown had two daughters. One was critically injured in a wreck and was spiritually not ready for death. The doctors gave her 24 hours. The Mom was a smoker and had emphysema. That night she stretched herself out on the daughter's hospital bed and prayed for God to take her instead of her daughter. The next morning the mother died sitting in the hospital chair - an aneurysm, the doctors said - and the daughter began to make steady improvements until she went home. A part of my mind argues that she was a very heavy smoker, often struggled with breathing, was under duress from her daughter's condition. Her...

I acquired a new job this summer, one I wasn't anticipating - that of a censor. We go to the dentist for one of T's many visits, and the boys start giggling, looking around, and holding a magazine very close. It's an underwear ad. I tell them to stop being silly and turn the page. They obey, but every boy after that wants that magazine. We go to the Hair Salon, and they get all excited when they see a cover, and I discover that there is a Maxim magazine in the waiting area. I start sorting through the many piles, pulling out all the Maxims and Cosmopolitans I can find. What are the owners thinking? But then tonight we go to Cary Towne Center. Walking out of Macy's, we have to walk by not one, not two, but THREE huge photos (all the same picture) in the make-up aisle to get out. The lady's top is almost off with nothing else on. Thankfully Tonya spotted a picture half-way through of a woman pursing her lips at the lipstick rack and started making fun of it, so that...

It has started. My next 9 days ("tomorrows" as the kids call them) are measured in small segments of time that have more than enough things to totally fill them. And of course, in the midst of it all, there are the time-out moments when everything must stop for certain things to be handled. You know, the bruises or cuts from crashing your bike into the shed on purpose, etc. And then there's the times we you have to carry out the threat you made, even though you don't want to but you know it's necessary. One of our 3 visitors has had a consistent problem with "talking" as the kids call it (calling others bad names). There have been times in years past when the translators would refuse to tell me what was said, saying it was very bad and too bad to translate. Since I don't speak Russian, in normal circumstances I don't know whether it's a real argument, or simply kids being kids. But the subject came up in the mountains, and I finally ga...

> http://www.wral.com/news/local/video/3227577/ YES! That was my husband on tv last night! And for the first time ever, thanks to some of the obscene, vulgar, hateful, and crazy e-mails the Rules Review received, they had to have a security officer at their monthly meeting! The worst e-mail turned out to be from a woman in Arkansas, and the nicest thing she said was that Bobby was an animal hater. HUH?! The Bryan family got a kick out of that one. The man who should have been named Noah and will eat a McDonald's hamburger and drink water to save money (or take his lunch) but will spend money on feed and medicine for animals is an animal hater?! I agree that animals should be treated, as should all of God's creation, in a correct manner, but it aggravates me somewhat that people are ranting and raving over an issue where they neither have all the facts nor care whether or not things are done legally and correctly. And that's all I can say on the issue.

Eating Healthy I like bananas when they're a nice yellow and firm. When they're mushy they're only good for banana bread, which somewhat knocks it out of the healthy category. I actually like peaches, watermelon and apples, but I think they're messy so I seldom eat them. I do like a good apple pie, which also bumps the fruit into a different category. I like pears in a salad - you know - the kind with mayonnaise and cheese and lettuce, which again, bumps the fruit into another category. I like cantaloupe , but I can't eat a whole one by myself and Bobby doesn't particularly care for it. I LOVE vegetables, especially fresh fried squash and okra, peas, and tomatoes. Eating healthy in and of itself is not a problem. It's the habit that's the problem. I'm finding that it's audaciously hard to break several years (and I do mean several) years of a bad habit. Baby steps...that's what I keep telling myself.

Sunday conversations: Mikalai : Mom, tonight church one hour? Bobby: One hour thirty minutes. Mikalai : Mom, tonight church two hours? Me: One hour thirty minutes. Aleh : Mom, tonight church one hour? Me: Yes. Tonya: Mom, tonight church one hour? Bobby: Yes, one hour thirty minutes. Mikalai : Mom, tonight church one hour... and repeat the above every twenty minutes, and then replace with ...read Narnia? read Bibles? Do they think the answer is going to change? Tonight in exasperation I responded with ,"No, 5 hours!" much to Jen and Nicole's amusement. No sooner is church over and we're in the van and the Narnia question started! When Aleh asked me for the third time before Bobby could even back out of the parking lot, I finally turned around and said, "Yes! And Aleh is reading 10 pages!" Then Tonya asked, so I said the same thing to her. When the time to read did come around, Aleh started whining, so I told him he had to read 20...

When I was a young child (before third grade, that is), my family traveled through some curves in life's road. My Dad was struggling with whether or not God was calling him to preach, Mom had cancer, and then in the midst of it all, the company of the store Dad managed sold out. It may just be my child's warped sense of time, but it seemed to me that it was during this time frame that Dad initiated the "three bite" rule. We were not allowed to make a face or say yuck to anything on the table, and regardless of whether or not we liked it, we had to eat three bites of everything served. Since Mom fixed our plates, that meant we basically had to clean our plate. And yes, countless battles ensued - Me vs. the Macaroni & cheese, Andy vs. the broccoli, Me vs. saur kraut and wiennies, Merinda vs. any breakfast food. I don't seem to remember Naomi whining about foods. Today my three ABRO kids were joined by three others. At lunch I noticed my three watching me to...

Week 4 started today, and while the whining started, tempers flared a few times, and some of the excitement is gone, overall things are still going well (by ABRO definitions, that is). I think it's a bit funny that I've had a child/teenager in tears twice the last two days, and yet I'm pleased that in 4 weeks that's all. PROGRESS!! Whoohoo ! (Last year he cried at least once a week, and sometimes for hours at a time, and over the craziest things.) And I'm not too bothered by the fact that he's crying because I made him share. Build a bridge and get over it. Too bad I don't know how to say that phrase in Russian. It's these days when reality sets in that are the hardest. They are only here for 6 weeks and come from a totally different background with a totally different set of values. I think we make an impact in their lives, but as a former ABRO child has said, "You're not going to change them in 6 weeks." And she's right. ...

This past week we had the wonderful privilege of having my family up from the wonderful land of Alabama. My 8 year-old-nephew, with his Dad's help, caught a catfish that we think weighed 10 lbs. To call the event exciting would be an understatement. I lost track of how many catfish my brother-in-law and I cleaned, but the boys are now convinced there are no more catfish to be caught in the pond. I keep telling them they are there, but since they haven't seen them during feeding time they think they're all gone. Explaining to them that the fish don't always come up and the five ones we always see (they have certain scars and markings) weren't the ones caught somehow doesn't translate into our/their limited vocabulary. Oh, and the tiny turtle Aleh caught, placed in the bathtub (which put them in a frenzy when Dad took a shower, only to discover Dad had placed their prize possession in a water-filled bucket) disappeared the next morning. The bucket of water was s...