When It Rains...

I'm posting during a quick window of opportunity at my mom's house, where I am always sure to have such windows as there are plenty of people available to entertain toddlers and hold babies. We are still without internet at our house and will be until probably Wednesday. It's been hard to go without TV and the internet, but as you can witness, I am surviving. I was thriving, rather than just surviving, until a couple days ago, when I finished the second book of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. Yes, there is a third, but I have to wait to read it until Candice finishes our shared copy, borrowed from a friend of Mom's--we have to do this because our library can't keep them in stock. So I have poured over my latest issue of Home magazine roughly sixteen times in an attempt to keep myself from going crazy. I should note here that Candice and I are thrilled (sarcasm) that the Twilight books are described as a "vampire love saga" in the book jackets. Yes, there are vampires, yes, there is romance, yes, it's a series--but a "vampire love saga"??

Ah, yes, the title of this post. Well, suffice to say, it's been a crazy week. Last Wednesday Baylor woke up with the mother of all colds, and he about fell to pieces. Baylor tends to be just slightly dramatic, and so things like colds or teeth or changes in routine completely throw him for a loop. By Thursday, what with Baylor not sleeping for two nights in a row and Charlotte waking up with colic at 1 and 3 AM, all hell had broken loose--and then Jack split open the back of his earlobe on the corner of the coffee table. Stephen ran home from work and I ran Jack to the ER, where he received four bee-yoo-ti-ful stitches in his precious fat baby lobe. He was an absolute trooper who earned many accolades of praise from the doctor and nurses. One nurse even offered him a sucker, and when he just stared at it and instead chose his sippy cup over the candy, I had to explain to her that he didn't even know what a sucker was. What a kid!

So, that was traumatic. By Friday both Jack and I had caught the dreaded cold (which, I assure you, is a doozy, complete with muscle aches and chills), and we were canceling previous engagements left and right. Well, I make it sound like we have a raging social life, when in actuality we only had to cancel dinner with friends Friday night and apple-picking with other friends Sunday afternoon. So Friday night dinner was canceled, we technically had no money for pizza but no energy (or groceries) for anything else, and Baylor was having a collapse-on-the-floor-in-a-boneless-fashion hissy fit because he couldn't breathe. Stephen took Baylor outside to calm him down and, by his account, looked up to the sky and asked the Lord for aid because we were falling to pieces. When he came back inside we started to look at pizza coupons, and then the doorbell rang. Our friends the Algers, who are in our Sunday School class, walked into our home and handed us lasagna and a salad, completely and unexpectedly fulfilling Stephen's request to God.

God is good, all the time. All the time, God is good.

In closing, I'd like to very proudly announce that my husband, already a published author of poetry, essays, and newspaper columns, has just had his first short story published! Titled The Glorious Revolution, you'll find it here at Ray Gun Revival, an online publication of science fiction writings. Scroll to page 22 to read Stephen's story. I am convinced this is just the beginning.

Things are looking up.